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!