Tolkienville Miles 1835 - 2000

Great place to eat lunch but a cold place to take a bath......... so we've heard.

It was cool seeing the old trail markers in Oregon.

Lots of trees......

....... and lots of lakes.  Oregon is great!

At times, Three Sisters Wilderness is like being on another planet!

While walking through the lava fields it felt  as though we maybe shouldn't be there! It felt like Lord of the Rings and we were getting closer to the Eye of Sauron.

Cold, windy, and dark.  We're getting close!

As we came to Mckenzie Pass we saw a beacon of hope in the gloomy, gray and black landscape.  It was the Pop-Up Trail Angels that we met down in the Mojave Desert!  So as we waited in the cold morning mist to catch a ride to the town of Sisters we drank cappuccino and ate French toast in front of the "Imagine Chillin'.... like an Oregon Sunset" trailer!  Chef and Jerry Can know how to brighten a day!

The day did get a lot brighter but the lava got rough. 

Imagine Chillin'.....like an Oregon Sunset

Woohoo! 2000 miles down 650 to go.

OREGON! Miles 1698-1835

California was great and REALLY long, 1698 miles to be exact, but the Pacific Northwest is calling! 

Totally AWESOME story!  These are our friends, Metric and Sticks, we met on the Appalachian Trail in 2012.  We hadn't talked to them about the PCT but knew they were hiking south this year. We had hoped to see them but thought that we had for sure passed each other like ships in the night... But we had a great surprise waiting when we came to a road crossing in Oregon where one can hitch to Fish Lake Resort to eat and resupply. We were planning to hike on and not stop. As we came to the road we could see a pickup truck picking up some hikers on the other side.  Possum could see the silhouette of the guy in the passenger seat and thought to himself, " that looks like Metric but that can't be him.".  As we stood there waiting for cars to pass, the little back window slid open and Sticks' BIG smile was beaming at us and as she was hollering our names we all just erupted in a "this isn't happening" yell!  Sticks said, "you guys wanna eat lunch?" from the pickup window and we just vaulted into the back of the truck, forgetting to even ask the driver if it was ok.  He didn't mind especially when he found out about this serendipitous road crossing!  We sat at the resort and ate and caught up and ate for about two hours.  It was such a good day for us!  We really like these two and it did our souls well to see them again.

AA at Crater Lake.  This place was so beautiful and spectacular!  It is one of those places where you just stand there and say very little.

Amazingly this part of the trail consisted of a 27 mile waterless stretch..... unless of course repelling is in your bag of tricks.

Mile 1606-1690's - Northern California and The State of Jefferson

Reverend Blister, Ninja, and Possum at sunrise on maybe our worst smokey day.

This is the spot where we like to watch bears.......

...... like this guy!  We thought we were going to make it all the way through CA without seeing one.  We sat and watched him (or her) for about 10 minutes, foraging for food, and it was like watching Discovery Channel.  As of the time I am writing this we have seen 3 bears, an uncountable amount of mule deer, lots of quail and grouse, 3 rattlesnakes, 1 bobcat, 1 elk, 3 coyotes, a lynx, and so many more other critters.  

Remember how we said that the smoke could be beautiful?

Never mind.

This was one of the worst days.

Taking some time to smell the flowers...... and spread some seeds.

Amazing!

This 6 mile road walk to Seiad Valley took  a little longer than planned as the wild-blackberry's gravitational force kept pulling us in!

While in Seiad Valley, which is in the " Great State of Jefferson", Blister needed a new hat so he got one with the seal of the State of Jefferson........ and he is now the Governor.  By the way, would you look at that burger!  

The sunset was amazing as we stopped in the middle of the climb out of Seiad Valley.  At about 2 am we awoke to smoke and unfortunately the wind had shifted and we got another really tough smoke day.

Sunrise

Possum looking lost.

Possum is tired of smoke and it might be causing him to lose it a little.

We saw so many trees like this that we started to just get used to them.  But seriously.........  that's a BIG tree

"Fire on the mountain! Run APES run!" Mile 1506-1606

So as we drove back to Chester, CA to drop our car off and start hiking again we found out that there were A LOT of wildfires that had started a couple of days earlier.  There was a big lightning storm with over 950 confirmed strikes but no rain so Northern California and Southern Oregon were quite a bit smokey!  Since the PCT was closed at Hat Creek Rim and Burney Falls due to fires we thought that we could just road walk and continue on but the road through Burney Falls State Park was closed because....... you guessed it!  More fire!  So we found some fantastic Trail Angels in Lake Shastina who let us leave our car at their house and we skipped 170 miles ( we plan on coming back to get these miles) to get past the fires and started back on the trail at Dunsmuir.

The smoke made for some pretty sunrises and for some nuclear winter type overcast days.

Smoke down in the valleys and working its way into the mountains.  Later this day  the smoke got really thick and made us ponder how many packs worth we had been sucking down.

Do you know what this means?  Yep, time to road walk.  

Almost Awesome in the kitchen!  We had a 20 mile road walk that started at 3 pm so we had to get creative when we rolled into the sleepy community of Callahan. This quaint little place rolls up it's sidewalks at 5 pm and the store/deli adheres to the common Western societal practice of being closed on Tuesdays.  So we toe'd the line of thru-hiker and vagabond and soaked our food and set up camp under the "town" bridge.

So what does a roadwalk look like, you ask?  A lot of this.

We stopped in to resupply in Etna and we stayed a few hours at the Hiker Hut, which was great.  One thing we learned there was to never joke about Bloody Marie's because ... POOF!... they will just appear out of nowhere.  Us enjoying a refreshment with our new friends (L-R) Reverend Blister, Dust Bunnie, and Ninja.

As long as we weren't enveloped by it, the smoke was rather pretty.

A wedding in Seattle

Once we hit the halfway point we decided we needed another break:) We did finally get to ride with Rock Ocean in his VW, "Stanley". Rock Ocean is a guy who drive his Westfalia along the trail giving hikers rides to towns and to wherever they need to go.  It is not unusual to see him with a bus of hikers heading to the coast to go surfing. We have seen him driving by on almost every PCT detour road walk we have done this far, but finally we got to ride with him into Chester!  He is a REALLY good guy.

Stanley drove the Appalachian Trail last year!

After 240 miles and 9 days back on trail we headed to Seattle to participate in our dear friend Katie Gray's wedding to a wonderful man named Grayson.

It was the a great celebration! Such a great time spent with good people (outside of the trail world)

Almost Awesome met Katie Gray and Joey 11 years ago at L'Abri in Switzerland...oh how the time flies. 

Katie Gray and her parents, "Slow" and "Easy", have been instrumental in our lives as well as our hiking adventures. Katie Gray and Almost Awesome lived together for years and during that time she took a week long hiking trip that was Almost Awesome's first steps on the Appalachian Trail. Slow and Easy hiked the AT as a married couple and were part of our inspiration for trying our hand at long distance hiking. Slow Bob also happened to have married us! Thanks Landham family for helping us discover a passion!

Like true hikers we forgot to take a photo together while all duded up, but we did take photos of each other with the food! It was the most delicious picnic reception!

A cake you could roll around in and can you say "double butter pie"?

Let us make a gross generalization and say, the way people eat in Seattle is every sort of organic, local, health food, paleo delishious!

Thanks to Anna Laura for taking another photo of AA with food!

Before we left Seattle we got to enjoy the beach with a view of the Olympic Peninsula across Puget Sound.

Possum was the most upset to leave. He really dove deep into his passion for shopping for clothes and drinking Iced half-caff, full fat, frappe breve mocha latte with an extra shot of Oprah. When in Seattle...

And as we headed back to the trail, we found out that the part of the trail we were headed back to............WAS ON FIRE!