Legs and Borders

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 ...

"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 ...