Amazingly, we weren’t the last ones out of camp. In fact, Salt Lick wasn’t even out of his hammock when we discovered the Marty McFly/Back to the Future crematorium privy on the edge of the camp. If he wasn’t awake before I discovered it, he sure had to be after I saw this gem. It is definitely the Rolls Royce of the privy world. I felt honored to even have my tooshie come in contact with such a modern marvel. If it weren’t for a line forming, I might still be ether admiring the sleek lines of this space age shit box. I want one for our home one day. The only way I won’t have one of these in my yard is if Bunny finally agrees to a Tiny House. Feel the heat!? That’s turd and “Bunny will” breakdown.
The campsite also had a bear box which the NP provided. The notes in Guthook had indicated the campsite was closed as recent as a week ago due to high bear activity in the area. When I asked the ranger, he said we need to put everything with an odor, including our butane stove fuel, into the bear box. Great! Something new to worry about. Not only are there aggressive bears in the area, but they are now huffing fuel. On the bright side, their teeth may be falling out from drug abuse just like the inner city meth-heads.
Since we will be getting into a town today, motivation to move was high. Counterpoint to the town was the fact that we have been out hiking for 10 days to get here, so our bodies were moving slower. How can that even be when snails already regularly pass us? I watched Bunny walking uphill and it looked like she was sliding backward. 2 mph is only a concept for us today. An unattainable dream at best. This became even more evident as we got near to Rainy Pass and could hear the road. It felt like forever from the first auto noises to emerging on to the road and it was less than a mile according to trail signage.
On the way, we did pass a few day hikers, including a woman wearing a NASA shirt. Of course, this required a conversation since we had hiked with Bear last year on the AT (drink!). Bear was an engineer/program leader/administrator over his nearly 4 decade employment with NASA. This woman was currently the project manager for the new international space station toilet. We had a pleasant conversation until I heard space toilet and I blurted “just like Howard Walowitcz” at which point she replied “I hope we can do better than throwing poop in the air” and abruptly departed. In the point of accuracy, no poop was actually thrown in the air from Howie’s toilet. It was merely beef brisket.
We had heard people in the area are very friendly to hikers and getting a ride is quite easy at Rainy Pass. We found this to be very true. Even though there wasn’t much traffic, by the 10th vehicle, we had a ride. Doug was a retired head of an international construction firm’s operation in Seattle. He was heading to his mountain retreat on the east side of the mountain range which had recently burned down. He and his friend had recently rebuilt their retreat with 3 very good looking yurts. He showed us the pictures. These were very cool looking wood structures with metal roofs. It looked like spaceships had landed in their pasture.
The plan was for us to hitch to Mazama to pick up a couple of packages then get another hitch into Winthrop to spend a day or two. We quickly made friends with Doug and his dog, Tillie. Doug agreed to wait for us while I picked up our packages and then take us on to Winthrop. Doug’s son (Goomy Bear) had thru-hiked the PCT just last year, and Doug was “paying back” the kindness that his son had received. Bunny and I had gotten a friendly vibe right from the start, so all of our recent “hitch hiking guidelines” went right out the window. We didn’t bother sharing our serial killer escapes with Doug. We spent nearly an hour with Doug from the time he picked us up until he dropped us off right across from the visitor center in Winthrop. It felt like 5 minutes with the conversation flowing so well.
Naturally, we had no plans about where to stay in town. It’s a little trick we started a few years back called “don’t plan ahead…let the trail provide.” So far, it hasn’t failed us. The visitor center directed us to a hostel right behind it which had private rooms for couples. Bunny and I got a huge studio in what used to be the hostel office. We had thought we might spend one night here and then move on, but with this being a slow period between bubbles, we got 3 nights right off the bat. We were less than 2 blocks from all the restaurants and outfitters in town. If we had stayed at a hotel, it would have cost us 3x as much. As it was, there were only 4 other people in the whole place. It was like having a house to ourselves. We walked all the way to the Old Schoolhouse Brewery to celebrate our return to civilization.
EFG
According to the NASA archives, it was actually Harold’s mother’s meatloaf.
Thanks for taking the time to perform a thorough investigation. I’m sure it was just an autocorrection that changed Howard’s name to Harold.