Wednesday 24th April 2019 – Day 1 Campo to Morena Village – 0 to 20.2 miles

I arrived in San Diego after a long set of three flights on the 21/4. The flights from Dubbo to San Francisco had been uneventful and nearly pleasant. Once I arrived at San Francisco however, the queue to get to through the border control was very long and slow. I was watching the time and it was getting to the point that I would be close to missing the connecting flight to San Diego. Luckily I finally got through and had my passport stamped with an October exit date leaving long enough to allow me to finish the PCT.

Navigating the airport to get to the United terminal had me a little flustered, but I managed to get my bag checked just in time.

A trail angel from Scout & Frodo’s picked me and another young fellow Patrick up and the same time and whisked us back to their house. I spent three nights in total at this amazing place, Scout & Frodo have been hosting, feeding and arranging the dropping hikers to the start of the PCT in Campo for 14 years so far with next year being their last.

I spent the best part of two days getting over the jet lag and organising some food to start with.

So back to today, I finally had a better nights sleep, but still woke up really early, packs were out at the front patio before a quick breakfast and then about 26 of us were loaded into volunteers personal cars and ferried the 90 minutes to the start. Three of us went with “Girl Scout”who is a previous PCT hiker who volunteers his time to Scout & Frodo.

So finally we’re at the start of the PCT and having some photos taken and touched the Mexican border wall and even looked through it. I couldn’t see any potential illegal immigrants though it, but we did see quite a few border control vehicles cruising around.

Today’s walk was pretty substantial in the elevation gain and fall combined with a temperature in the high 20’s C made for warmish walking. I had a late lunch at Houser Creek and a bit of a siesta before deciding against camping there and pushed on up the bigger climb and kept going to Lake Morena. I’ve set up camp in the caravan park for $5 and even had a shower since it had been a few days.

I had dinner of a burger and chips at the local shop which was a short walk away with a fellow hiker.

I’m not sure where to head to tomorrow, I could make Mt Laguna or I may pull up a little short and camp instead, heading through to the shop in the following morning.

I’ve got no blisters today, but was puffing pretty hard up the climbs, but it’s what I expected since I hardly did any training at all.