After a 39 day hiatus from the PCT, I was finally able to convince Bunny that the days of hotel living and eating out every meal have to come to an end. It was a struggle. I was forced to point out that if we didn’t leave soon, we’d be right back in the snow in Washington.
During our time away from the trail, we did hitch/hike the Oregon Coast Trail. Maybe sometime in the future, I will complete my blog entries for that “trail.” The Oregon coast is beautiful and rugged, but there isn’t really a trail to hike. By Oregon State Parks own admission, over 40% of the trail is on Route 101 and another 15% is on secondary or abandoned road beds. It’s a whole lot of road walking. We fell into the trap of listening to the armchair hikers on Facebook and didn’t do our homework. I wouldn’t recommend the trail for a true backcountry hiking experience. Something else we did wrong was hiking from south to north. The prevailing winds are from the northwest this time of year so we were always walking into the wind. Our objective was to kill time to let snow melt on the PCT, see more of Oregon than we would normally get to (it is one of our 8 finalist states for where we will settle after we get done hiking), and end up in Portland so we could catch a plane to Georgia for our son’s graduation from Basic Training at Fort Benning.
Sam makes a striking soldier. He didn’t get as much free time as we had hoped for considering his graduation was over the 4th of July holiday. After his “turning blue” ceremony where he was awarded his infantry ribbon, we got to go eat with several of his friends at a restaurant of their choice. They chose Cracker Barrel. You can tell the army has aged them all if that’s their first choice. Even though their physical ages are only 21, mentally they have aged into their 80s. Afterwards, we all went to a movie. I felt very secure sitting through a horror movie with 4 newly minted army killing machines sleeping around us. The movie was Toy Story 4 which helped reduce the average age of the group back down to 30ish from the aforementioned 80s. The time with Sam went way too fast. Now he’s getting prepared for Ranger Selection while we return to the PCT via Portland.
We really wanted to like Portland. It has a lot to offer: great food, pleasant climate, a great public transportation system, a burgeoning music scene, and a liberal, friendly citizenry. But what killed it for us was the huge amount of litter and homeless people. The city has opened its arms wide to the homeless and let them camp, unharassed, anywhere in the city limits. The only city I’ve seen with more people sleeping in the streets is Paris, but they had the huge influx of Syrian refugees into the EU to contend with. I never felt in danger (in either Paris or Portland) but the situation definitely shows the need for more mental health assistance. Perhaps there are a huge number of iPhones with Bluetooth earbuds among the homeless, but it sure seemed like a lot of people were carrying conversations with themselves and swinging at a lot of bugs around them in the process.
Last year when we thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail (we’ve been away from the trail for a while, but the rules haven’t changed—everybody drink), we hiked a third of the trail with Bear and Sassy. Bear was a retired NASA engineer/administrator so he always had 2 or 3 contingency plans for everything we did on the trail. I let him do all the planning (it’s his happy spot). However, I was heavily influenced by him and look into more contingency planning for myself. It’s good to know Portland is welcoming to homeless people. If/when Bunny gets tired of me and takes me for every penny I have, I’ll still have a place to live as long as I get to keep a freestanding tent and my Southwest airline miles to get back out there. I’m going with that as my third level contingency. I’m leaving the door open to former friends letting me have some garage or basement space as second level. First is still the lottery. Knowing that, everyone reading this has plenty of time to develop excuses as to why I can’t sleep on the dog’s couch in the basement.
It was a breeze getting out to Cascade Locks from Portland. As I said, Oregon has great public transportation. I had gone grocery shopping yesterday to allow Bunny some alone time on a king sized bed to soak in the memory. We hadn’t done any food preparation or packing until this morning, or even bothered to figure out the route out. We didn’t get up until 8, but we were eating one last town meal in Cascade Locks at noon.
We knew we had lost some conditioning during these past 5+ weeks. What we didn’t realize was that we had lost it all. We still managed a 2 mph pace today, but it was, pretty much, level walking. The Columbia River is the low point of the PCT. Cascade Locks was the low point of our trail fitness…a perfect storm is brewing.
We got back on at the Bridge of the Gods. Honestly, it was a bit disappointing considering the name. This is not a bridge worthy of Zeus or Thor. “Bridge of Lessor Saints” might be a more appropriate name. St Ruben, patron saint of lost causes and corned beef would be honored by such a bridge. Oregon, in keeping with its high regard for hikers and road walking, does not actually have sidewalks or space for pedestrians on the BOG. They do recommend facing traffic while on the bridge so that you might remember the license plate number of the vehicle that runs you down in the unlikely event you survive.
A name from my past came to mind as we were crossing—Bob Lowe. I have never seen anyone more afraid of heights than he is. I remember walking up on open deck catwalks and Bobby having excessive anxiety. The Bridge of the Gods is an open deck bridge. Even I freaked out a bit if I looked straight down while walking. If we were to get run over, we would be converted to meat fries suitable for deep frying if the slices could be retrieved before the river washed us out to sea.
As we were leaving town, I noticed Bunny eyeing the farm-fresh fruit stands. The next stand we passed had a paying customer finishing up, but the woman behind the stand asked us to stop and talk. She told us she’s a part time trail angel and gave us a quart of fresh, juicy, organic cherries to take with us. We were caught off guard not expecting to run into any magic (by definition, magic is unexpected, so attribute it to brain farts then) and we forgot her name. We had about half of the cherries for supper tonight, and they were fantastic.
We were to our camp by 4:30. Not bad considering we didn’t start hiking until after 1. Instead of worrying about miles, we’re going to slowly ramp up our hiking time. By the end of the week, we should be up to 6 hour days assuming I’m able to wake Bunny up in the mornings. She’s grown accustomed to 12 hour nights. Being the good husband, I stay right there beside her always ready with a Benadryl and a glass of water. I would be remiss in my account of the day if I didn’t mention that we were in our tent, ready for bed right after 6. The sun doesn’t set until after 9.
EFG
And the other 7 finalist states? How does Portland OR compare to Portland ME (the original Portland)?
I like both Portland’s, but Oregon’s is too big for us.