2000 Miles of Trail (& Dirt!)

 In celebration of our 2000 mile marker, we made use of the caked-on dust on our calves and 'cleaned' the numbers out. That is what you get for not showering for a week and not doing laundry for nearly two weeks. When Liz's friend picked us up to take us the hour drive into Bend, OR for a food resupply, she promptly rolled the windows down and said, 'You guys stink! Where is the closest lake I can drop you guys into?'. We laughed at her bluntness and knew it was all too true. It also made us realize how utterly polite all of the kind people were who picked us up from the trail to bring us into a town to resupply. Honestly...we've definitely smelled much worse. We have previously gone more than two weeks without showering or doing laundry (!). When we were hitch-hiking into Burney, CA, a couple picked us up in this nice clean SUV. As we were driving down the road, I realized that we were not the only passengers the couple had picked up when we got in: there were also several flies buzzing round us. Not a word was spoken that we were the real life version of PigPen (!). 

The Oregon Trail

The Oregon trail has proven to be quite different from California. The mountains here are all volcanic and singular protrusions from the otherwise relatively flat surrounding areas, so it has translated into some pretty mellow and flat hiking (hooray!!). With the easier terrain, our average mileage has been consistently 25 to 30 miles a day. The trail has been mostly in pine forests (or former pine forests) which has made some days feel a bit monotonous. However there have been a couple days when we hiked through just amazingly beautiful country including Crater Lake and the Three Sisters Wilderness. So far our favorite Oregon section has been the Three Sisters Wilderness.

Meadows surrounding the South Sister.

Lunch in view of the Middle Sister as clouds are building up and threatening rain.

Lupine and lava flows near the North Sister.

Our hike through Crater Lake National Park was really cool (it is a must see) but we decided we'd enjoy it just as much from a car. I say this because the trail we took followed the rim for miles around the lake on one side and the rim road on the other side. As a consequence we would hike from view point to parking lot, back to view point and back to parking lot.

Hiking around Crater Lake.

 The Insects!! We have been traveling mostly through dry, flat pine forests speckled with hundreds of lakes and ponds. While flowing water was hard to come by, water from most of the lakes has been clear and beautiful. The plethora of lakes and ponds however has been both a blessing and curse. While we've had lakes to swim in, we rarely have been motivated to get in due to the hordes of mosquitoes assaulting any exposed skin. Let's just say we wore head nets for days on end, pants on hot days, and applied more Deet than we'd like to admit. Despite our best efforts, we have lost count of how many bites we have.

Morning at Diamond View Lake. This was one of the many lakes we hiked and camped near but avoided swimming in due to the mosquitoes.

Garrett going for a lunchtime swim when the mosquitoes weren't too bad. 

The Burn. We've hiked through several burned areas on our trip so far and we have already hiked through several in Oregon. So far we've been in three evening thunderstorms and the latest one sparked several fires in the surrounding area. Based on our conversations with locals, this is just the time of year for fires due to the thunderstorms.

Burned area near Mt. Washington.

California in Photo Review

Camping by the Joshua tree in SoCal

Desert hiking at its best

First sunset in the Sierra!

Camping at 11,000 feet on some of the only bare ground around.

On top of Forester Pass, the highest point on the PCT (13,200 feet).

Hiking down from Muir Pass on the John Muir Trail section of the PCT. I called it an arctic wonderland!

One of the many stream crossings...though this one was special because we were actually crossing in the middle of a giant waterfall on a steep mountainside. Garrett was there helping one of our traveling companions accross.

SHASTA!!



Sending my love from Oregon!!



Running for the Border (The Oregon border, that is!)

Just a short time ago we checked in at 1400 miles--we've now reached the 1600 miles marker in northern California and have about 150 left before we finally arrive in Ashland, Oregon. Since we were not able to post pictures last time from the pizza place in Burney, the we wanted to catch you up with one of the big milestones of the last couple weeks--reaching the PCT midpoint of the trail--1325 miles. We were expecting a signpost and maybe a bench to celebrate the occasion, but alas all that was there to greet us was a cement marker and a geocache box. Ah well! That is what you get when you are hiking a trail through the wilderness (smile!).

Ashland here we come!!!

Volcanoes and Lava Flows in Northern California

1400 miles in and we are still in the same state! Well, technically we are, but we've decided the northern California is quite different from the rest of the state (It sits better with us that way too. Come on, how could it possibly take over 3 months to walk through just one state?).

In the last week we've traveled through some of the strangest towns and terrain. We'll start with the towns:

Towns
1. Belden consisted of 18 residents and any weekend residents at the 'resort' (aka RV park). We heard that every weekend the 'town' hosted raves along the Feather River, including the latest rave of bikers. Luckily we came on a weekday and stayed just a couple hours...

2. Chester was a small town with local fast food place that had 30 flavors of milkshakes and was the place to be. It was routine to see people run into the Post Office or store and just leave the car running. That was crazy for a weathered Baltimorian to see!

3. Our current town of residence, Burney, can be summarized by the fact the the only public computer is at the local pizza place where the Rotary and Citizens Patrol meet on a weekly basis.

Terrain
In the last week we've seen quite a few interesting sites as we've hastened our journey northward. We hiked through Lassen Volcanic National Park and northward. Lassen is very volcanically active. We've pasted a steam vent, a lake that was boiling, took a dip in a hot spring pool, and walked through a tunnel formed by an old lava flow that really looked like a subway tunnel, and hiked over more lava rocks than we would have liked. This morning we just completed a 30 mile odyssey on what is called the Hat Creek Rim. It is formed by an old lava flow that sits several hundred feet above the surrounding terrain. We hiked it mostly at night because this high plataeu has very few trees and no water. We heard strange things at night including toads that sounded like growling bears, and ran into one ton beasts that scared the living daylights out of me. I should have been familiar with them because there were cows! Even though we tripped a lot over the lava rocks, we still managed to hike 35 miles in less than 24 hours.

We are looking forward to finishing up northern California and head into Oregon before mid-August. Then we will finally REALLY be in a different state!