This was a very brief overnight trip to Julian in celebration of Valentine’s Day.

While one normally associates this day with romance (or heartbreak, depending on your situation), Julie and I remembered this trip in terms of hiking and driving under a freak snow storm.

It was a weird trip that not only allowed us to witness a family of bears right off the freeway whilst driving in the snow storm, but I even got interviewed by some guy working for the local news in the San Diego area!

It had to have been one of the strangest experiences ever on a waterfalling trip, but sometimes it’s these weird circumstances that thrust such experiences out of obscurity and into one of those moments you remember the rest of your life.

And if you pay attention to the logistics I’m spelling out below, you can see that this otherwise would have been a rather comfortable and not-so-rushed trip…

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Kitchen Creek Falls – This was the lone waterfalling highlight of the trip. The original plan was to visit Cedar Creek Falls, but an unexpected snowfall in Julian made us change plans at the last minute and so we pursued this waterfall. And it turned out to be quite the adventure though this turned out to be one of the most elusive waterfalls we’d ever visited in our history of waterfalling.

Butterfield Bed and Breakfast – Although our first visit to Julian was full of drama from the unexpected snow, we felt warm and cozy from not only the Apple Room that we stayed in, but we also received a warm welcome and great company over breakfast the following morning. The innkeepers went out of their way to show up some of the literature they had on hand to see what else we could do when we knew Cedar Creek Falls wasn’t going to seem likely.

Day 1: Drive from Los Angeles to Julian

Overnight: Butterfield Bed and Breakfast (Julian, California, USA)

This was basically a driving day, where we picked up a rental car. Then, we drove out to Julian. We ultimately arrived at night time and had dinner in town before settling into our comfy room.

Day 2: Drive home from Julian

Due to the unexpected snow, after breakfast and checking out, we decided to visit Kitchen Creek Falls. It turned out that we got caught in another snow storm on our way out of the hike, and we endured a scary drive on the interstate back into the San Diego area before heading north to home, where we returned the rental car and called it a trip.