Day 21 - Planes Trains & Automobiles (& Trucks)

Mile 335.6 to Mile 357.2 - 21.6 miles

It was a day of contrasts today going from being amongst a moving mass of humanity to being isolated high up in the San Gabriel Mountains.
The day started with a climb up to the Cajun Pass where we turned a corner to look at a different world

See those mountains in the distance - in line with my new motto for the PCT "See Mountain. Go up Mountain" which is what we did. Down the bottom you can make out Interstate Highway 15. A bit further around the corner & it was this

Two lanes of the highway going up the pass & two railway lines. It was just mass of moving humanity to & away from LA. At the bottom the backdrop to the sign was the rush of a very busy road

Just around the corner was what everyone was waiting for - the vortex of a highway McDonald's

Yep - they are all hikers with Ranger in the foreground.
I left a bit earlier to get in to the task of the long climb ahead - started at 3587 feet & dropped to 2995 to rise again to 6466 feet. What blew me away was the trains - freight trains with up to 5 engines pulling massive numbers of carriages. There were tracks everywhere & often one train would be following another within 5 minutes of each other - along with trucking the freight business in USA must be worth billions

As for planes - not a day has gone by without the rumble of jets overhead flying in & out of LA , San Diego & Palm Springs. And daily, military aircraft will fill the void.
As for the climb this afternoon - we crossed the San Andreas Fault Line at one point, passed 350 miles which means we are halfway to Kennedy Meadows (start of the Sierras) & finished up at a magical campsite high in the mountains overlooking the lights of the town's of the southern Mojave. Oh....and I spent the day drying to avoid Poodle Dog Bush, Poison Oak & Deer Ticks but more about that later....Weta