PCT Day 116 to 118
August 24 to 26, 2021
Mile: 2145.0 to 2147.6 (2.6 miles)
Start: Secret deer meadow next to Columbia River highway
Finish: Hotel in the tourist town of Hood River, Oregon
My legs were so sore this morning from essentially doing a marathon of hiking yesterday that I had to waddle the 2 miles left into town. It was pretty pathetic but at least we were moving north! Shannon and I packed up as soon as the sun rose in the meadow next to the PCT, backtracking on the spur trail and spilling back on the PCT around 7:00am. We ran into fellow PCT hiker Twilight who we’d met yesterday at a spring collecting water and we hiked on with him until we came to a tunnel that went under the highway and train tracks. Twilight had to take care of some chafing so we left him to take care of that in peace and continued into the small town of Cascade Locks, Oregon for a day of rest.
We trekked alongside a busy highway and were dumped out at a “Welcome to Cascade Locks” sign covered in tangles of wild roses. The trail traversed underneath an enormous bridge where a mural of Native Americans and wildlife was painted in what was once vibrant colors. Above our heads the notorious Bridge of the Gods spanned proudly above the mighty Columbia River, a steel grated bridge that was a true feat of engineering. This bridge would take us from Oregon into Washington state and we were really excited to walk over it (of course only after we had a nice rest day or two under our belts). The tiny town of Cascade Locks bordered the wild Columbia River and as we strolled onto the main drag, we detoured by a couple of farm stands where a lady was selling the last of her white peaches and ruby cherries that grew on her land. We picked up a sack of delicious Washington cherries and a beautiful donut peach that looked just like a butt and made us giggle like children every time we looked at it.
Next to the fruit stand was a Native American guy and his kids selling whole salmon, smoked salmon, candied salmon, salmon jerky – you name it! The dad said that the beautiful clear-eyed chinook salmon had just been caught only three hours ago on the Columbia River. We didn’t know if our hotel would have somewhere to put an entire 20lb salmon so instead we grabbed one of the last jars of smoked salmon that they had. The chinook salmon looked like they were almost alive still on the cooler of ice, their eyes clear and vibrant, their silvery scales and black toned backs shimmered in the dappled light. The fishmonger told us that the day before he actually ran out of fish to sell because a tourist driving through town bought the entire cooler of fish from him – probably over 100lbs of fish. Crazy! But I guess fresh salmon pulled right from the wild Columbia River below is a high demand commodity this time of year.
In town we stopped at the little grocery store to pick up a couple drinks and some snacks like cheese, bananas, hard boiled eggs and anything that wasn’t a granola bar since we didn’t really have breakfast this morning yet. We walked to the nearby (and only) coffee shop in town where your standard cup of coffee cost an arm and a leg. Since this cafe had the monopoly on the coffee biz in Cascade Locks and for about a 20 mile radius, they could charge whatever they wanted. Outside the cafe, about a dozen PCT hiker backpacks were lined up against the wall along with someone’s dog leashed up to a post. It was a beautiful thing to see all the dirty packs in a row and made me smile. We briefly peeked inside the cafe which was quite crowded. After looking at the drink prices and how crammed the place was with hikers, I decided that I didn’t really want to buy anything. Shannon was propelled by caffeine cravings and must have blacked out when he ordered his $4.50 coffee which he was kind of pissed about. The prices of the coffee are listed right in front of you so if you’re going to spend that much it’s not really a surprise. Oh well!
Anyways, we were just hanging out on the sidewalk when all of a sudden our friend Kinsey, one of the girls we hadn’t seen since the very beginning of the PCT, jumped out of the cafe and yelled. She ran up to Princess and I giving us a humongous hug and wouldn’t let go. It was so cute and so funny! We had really liked hanging out with her and her friend Twist way back in the deserts of Southern California but hadn’t seen them since. It was wonderful to see that they were still hiking together thousands of miles later down the trail but wasn’t entirely surprising since they had been friends who had met years ago working together and attending school in Boston. Twist (Eliza) jumped out of the cafe next and jumped up and down with how excited she was to see us.
We spent the next hour catching up, laughing, meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones. We ran into Cash (aka Johnny Cash since she had dressed all in black at the beginning of the PCT) who was the girl with the most massive blister any of us hikers (and even the nurse in the town of Idyllwild, California) had ever seen. Cash’s blister had been so big and potentially infected that she had to go to a clinic to get it lanced and cleaned out by a nurse. Now Cash said she had a bad toe injury that had been bothering her so long that she named it “Earl.” Cash wiggled her foot in front of us with a sly grin and asked, “Earl is really gross – did you want to see him?” We laughed til there were tears in our eyes but politely declined. She then showed us her secret for getting through the rest of the trail which was a quart-sized plastic bag filled almost out the top with what looked like a mix of various hard candies. My mouth dropped as I realized what the candies actually were – different types of ibuprofen and pain relief meds. Man, we had really missed these crazy gals!
We recounted adventures with the girls who also had avoided the August 20-21st PCT Trail Days in Cascade Locks. Trail Days is a big thru-hiker celebration where hundreds of hikers gather to party for a weekend and lots of hiking gear manufacturers come to sell and advertise their wares. It’s both a boon and strain on these tiny towns because they can’t always support the housing needs, food and impact of hundreds of hikers going nuts like it’s a college Spring Break party, sans deodorant. Shannon and I had heard about the debauchery and general craziness of the Trail Days and along with an ongoing Covid outbreak amongst the hiker bubble, we didn’t want anything to do with it. Sounds like we weren’t the only ones who didn’t want to be around hundreds of dirty hikers binge drinking, doing drugs and stealing from other hikers and local businesses.
The girls also had to skip parts of the PCT because of the fires and we told them about getting smoke inhalation back in Tahoe and how we had to get off trail for a few weeks to recover. We caught up on trail gossip and found out that:
- Our buddy Crystal from Toronto is up ahead and her trail name is now Slayer which is perfect for her sassy-but-sweet self.
- Treebeard is likely up ahead but we weren’t sure exactly where. We agreed that he was definitely at PCT Trail Days because he loves organizing parties. I said that I was pretty sure Treebeard organized Trail Days because he loves organizing hiker get-togethers.
- We ran into Ziplock who had the same outfit as me at the beginning of the trail with our bright orange red tops and Hawaiian shorts. I didn’t recognize him because he was so skinny and had a beard now!
- We ran into Deadpool who remembered us but we had trouble remembering meeting him. He was just happy to be here.
- Twist, (aka Eliza, aka Mrs. Hemsworth because she was dating a guy from Australia who was super hot who we thought was related to Chris Hemsworth) had just come back from taking a bus to Portland where she got her knee and ankle checked out because they were hurting her so much from overuse. She said that the whole doctor’s appointment and the ankle and knee braces were free because said she thought the doctors just felt really bad for her. Somehow she finagled her entire health bill so that what would’ve been thousands of dollars was free!
- Ben and Grace, the sweet yoga-teaching couple, got engaged on top of Mount Whitney! A bunch of the hikers with them snuck up bottles of champagne to celebrate for the sunrise proposal but first the proposal actually had to happen. I guess Ben had been trying to get Grace to come stand with him at the summit for sunrise but she was reluctant to get out of her sleeping bag because it was so cold at 15,000 feet. So all the proposal photos have Ben kneeling down in front of Grace who is essentially wearing her sleeping bag. Lol that is so awesome! It sounds like later on in the trail that Ben’s knee blew up to the size of a basketball so they got off trail to get that checked out by a doctor and rest. They grabbed their van in southern Cali and were driving up the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington and hopefully would be meeting up with some of the PCT hikers again.
If there’s one thing that thru-hikers enjoy, it’s trail gossip. The comings and goings, rumors and facts, crazy adventure sagas and jokes had us laughing, telling stories and catching up for a good while. I had dropped my phone on the ground when you’re walking back from buying salmon and cherries so Shannon had said my phone privileges were revoked for an hour. Kenzie tried to get me to add her on Instagram but I told her my phone privileges have been revoked and she was dying laughing. Gosh I miss those girls – they are so fun to hang out with! We told them that we did need a day off to rest but we’d catch up to them. Eventually we said goodbye to Kinsey, Twist, Cash, Deadpool and Ziplock who were leaving Cascade Locks and we told them that we hoped that we’d see them again.
Anyways, Shannon and I caught the local $1 bus to go to the larger town of Hood River just 20 or 30 minutes east of Cascade Locks where there is more to do, more hotel options and bigger grocery stores. We caught the bus heading east and enjoyed a day of good fresh food, some relaxation and a nice bottle of wine in the evening.
The next day my body was still feeling pretty run down so we stayed another day to rest. We enjoyed the morning of relaxation with some crappy commercial-filled daytime television and walked a mile or so to the touristy downtown. Dodging slow moving vacationers, we checked out the outdoor gear shop to see if we could buy Shannon a new pair of shorts since his inseam had busted through. The shorts were a bit overpriced in the boutique store so Shannon finally decided he was going to sew up his shorts instead of paying $75 for some athletic shorts. Hey, I’d only offered to sew them up 5 or 6 times and also encouraged him to mail some online to one of the cities we were visiting but he is too stubborn to do that. Maybe it took Shannon seeing the prices of new shorts for him to finally fix them. I also think walking around town amongst old people and children with a giant hole in his crotch area finally pressured him into taking care of his appearance.
Downtown we browsed a free art gallery and saw some gorgeous photographed metal prints, odd abstract art that we were very confused about the price tag of $3,000 for paintings that looked like it was done by a kindergartener and intricate glass art. In a corner we noticed some strange art that looked vaguely familiar. On closer inspection we discovered a local artist had made some pieces for one of our favorite TV shows from the 90’s with Patrick Stewart – Star Trek: The Next Generation. Freaking nerdtastic! After geeking out like the Trekkies we are, Shannon and I left the art gallery and walked up back to uptown to the hotel. We stopped at the grocery store for salad stuff to eat, lots of fresh veggies, some jackfruit that was marinated, grabbed some more drinks to hydrate and did a little bit of resupplying. We spent the night catching up with Shannon’s family on the phone and went to bed late after enjoying our day off.
The next day we thought we were gonna hit the trail again and left the hotel to grab some sidewalk space at the bus stop to go back to the little town of Cascade Locks. Earlier in the morning I realized that I forgot to buy a fuel canister as Walmart was out of stock after Trail Days. When I went to go purchase fuel from the gear shop downtown, I had to literally step over a large homeless man who was passed out drunk (or messed up on something). Hood River wasn’t exactly a town where there were a ton of homeless people and seeing a sleeping guy taking up the entire sidewalk was a little concerning at 9am while the sun’s been up for hours. I made sure that he was still breathing from a distance as his big belly hung out of his shirt and his sleeping bag was half off of him in the grass of the McDonald’s restaurant.
When Shannon and I walked to the bus later that morning, the homeless guy was now sitting on the side of the road with a glazed look in his eyes, his belly still poking out of his too small shirt. He was awake now and he sounded like he still was kinda messed up as he noticed our backpacks. He patted the grass on the McDonald’s drive-thru next to him and said, “Hey guys, come have a seat next to me!” We politely declined his invitation fearing that he’d either hit us up for money or invite us to do meth with him (which along with other drugs in Oregon has been decriminalized). He asked where we were going and I stupidly replied “The bus.” Homeless guy pointed out that we were going the wrong way and we just said thank you and made our way down into a park where we might spend the hour waiting for the bus to come. I’ve hung out with homeless people while hiking various trails and so have some of my friends – it always seems to come with drama. The difference between thru-hikers and homeless people isn’t that big from first glance but in general thru-hikers have finances to support themselves and a large physical and mental goal they’re working to achieve.
Back in Cascade Locks we had been looking forward to eating at the Native American-owned seafood market before hitting the trail. and when we went to grab some of their legendary salmon-and-chips and they were all sold out. Oh well! I got some Alaskan halibut with gluten-free coating and Shannon got a smoked salmon quesadilla. As we sat in the afternoon sunshine, our minds baking in the heat and starting to get very sleepy from the food, we didn’t really have any desire to go back on trail. After a big meal and sitting in the sun, it sounded a lot more fun to stay one more night in town where we grabbed an extremely good (and under the table) deal on a hotel.
The idea was to grab something at the local tiny grocery store which we knew was going to be a limited selection of food that was gluten-free and healthy. We didn’t realize how limited it was for dietary-restrictive food and couldn’t find anything fresh really to eat. The produce was nearly cleared out and everything that was left was kind of moldy or slimy or wrinkled. We didn’t really want to make a salad with that kind of crap so I went to check out what other options they had. Breaded processed red meat seemed to be everywhere and I guess we could’ve eaten that with some electric pink Jell-O salad that looks like it had been on the shelf since 1993. It was an interesting kind of grocery store.
Anyways, we left without much and decided to grab our free beer and cider that the Thunder Island Brewing company offered PCT hikers. Even one of the owners or managers asked us when we were going to come get our free drinks when we were in Cascade Locks a few days ago. Everyone was really pushing the free drinks here. When we went and sat down in the brewery, the waiter informed us that all of the hundreds of thru-hikers who had been through town for Trail Days last week had spent hundreds of dollars in free beers and he wasn’t sure if there was any money left in the PCT Hiker Fund to give us our free beer. It wasn’t a big deal but we told him that the other day the owner had asked us if we’re going to stop by for a free beer and it was weird that he would ask us that if they weren’t doing the PCT hiker promotion. I felt kind of like a “Karen” bringing this up, but when we talked to other PCT hikers they said that they were given their free beer, no questions asked. Hmm… Soon we had a couple of drinks in front of us, Shannon drinking a house brewed beer and I had a nice marionberry (a type of local blackberry) cider that tasted like a juice box. It tasted so good that I chugged down half of it and got kind of drunk! Yikes. We each ate rice bowls, Shannon had yummy baked tofu and I had a salmon bowl. After dinner we went straight back to the hotel across the street and passed out. We knew tomorrow we definitely would have to get back on the trail or our backpacks wouldn’t fit around our bellies anymore!
