PCT Day 44

Start: 259.4

Stop: 268.2

Today’s miles: 8.8

Total PCT miles: 456

Uhhh.. kinda funny story.. I may have almost attacked Marquis last night. At some point I rolled over and faced him, but was mid-dream that I can’t remember now.. and when I saw him, my eyes got wide and I had a brief moment of thinking he wasn’t real, so I grabbed his forearm.. kind of hard-so hard that he startled awake and did like a, “AHH!” So, I did too.. and then I let go, said a weird, “sorry, I forgot where I was,” rolled over and went back to sleep. We laughed real hard about it this morning, and thankfully he said he just fell right back to sleep, too. Good god, I’m losing it, y’all.

We slept in until 8ish. Thankfully Margot wanted to go get coffee at a cafe or something, so instead of packing, we walked to a Mexican restaurant across the street and ordered breakfast burritos and quesadillas with coffee. Y’all. It was fantastic! We devoured it, had several cups of coffee, and then made our way back to our room by 10 to pack.

We left walking right at 11am and headed back towards the highway. We passed a pharmacy and went in just to make sure they didn’t have the bug lotion we wanted.. they didn’t, but we did all buy new headphones. It was worth the stop. Margot also got a marker to write on her tyvek sheet that goes under her tent. We walked to the highway on ramp area for the direction we needed to go and Marquis and I started putting our thumbs out while Margot wrote out, “PCT Hiker to Trail” on her Tyvek.

It took a whole 11 minutes before a man with his son in a nice truck pulled over to take us back to Snoqualmie Pass. They had just done a hiking trip together and were headed back to Spokane, going right by the exit we needed. They dropped us off in front of the pancake house. Margot and Marquis added some stuff to the hiker box inside the Inn connected to the restaurant, and we walked over to get a corn dog.

I was in no way hungry yet, but a hand dipped corndog is a hand dipped corndog and deserves to be eaten, hungry or not. We hung out at picnic tables in front of a convenient store.. then, Marquis had some people he knows surprise him! They had been following his garmin and had just hiked some in the area and decided to give him some trail magic! How cool! We all sat around talking until close to 1pm before we all decided we needed to get a move on.

Back on trail, the climb out of Snoqualmie was kind, even in the heat. The trail meandered easily up and down and through beautiful forest. Trail maintenance workers passed us coming back from working all day, making this trail pristine to walk on.. no blow downs or overgrowth. We were shocked to hike out over 8 miles today, to a gorgeous lake. I’m feeling a little nauseous and didn’t eat dinner (I did eat some of Margot’s peanuts), but I think it’s from being over stuffed from the town food.

Marquis made us a fire and we sat around talking until almost 9pm. We had to wait for our tents to dry out before setting up our sleep stuff, so we weren’t in any rush. Now, it’s 10:42, a late night for me, and I can hear owls hooting nearby and some kind of small critter near my tent. I’m praying it doesn’t smell my food and try to get into my tent. I also pray it’s actually a little critter and not a nimble large critter, because I have to pee again here in a sec. Haha. I think I’ll have my bright headlamp on for this one, because it’s a little unnerving.

Tomorrow, we’re planning on just over 17 miles and the terrain/elevation gain and loss doesn’t look nearly as difficult as the last few weeks have been. Something tells me that might mean more blowdowns and bugs-but we’ll see. Time to go pee and get some sleep. Morning always comes way too fast for me! Sweet dreams, yall!