So this is the first trip I’ve taken since I started building the van. There was another trip with a friend to Utah but this is different, this is me, just me. Sadly I have great cell reception, I say that now but one day I will be in the middle of nowhere sick of my self and everything I am doing to stay busy and I will wish there was cell reception. Alone is not just a frame of mind, it’s an actual thing. They say in the program, ‘your never alone’ – bullshit. Why put a negative spin on it, liker alone is a bad thing. Alone drives us to step out of our norm, it challenges us to be different, to try new things, to change who we are. I dread being alone too much, absolutely dread it, yet here I am, choosing to be alone.
I’m sitting ina nearly empty campground East of San Diego, a place called William Heise Country Park. It’s a nice campground, a little on the pricey side, $24 a night. Level drive up campsites, clean pit toilets, two places to shower – this is like high on the hog camping right here - I mean if Jack Kerouac could see me now. I ended up here by chance. I had called Kenda, she said she was going to a NA campout for the Greater San Diego Area and I said, I’m there! Talk about getting out of your comfort zone. Go camping with a ton of people you don’t know, perfect! Now I know, all you NA folks are like, ‘that’s your peoples, thems your family’. Yeah I know, my peepholes, I get it. That don’t mean a feller aint gunna feel a little bit of some way not really knowing anyone. Luckily NA folk are a kindly bunch and always willing to make someone feel a part of. I really don’t think I could of joined a better group of drug addicts and criminals. I mean reformed drug addict and criminals, for the most part. No one is perfect, we’re just willing to admit it. The drive down was standard issue, traffic on the 5 and the 91 and the whatever else I took to get here.
The town of Julian is what sit’s right below this campground, it used to be known for its gold mining but now it's known for it’s apple pie. I guess all the claims dried up at some point and Jonny Appleseed come through and plant a ton of seeds. All up and down the one tiny main street here is about pie’s. Apple pie, crumble apple pie, caramel crumble apple pie, flakey apple pie, cherry apple pie – this could go on and on. It’s a cute town, there’s a soda fountain shop, some wholesome gift stores, a general store – the kid working in there was playing Metallica, god bless him. Coming off this quite, quaint main street, with kids and tourist’s and the smell of fresh baked apple pie and walking into a general store playing Metallica, made me smile from ear to ear. It was like his own way of saying, ‘this is my town and not everyone in it is glad you are cluttering up the streets and eating up all this shitty pie’. I played it out like something of a movie in my head. All I needed was some more kids in leather jackets, driving a 4 wheel drive truck, smoking weed and throwing beer bottles into the street as they drove by, blasting Metallica. The kid in the general store would wave and they’d laugh back at him and flip each other off with a smile. That would’a been cool.
I walked around town after going on a mountain bike ride. Of course my dumbass rode the trail in the wrong direction, not the first time I have done this and let me tell you it really sucks when you do, the climb out is always fuck’d. Anyways, after my 10 mile ride, up hill both ways, I stopped off in Julian and walked around town. All the store fronts looking like something out of a western or Little House on the Prairie, the apple pie in the air and all that was for sale in the shops was drastically overpriced. $6.99 for a key chain? Whatever, Delaiah always gets a keychain every time I take a trip somewhere. So I buy some gifts, cookies from the Metallica kid and a slice of apple crumble pie from Mom’s Pie Shop. Word is Mom’s is the first pie shop to ever grace the town of Julian, that was back in I don’t fuck’n know I didn’t ask, but it was packed full of apple hungry patrons, all chomping at the bit for their first bite of heaven – or so I’m told. I guess the best strawberry rhubarb is just down the street from Mom’s at the Julian Pie Co. I went with Mom’s.
I ended my adventure with a walk through the local museum, $3 will get you in the door to a yesterday that has been forgotten. Some real cool stuff was in there, a tub that looked like the Tin man from Wizard of Oz, a couple stuffed mountain lions; guess this is mountain lion country glad Ii didn’t get eat’n on my bike ride. Clothes from WW1, old pics of the founders of Julian, some type of crazy contraption to electrify a woman hairs while they were in steal rollers. It was the best money spent today and dropped some coin. Yet I haven’t had my slice of apple pie, it’s sitting in my fridge calling my name. I think I must eat it before my fire goes out, I just put the last bit of wood in the pit. I’m not going to tell you how the pie is though. Next time you are East of San Diego stop off in Julian and grab a slice for yourself and we’ll compare notes.
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