After 20 days of non-stop hiking, it was time to take a break in Cascade Locks. This neatly bookends Oregon, with zeros at the start and end of the state.
-
A very busy train track runs through Cascade Locks. Thunder Island was far enough away that it wasn’t too loud, but I’m not looking forward to tomorrow night.
-
At Trail Days, breakfast for this year’s hikers was organized by ALDHA-West. It consisted of bagels, apples, bananas, oranges, cereal, and orange juice and milk. Although it was scheduled for two hours, most of the food was gone after the first hour.
-
I returned to Thunder Island to pack everything up and relocate it to the overflow area at the Marine Park RV park.
-
A trail angel, Granny, was there with her RV. She was making pancakes, and had a charging station.
-
Three other hikers and I caught a bus to Portland. It was a bit out of the way for resupply; the primary reason was to go to REI.
-
I got a new pair of boots and a fuel canister at REI. It almost feels like walking on air. These are my fifth (and hopefully final) pair on the PCT.
-
We went to Deschutes Brewery’s Portland Public House, for food and drink. I had an elk burger. It was tasty.
-
I hoped to do my resupply in Portland since we were there, but we didn’t have time since we had a deadline to get back to the bus station before the last bus back to Cascade Locks.
-
Back in Cascade Locks, I got ice cream from Eastwind Drive-In. It was unexpectedly large, so much so that it wasn’t possible to eat all of it before it started dripping. Being something like two feet of ice cream above the top of the (small) cone, it also started to bend, and required rapid eating to keep it from falling off the cone.
-
The evening was warm, but with a nice breeze blowing.
-
The closure of the trail to the northern terminus now has a potential reroute, but that reroute requires extra permits and a pre-specified hike plan, leading to a different border marker, and no entry to Canada. While an improvement, this is still disappointing. For now, I’m just going to hike north one town at a time and see what the situation is. There’s still a chance it’ll improve.