The night before we left, Kristin and I visited a farmers market to pick up supplies including hummus, pita, apples, oranges, grapes, and some nuts. Then we realized we of course needed chocolate, marshmallows, hot dogs and wine! So we made a run to Trader Joe's where we picked up the supplies (except they don't sell marshmallows, weird right?). And get this, we got "tomato-basil Tofurkey dogs". They were Delicious!! It was definitely a fancy camping trip if you look at our food choices.
Otherwise we were rugged. Rather than paying for a campsite with running water or at least a port-o-potty, we trecked into some unknown territory (via the directions given to us by a guide at the visitors center) and found a remote spot off of a very unkempt dirt road far away from the lights of the city or any other people. There we set up camp! Such a beautiful sight it was!
We figured that we had time to do a hike that afternoon and then another one in the morning before heading back to San Diego. So we set off toward the distant desert hills with a few water bottles and snacks. Now, along the path as we made our way in I pointed out to the girls the various path-marking signs such as stacks of rocks or rows of rock across the pathways and explained to the that you should always stick to those trailmarkers for fear of getting lost.
About 2.5 hours into the hike, we decided to veer off the trail to "go hike that mountain". Offroading, we pushed our way through brush and up bouldered hillsides until we reached the summit. Once there, you definitely don't go back down the same way, so I ended up leading our trio down the other side and figured we would come across a trailmarker and the path that would take us back to our remote campsite.
We found a few of the markers, but they slowly stopped appearing and instead we had to follow some footprints. Well it turns out the footprints lead to some random person's house that we definitely could not see from our campsite. But, near the house I could see the statue that marked the road that we took to our site, so we made our way north and finally as the desert around us darkened we got back to the site and sat down to a lovely tofurkey dinner.
The hike the next day was also incredible, we made our way up to a beautiful desert oasis and natural palm tree grove. It was another beautiful hike and we got to see the last of the desert wildflowers in full bloom before we made our way back to San Diego (with a quick stop at Julian for their famous apple pie along the way)
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