I Love Idyllwild...and So Should You

(Sunday May 4, 2008)
I'm only a week or so in, but this trip keeps surprising me. From the moment I set foot on the trail, the scenery and mountain vistas were much more amazing and beautiful than I expected, and it all came much sooner than I imagined.

I expected that it would be "Eh" with a couple of Ooos and Ahhs mixed in until I started climbing into the Sierras and then I figured it would get real spectacular.

But every day I'm surprised by what I see, so much so that I've almost gotten used to it. That really isn't true at all, but I've stopped taking so many pictures because 1) I'll run out of memory and 2) even though it's all extremely beautiful and worthy of an depression-abating cubicle nature poster, it can all start looking the same after a while. And that's the real beauty. It rarely ever stops (okay, maybe in the godforsaken desert).

You get these uninterrupted views that go for miles and miles, 180 degrees or more and the mountains stand before you one clear range, one hazy range beyond that, another one still more vague and finally the tallest one above all the rest only a shadowy outline.

Everything is green, even the desert to a great extent. But its all a deceiving green. Except for a few stretches, much of what you think is forest covering the landscape is what's called chaparral. Chaparral is what sprouts up after a forest fire - of which there have been many in the last decade - and while pretty from a distance, up close it's dense, short and sharp.

And so if you can get past what can be sometimes ugly and oftentimes annoying when it starts crowding the trail, you see things at every turn that you've probably never seen before in your life.

Hiking the PCT has been what I expected, and like nothing I imagined. I'm meeting great people, seeing wildlife, experiencing awesome towns which I might never have known about without the hike.

Idyllwild is one of those towns. Real quaint, a big fish in a small pond (population 3500 surrounded by towns with less than 500 a piece), but someplace you'd love to have as your summer home if you had the money.

You're right in the middle of a state park, so it's nice and quiet, there's a good downtown area with a bunch of bars and restaurants, a movie theater, homegrown shops, pretty much everything you could need in a little self contained community.

You wouldn't need AC because the nights are cold and even on the hottest days you'd just sit in the shade and it will be 30 degrees cooler than in the sun because there's no humidity.

There's a sign as you walk (I should say "I" because you'd most likely drive) into town that says "Idyllwild - Entrance to America's Cleanest Forest" and they mean it. The place is clean in every sense of the word.

People always say "I'm going to get some fresh air" but this is the only place I've ever been where I can truly say that. The air is so fresh and clean up here it's hard to describe. It's like that frigid January morning when you go out to warm up your car and the world hasn't started moving yet, that refreshing inhale before you open the door and turn the key. It feels almost delicious to breathe.

The hike is hard, no doubt about that. Since the trail is closed for almost 30 miles, a group of us hiked like the world was on fire to Idyllwild along roads. My feet and knees are beat to shit right now, but the experience of the ups and downs, good and bad have made the trip worth it already, even if I've only been here a short time.

Remind me of this post in a couple weeks when I claim that I'd rather be at home lying naked watching Disney movies with Cheetos residue covering my lips and fingers...actually I would rather be doing that right now. Well, remind me if I start to wish for anything other than nude Disney Cheetos afternoons.