Day 109
I slept poorly last night due to the strong wind and gusts which made a lot of noise even though I had my earplugs and hat on. I guess that is what you get when you camp on top of an ancient Indian burial site. Just kidding. It was on top of the ruins of a haunted house built on top of an ancient Indian burial site next to Timberline lodge. I packed down camp, wore the cleanest clothes that I had, made sure my hair wasn’t too bad, and I probably wasn’t too smell either thanks to the shower yesterday. I went to the buffet and was seated together with three other hikers, which were Oldtimer, Bandit, and RocketMan. I had all met them before but I haven’t told you anything about the two latter hikers. Anyways, the interior of the lodge was very nice build with massive tree logs like no one does anymore. The company was also nice. And, finally, the food was also nice, though it wasn’t anything truly out of the ordinary. Think like a good breakfast buffet at a decent hotel. Nothing worth driving here for, or walking 2100 miles from Mexico for. He he. I asked Oldtimer what he was looking most forward to in Washington. He said the monument at the border to Canada,!as he was feeling a bit worn out. I am certainly also looking forward to standing next to the monument, but I am also looking forward to things along the trail and kind of fearing the void being done with the trail will create. Well, there’s still a long way to Canada, so let’s get back to the food. I tried almost everything and eventually was done with it. Importantly, I managed to not overeat. Yay!
In the reception at the lodge you could ask to see the axe from “The Shining”, which I of course did. It did seem somewhat factitious as it had “Here’s Johny” burned into the handle, which I don’t recall seeing in the film. He he. A more legit prop owned by Steve Balmer, CEO of Microsoft, is displayed at a museum In Seattle. It doesn’t resemble this one. I guess they’re just giving tourists what they want. Anyways, I strolled quickly through the publicly open parts of the lodge and then left to go hiking.
Breaking in my new shoes had made my feet hurt a bit, so I went back to the old ones for a while. Also, whilst putting on my backpack I lightly scratched my old wound making the skin break yet again. That skin is just so very fragile.
It was overcast most of the time and intermittently a few drops of rain fell. There were actually quite a bit of people on the trail which I found slightly irritating today as it meant that it was harder to find my own pace.
The scenery was different from most of Oregon as we there were marked elevation changes going up and down valleys. There were also a few river crossings, but none necessitated getting ones feet wet. One of the crossings was in a very wide and rocky river bed and the dry crossing was a bit upstream from the trail, so I was glad that I had GPS to guide me back.
Some hours into hiking got me to a junction leading off trail to “Ramona Falls”, where I went. It was an interesting waterfall with the water broadly branching out from the top. Even though it somewhat seemed like a lesser version of Burney Falls, I still thought it was nice and certainly worth the short detour. I had a late lunch there. Then I looked at the clock, it was three pm, and at the milage, which showed that I had done approximately ten miles. Shoot! I had been going slow, which I knew, but not that I had been so unhurried and I had been of to a late start. This meant that it would be quite late before I got near the milage that I had planned for today even if I sped up. When I got going again, I did speed up to not make matters worse. 17:32 I went by a trail head where someone had signposted that they would pick up hikers to invite them home 17:30 yesterday and today. Based on the hikers waiting there, the pick up seemed to not yet have taken place. Didn’t know anyone there though, and it didn’t really fit my plans, though it potentially could’ve been fun. So I hiked on.
I had my second lunch break shortly after that next to a creek. I changed to my normal glasses instead of my sunglasses and subsequently felt kind of stupid for having walked in the near darkness of the forest floor on an overcast day. Anyways, not so long after that I got to the first potential camp site, but eventually decided that it was not far enough and walked on. Dusk came and at the trail ascended. In fact it ascended right into a cloud makings things quite foggy and eventually dark. I didn’t like this as I didn’t know if it would be problematic to camp there, or more specifically if camping in the cloud would make all of my things and my sleeping bag so wet that I would have to get up and start walking in the middle of the night so as to not get too cold. Further, I was unsure if there would be room at the next site as it was the last in a while and allegedly a popular one. This all made the situation seem a bit precarious.
One and a half hour later I eventually reached my desired campsite, hiking with my headlamp on. It was already crammed but I managed to squeeze in at a spot that was a bit slanting. It was around nine and all the other hikers had already gone to bed. I had my dinner while being as quiet as possible. Somewhat expectedly, I saw what I assumed was Pop’s and Noname’s tarps at the site. It was dripping slightly from the trees but not raining in earnest. I was glad that I had found a spot, got into my sleeping bag. I turned off my headlamp and to my surprise I found myself in complete and utter darkness. I had never before experienced such darkness out in the nature and it felt weird not being able to see anything at all. I relatively quickly fell asleep while crossing my fingers that it would work out.
This days miles: 2097-2121
