Day 116: mile 2135.7 – mile 2147.5

Elevation gain: 1,278 ft

Elevation loss: 4,835 ft

Ahhhhh…the rain stopped, and the sun was shining this morning. Everything was still soaking wet, though. My pants weren’t even close to being dry and it was pretty chilly, so I decided to wear my night clothes to hike in. Because we were going to be able to do laundry today, that would work out perfectly. My sleep clothes are merino wool so they were so comfy to hike in on this brisk morning. Ahhh…dry clothes today! I had no options with my shoes, though, so those were going on my feet no matter what. They each weighed about 5 lbs and felt like I was walking on water beds. We decided to sleep in a bit and set the alarm for 6. Even though it was a town day, we only had 11-ish miles to get there and wanted to make sure the hotel room would be ready. The early morning light with the mist looked super neat.

Almost everyday there’s a new, different cool PCT sign. We’ve taken pix of them all to put together in a slideshow at the end of the trip.

My two favorite sounds on trail are the frogs and the woodpeckers. We sure haven’t heard frogs in a while, but because of all the burned trees in OR, we hear woodpeckers almost everyday. Especially during the quiet mornings, like today, the woodpeckers always make me smile.😁 There were still raindrops on most of the foliage which was super pretty, plus we saw a new plant/wildflower. We had seen many of these over the last few weeks, but none that were as healthy as this one. I’m thinking their life as a flower must not be very long.

Harebell
New flower: Woodland Pinedrops

We ran into a bunch of day hikers today and stopped to chat for a while with 4 gals and their 2 dogs. They were super excited to hear about our journey and their excitement was definitely infectious! That’s my favorite part when stopping to talk with people, so “hi girls” if you’re reading 😁 As we were walking away we could hear them say, “See, I told you we might be able to run into a PCT hiker…I actually got goosebumps”…Ahhhhh ♥️ About half way to Cascade Locks, we started to see some amazing views. Cascade Locks is the LAST town stop in Oregon, and our lowest elevation point of the entire trail…less than 100 ft!

Mt Adams
Ahhhhh…blackberries again!

As we started descending, we could start to see the Bridge of the Gods. This is extremely exciting because it links OR to WA…Ahhhhh, we’ve made it to the LAST state!!

Trail Magic! Sitting on the trail in the baking sun for how long though…? Just some random items inside but SUPER nice for someone to leave for hikers!

First we went to the hotel to check in and the room was ready even though we arrived at about 1pm. As much as we wanted to shower, food felt like more of a priority so we headed to the Ale House. We had our resupply packages delivered to the Ale House restaurant because we knew we would probably arrive into Cascade Locks on the weekend. The Post Office isn’t open on the weekend so we thought this was a perfect plan. Except that when we got to the Ale House (on a Saturday), they only had one of the 3 packages we had delivered. They only go to the post office once a day in the morning to pick up all their mail, and our packages were delivered in the afternoon yesterday. Sooo…we can’t get the other packages (Link’s new shoes and compression sleeve for his leg) for 2 days when the PO opens on Monday. We will see how Link’s shin is feeling and then make a decision. We can either take 2 zero days to help him heal, or just leave after getting the packages in the morning on Monday. We took our one package, ordered some sandwiches to go, and then went to the market next door for snacks. When I say “snacks”, you know I mean chips, cookies, candy, beer and root beer…all of our usual essentials…Ahhhhh.

Cascade Locks is a huge PCT hiker friendly town…they even have this terminus replica on the street!

Then it was finally time to shower and do laundry…Ahhhhh. Once all the basic chores were done, a bunch of hikers who are also in town wanted to get dinner. So we met Terminator, Dallas, Giggles, and 35 (who we hadn’t met before) at Thunder Island Brewing Co. We were able to sit right on the Columbia River and I had the best chicken salad sandwich and hard cider…Ahhhhh

We all tried to get some soft serve after dinner but the place was already closed. So we opted for dessert from the grocery store instead. Then we said good night and headed back to the hotel so we could put our feet up and Link could perform round 3 of shin treatments…Ahhhhh. Thanks for reading, guys! DoubleDown

PS…so now that we have cell service, we have been able to research info on all the cool “naturalist” finds over the last few days on trail. Well, I feel fine, but apparently the Rough skinned newt releases toxins (similar to a puffer fish) that causes various reactions in different people. I probably should’ve washed my hands after handling him since I was eating beef jerky at the time we found him 😳