Day 1

I flew from NYC to San Diego last night and my friend, Erica, picked me up at the airport and hosted me for the evening. It was such a lovely way to start this journey.
This morning, she dropped me off at the PCT shuttle and I was off. The shuttle was awesome, as I got to meet about 6-7 other hikers. They were from all over - Chicago, Australia, London, Oklahoma. And they were all ages, the lady from Oklahoma had to be in her late sixties. I asked her why she was doing this and she said she had to do it now or she’d be too old. I told her I thought the same thing about myself. Maybe we have more time than we think.
After a bunch of stops, we finally arrived at the Southern Terminus. My heart was beating pretty fast, as I couldn’t believe I was actually there.

The border wall at the Southern Terminus is immense and it’s crazy to think how people actually get across it. I also couldn’t stop thinking how families risk their lives to cross that wall, and here we are, walking mile after mile by choice, right on the other side. But here we were. This is what we set out to do.

After we signed the book and took some pictures, we just started walking, one foot after the other under the blistering midday sun. I fell into hiking with two other hikers, a teacher who lives in Chicago and an ecologist from Australia. The teacher had already done the AT and I was marveling at how small his pack was. Both were awesome.

Because we didn’t start hiking until about 1:30-2, we just wanted to get to a decent campsite about 8-9 miles in. We made it at about 6:30 to mile 8.8. The hiking wasn’t bad, except I already almost stepped on two rattlesnakes. Gotta watch those feet.

We set up our tents, made our dinners, and chatted about our respective lives. It was a good first day. It’s nearly 9pm. I’m ready for bed.