After a big feed at the excellent Paradise Valley Cafe, we hitched a ride to Idyllwild. Situated at about 5,500ft and in the shadow of Mt San Jacinto, Idyllwild is a sparsely populated and hiker friendly town. I'm not certain how they got their name but am pretty sure it is a portmateau if idyllic and wild.
As soon as we arrived I recognised it! Not because I'd been there before, this is my first time in America. I recognised it from my Pop's slides. Pop used to travel here frequently with Nan throughout the 1940s and 50s. He took many slides of his travels and would show them to us when they visited Canberra. These are some of my first memories of photography and blow me down if I didn't just step into that world.
Actually, since stepping out of San Diego airport I've felt like I've walked onto a movie set. The first thing I saw stopped me in my tracks; a blue USPS mailbox! Unassuming and ubiquitous I know but my entire knowledge of blue USPS mailboxes has been through visual media. Television and the movies has been my only experience of the USA. And there I was standing on the sidewalk staring at this bloody blue box. It didn't end there. There were the black and white police cars straight out of 'Cops'. The ubiquitous yellow school bus. The background noise laden with american accents. And it is still happening, this feeling I have stepped into the TV. The landscape around me is so big and magestic that it must be a movie set! Then there are people I have met who I saw on social media (youtube, instagram etc) while I was doing research for this trip. That is trippy! Seeing people you watched doing videos on youtube and then BAM! There they are chatting at the table next to you in a cafe in... Where were we? Oh Idyllwild. So yeah, all the wood cabins and presidential campaign friendly folk set amongst beautiful pines and spruces really sent me away into Pop's slides and to top it off it snowed!
Jim looking all windswept and interesting. Oh and for all you Aussies, he is actually called James Valentine! I know huh!! This was taken nearing the end of our descent down Fuller's Ridge; a hellish track that took a meandering 15.2 miles to go 4.2 miles as the crow flies! In that distance we came down from around 9,000 feet to around 1,500 feet! The entire day you could see exactly where we wanted to go just below us but were zig-zagging back and forth above it!!!
The trail takes precedence...
L.A. is pretty close by and there is lots of air traffic.
We could still see Mt San Jacinto for a long time after we had left its snowy trails.
Well... That's about it for this post. A big one I know but it is very hard to edit on trail and zero days in town are chewed up with chores at the post office (didn't help that Big Bear has two and my parcels were all over the place) and shopping. Getting these posts done in the crappy wifi at Motel 6 means I am up late and bloody tired! But that is all part of it. Embarking on this journey I knew I would have to dig deep to get miles behind me. I also knew I have some gumption to achieve that. What I didn't expect was that I'd have to dig deep every day on the trail. It is equally more challenging and more rewarding than I could ever have anticipated!
I also knew that I would change on the trail... I didn't think the first apparent change would be my shoe size! When I left Australia my feet were the same size as Dad's about a 9.5. Now I am sporting a size 11 and am pretty sure I could do with some more real estate for my feet!
Ok. Like I said, it is late and I'm back on the trail tomorrow morning so good night and please give me some feedback if you think the posts are too long, too boring or not covering things you are interested in.
Ciao for now.
Rxxx
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