Julian, April 13th-14th

I walked up to the fork at Scissors Crossing, stashed my pee rag[i] in the front pocket of my backpack, and stuck out my thumb.  Maybe 10 cars passed me before one stopped, a small sedan driven by a man in his forties.

 

“Are you going into Julian?”

“I guess I am now!”

Unsure, I stuffed my huge backpack onto my lap in the front seat and didn’t fasten my seatbelt in case I needed to get out in a hurry, but my apprehension didn’t last long.  Wes lived with his wife in another state and did maintenance for the railroad; he was in California on a project and was driving around to sightsee on his day off.  I told him about living in the former Soviet Union where the necessary investments in infrastructure had been made to make passenger rail a common method of transportation, and together we lamented the fact that his had not been done in the U.S.  

Wes dropped me at the post office where I was just in time to collect my package before they closed.  I was starting to realize that I’d mailed myself a lot of things that I didn’t need.  My biggest waste of money was a container of JetBoil fuel at each stop:  $5 for the fuel, $2 for the small cardboard box, and $3.50 for the shipping; it must be shipped separately from your other resupply items shipped priority mail because it’s a compressed mixture of isobutane and propane and must be labeled 

Surface Mail Only

Consumer Commodity ORM-D

Without this label, I think it’s a felony – with it, perfectly legal.  However, my JetBoil stove burned so hot that I could basically only boil water to make instant food (a few disastrous early attempts to cook in it necessitated brillo pads to remove the charred black layers of food from the pot) and it was efficient enough that it didn’t use much gas to do that, so I found myself at my resupply drops collecting canister after canister of expensive, unneeded fuel. 

Julian was a sort of faux-frontier town, tiny but full of tourists, western-themed souvenir shops, and restaurants.  There was a large motorcycle group apparently on a day trip, a few horse-drawn carriages offering rides, and a llama that could be posed with for pictures.  There was also a building advertising old-time reenactments and I would later see some of the performers having lunch in full costume, but I failed to catch a show.  I made my way to a barbecue joint and had lunch while chatting with the friendly woman at the counter; she offered to secure me a ride out to the nearest campground outside of town but I was too enthralled with the town and the prospect of going to a bar that night.   

My first restaurant meal since starting the trail - a pulled pork sandwich, macaroni salad, and coleslaw

 The town was unusually busy, due apparently to the fact that it was the “Taste of Julian” weekend, but the manager at the Hotel Julian agreed to drop the price of her last room from $125 to $95 as a hiker special and to do my laundry.  I really couldn’t afford it, but I have to admit that it was money well spent[ii].  The rooms were beautiful, with old-fashioned décor and modern bathrooms and no TV sets, and at 5:00 PM they served “high tea” where I ate enough scones, whipped cream, and jam to suffice for dinner and the local historian dropped by on his way home from work to give us a short lecture on the history of the hotel. 

David Lewis in the parlor of the Hotel Julian

David Lewis’ great-grandfather homesteaded in Julian, but it wasn’t until his cousin was killed by a drunk driver that his interest in local history was sparked.  Digging his cousin’s grave in the local cemetery and seeing the old tombstones opened that door, and he has since spent years learning all he can about the history of the place that is his home.  David’s most endearing quality is his open admission of what he does not know, and how what is taken for truth changes as new information is uncovered.  He likes to say, “What I’m telling you today may not be true tomorrow.” 

 

The Hotel Julian is special because it was built and opened by freed slaves Albert and Margaret Robinson.  There is record of Albert Robinson and a Union cavalryman by the name of Chase taking a steamship to San Diego together from New York; Chase would become a prominent lawyer in El Cajon and Chase Avenue there is named after him.  Margaret was from Temeculah, the record suggests that her first husband John Boyd was absent and that she was a single mother before marrying Albert.  The homestead act of 1862 enabled them to homestead in Julian, and they first built a bakery/restaurant and ran that for 10 years before building the hotel.  It’s unclear whether they had help financing the construction of the hotel, but David points out that it was a bold business venture given the fact that there were already two hotels in town owned by whites, and speculates that the lawyer Boyd may have helped his friend Albert.  Albert died in Julian but Margaret simply disappeared from the historical record and David has yet to uncover the end of her story.  He’s even written Oprah for help, but he has yet to hear back.  

Margaret and Albert Robinson

The original hotel as it was called then - Hotel Robinson

 In the evening I walked to the local restaurant/bar where there was a band playing.  Outside of the building I recognized a group of Brits from the hotel, and stopped to talk to them.  They had just kicked off their own 2,600 mile trip from California to Florida.  Joy was driving a car from 1904, and the rest of the crew was her support staff – a co-pilot, mechanics, a filmmaking crew, etc.  I spoke with her and she told me that she had planned to make the trip with her partner, but he had died of cancer in 2010.  Instead she was making the trip in his memory, and raising money research into the mechanisms via which cancer spreads throughout the body.  The next day I would catch the group on their way out of the hotel, and snap photos of them as they left the hotel, caravanning with a local couple who owned a car made in 1901 and had decided to join them for a the day.  

I would later visit the project’s website (http://joy-across-america.com/) and be amazed at the pictures of Joy’s career as a race car driver (http://joy-across-america.com/the-driver/).

I spent an uneventful evening listening to a Pink Floyd cover band, drinking locally brewed beer, and developing the concomitant headache that comes with miles of hiking in the heat followed by beer.   

 In the morning the hotel served cheesy polenta topped with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, and I sat with the hotel’s only other hiker, Mike.  Mike was retired and was doing the hike in two-month sections.  He would do the first two months northbound, then go home for two months and then do the Sierras southbound, and then return next year to complete the final stretch in the north.  This was because his wife did not want to be abandoned while he went hiking, and they had compromised on two-month absences.  We chatted about campstoves and blogging, and he told me that his own blog was at www.postholer.com/miked, and I cracked up.  

“Mike D?  Like the Beastie Boy?”  His face was blank.  “My name’s Mike D, and I get respect – your cash and your jewelry are what I expect!”  He stared at me, perplexed.  I would later see him on the trail and he would tell me that he had been given the trail name of “Evergreen,” but I’ll never call him anything other than “Mike D.”  

Mike D

We ran into each other again at lunch, where I was wolfing down a hamburger and a huge milkshake, while Tim McGraw sang 

I’m just a singer of simple songs

I’m not a real political man

I watch CNN, but I don’t think I could tell you

The difference ‘tween Iraq and Iran.

“Why is it,” I demanded, “that the United States is the only country that celebrates ignorance?”  Mike D nodded, and I continued, “I mean, they’re not even related – Iraqis are Arabs, they speak Arabic – Iranians are Persians, they’re Indo-European, their language is in the same family as ours.  They’re nothing alike!”  Mike D agreed, and we walked down the street towards the hotel.  A blind man played the guitar on the street and I dropped my change into his can to drop the weight from my pack.  He thanked me, introduced himself as Dave, and asked me what I wanted to hear.  

Dave

 He knew the chords for Long Black Veil but was fuzzy on the lyrics, so I sat down with him.  I would start each line and then he would remember the words and come in over me, his voice stronger and richer.  

Ten years ago on a cold dark night

Someone was killed beneath the town hall light

There were few at the scene, but they all did agree

That the slayer who ran looked a lot like me

She walks these hills in a long black veil

She visits my grave when the night winds wail

Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me

The judge said “son, what is your alibi?

If you were somewhere else, then you won’t have to die.”

I said not a word, though it meant my life,

For I had been in the arms of my best friend's wife.

Oh, she walks these hills in a long black veil.

She visits my grave when the night winds wail.

Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me.

The scaffold was high, and eternity near

She stood in the crowd and she shed not a tear

But sometimes at night when the cold winds blow

In a long black veil she cries over my bones.

She walks these hills in a long black veil

She visits my grave when the night winds wail

Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me.

Oh, she walks these hills in a long black veil

She visits my grave when the night winds wail

Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me.

 A small crowd gathered.  Dave and I chatted about getting to the point in your life where you’re old enough to want to live outside of the city, and then he played and we sang a little more before I moved on to head back to the trail.  

On the way out of town I was picked up by a young couple in a Volkswagen Van.  Joaquin and Anna were from Argentina, and they had an apartment that they got $600/month rent from, and they were living off of that and touring the Americas.  They said that they had stopped and worked a little in other countries when they needed money, but that the U.S. wasn’t expensive.  Interior components of the van folded out into a bed, and they basically only needed to buy food and fuel.  Their goal was Alaska.

“Wow, that’s great,” I said, “How long have you been on your trip?”

“Two years,” replied Anna, matter-of-factly.  I was deeply impressed.  I asked if they were blogging and she said yes and gave me the address, http://poramericaandando.blogspot.com/.  She warned me that it was all in Spanish, and I told her that I would make my sister and brother-in-law read it to me.  I knew that I’d meet other PCT  hikers, but in less than a week of hiking I’d met Derek on his cross-country bike tour, Joy on her cross-country motorcar tour, and Anna and Joaquin on their inter-Americas bus tour.  If I had met that many in such a short time, there must be an awful lot of people out there just exploring the world in their own way.   

Anna and Joaquin (you can't really see Joaquin, but he's in the van.)

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[i] Burying toilet paper ten times a day would be too much, so women are generally advised to carry a bandanna for this purpose.  It hangs on the outside of your pack and dries out in between uses, but it’s obviously better to stow it before getting in someone’s car. 

[ii] They not only washed my clothes, but after they gave them back to me I changed and gave them the clothes I had been wearing while they washed the others, and they washed those too, which was pretty awesome.  Before agreeing to take the room I had walked over to the town’s other hotel where the manager had told me that they it wasn’t possible to do laundry there (how do they wash the sheets?), so between that service and the generous amount of complimentary food I would recommend the Hotel Julian to any hiker.