Day 1 off the trail

I don't know if this really counts as a day off trail, as we did sleep out and we were at Lake Morena for a little while, but really, it was the first day back in civilization. Don't get me wrong, showers and hot food that I didn't have to cook probably does count as civilization, but there were definitely fewer people around at the campground.

Once we were up and moving, I had to start packing. That packing job was one of the worst backpack packing jobs I have ever done. It's okay though, since we were headed home. I didn't have to carry it far and it didn't need to be super balanced or anything. It just had to hold everything.

Rod made "hiker trash pancakes," aka grilled, left over hot dog buns. We covered them with honey and finished them off. Crazy enough, they weren't half bad. Once we were all loaded up in Rod's van, we headed out.

We arrived about 10 am to the San Diego airport. We couldn't check in yet, as Southwest would only take our bags four hours before our flight. We ended up bumming around the airport, finding different corners to hang out in until it was time. Originally, Damon was on a two part flight back to Portland, while Lucky and I were on a direct flight. It ended up that Damon's first flight was delayed enough that he was bummed to my flight. That meant that we started boarding about 8:30 pm. Yep. Lots of time in the airport.

Going through security was definitely a little bit more interesting. Since we had the issues last time, I did let them know that I needed to take all of his stuff off of him to get him through the metal detector. They were fine with that. They also were fine with me sending Lucky through with Damon catching him on the other side of the metal detector. Lucky, though, was not really a fan of sitting still without all of his stuff on. He tried to get away, climbing up onto the shelf under the table right in front of the xray machine. Thankfully, we got through without too much trouble.

We made it on the the flight and Lucky zonked out. Having Damon with me made flying much better with Lucky. It meant I didn't have to pack everything up to go to the bathroom and I didn't have to make Lucky walk all over the place all the time. It made it just that much easier.

Once we landed, we were greeted by my mom. She picked us up in Portland. We chose to fly there so I could pick up my Jeep. And it was cheaper. We got back to her place after picking up some food and crashed out. We did clean up Lucky's foot, which wasn't bleeding, but did smell something foul. We figured it would be figured out when we got to the vet.