Legs and Borders

Today we came down to Cascade Locks, the last stop and finish line for the state of Oregon. Once we will pass through Bridge of the Gods we will be in Washington and the last 500 miles of PCT will begin. Today myself, Tank Top, Fomo and Lucky took an alternative PCT route from our campsite leading through Eagle Creek and it's many amazing waterfalls, most notably Tunnel Falls which had the trail running behind it through a tunnel carved in the solid rock, it was spectacular. There was many day hikers walking six miles each way on a very steep and exposed cliff edge to see it. We reached Cascade Locks around 3pm where Swede, Tank Tops friend took us to this house for the night. We did our usual chores, resupplied and then our host and his wife prepared us a delicious dinner with rice, fresh vegetables, grilled chicken and venison from the deer he has hunted. There was triple chocolate ice cream for desert, then we went down to the garden to chill out before heading to bed. We ate so...

It was supposed to be a zero day.. and it nearly was! There was few issues I encountered in the afternoon which steered me to hike out of Ashland and I'm literally camping two miles away from the city. The day was way better than expected, I woke up late, dry and clean in a comfortable bed and had a breakfast consisting of marionberry yogurt (a cultivar of blackberry developed and grown only in Oregon), three bananas, few spoonfuls of my old peanut butter to finish the jar and a black tea. After that I found some thread in the hiker box and sew holes in my Camino t-shirt to prolong its life and perhaps even finish the trail with it. Then about 9:30am I went out to join the street parade for the Independence Day which was starting in half an hour. I was surprised by the amount of people that came to take part in celebrations, main street was teeming with people, families 'booked' a space by the road by marking it with a ribbon or chalk the day before. All sorts of community ...

"You guys are lucky that my wife left me ten years ago, otherwise non of this would be happening" Kenny. "I'm a Trump supporter, but I leave it outside the house" Kenny. Today we walked ten remaining miles to Big Bear to have a NERO day. We waited for Kenny our host for the day, for about an hour as when we arrived at the crossroads he was at the Sunday mass. We both knew Kenny was Donald Trump sider, so we anticipated an American flag outside the house, but what we saw outgrew our wildest expectations. What's even more interesting Kenny turned out to be a genuinely nice person, his rule was to never turn away a hiker, so we have sixteen people sleeping here with us tonight. There's air mattresses set up in every room, Kenny's dogs are running around, washing machine and tumble dryer are working in constant loop. Everything in the fridge without someone's name on it can be consumed, no washing up necessary and the list goes on. After arriving at ...

"One litre of water per four miles of hiking, and then some for camping. And extra two litres when you're old" Salty. Since I stayed two miles behind Tom yesterday, I woke up earlier to catch up with him. My shins were feeling fine after the night's rest, but something in the middle of my left foot was hurting instead. I decided to take it slowly again and see if I can 'walk it off'. I had vivid dreams at night again, but luckily this time they were more tolerable. I met Tom at mile 132 at 7am, he went in front of me at a higher speed and I was walking behind, we were gaining quite a lot of altitude before the midday. After couple of miles we met Salty and his new trail family at the last water source for the next 16 miles, he looked tired and (un)ironically asked me if the hike was getting easier. The path after that got surprisingly empty, I came across five hikers for the rest of the day, no one was going opposite direction at all. Path got easy and shaded ...