PCT Day 93, SoBo Flip Day 12

July 14

Mile 2214 to mile 2186.2, 27.8 PCT miles, no off trail miles!!

PCT total: 823.7

Running total: 926.8

The day started with me discovering a dead mosquito in my underwear before 7am…how’s your day going??

After emotionally recovering from the skeeter incident, we packed up and were on the trail before 0715! Matt had a crazy goal of hiking 27 miles today- somebody is a little too excited for a beer in Cascade Locks!

It was a mellow morning of hiking- although it started with a small climb, it was mostly downhill for the next few miles. We ended up knocking out 9 miles in 3 hours and had 15.6 miles done by 1245!

We entertain ourselves by finding animals and faces in trees and rocks

We had to rock our rain pants (for mosquito control) and bug nets all morning, but were happily surprised that the mosquitos seemed to have disappeared at our planned break site, a trail-head parking lot with picnic tables and a pit toilet!!

This was our first break in what seemed like forever that we could actually sit down and enjoy the rest without freezing, getting soaking wet, or getting mauled by mosquitos- we enjoyed it so much we ended up taking a nearly 2 hour break!!

We started up again around 2:40 with both Matthew and I feeling off in our stomachs- but we still had 9 miles to go.

We ended up stopping for water at a piped spring, and immediately after sitting and drinking some cold water I felt better. (It took a while longer for Matt, but he, too, started to feel better eventually.)

Just as we were leaving the water, SoBo hiker Patrick, whom we had met at the cabin the week before, walked up- honestly, at his pace, I was shocked he wasn’t in Mexico already!! Turns out he got a pretty bad stomach thing (giardia maybe?) and had to take four days off. He’s back and feeling a lot better, so that’s good.

Matt and I hiked for another 4 hours until we reached our planned site. The last two miles were ROUGH! I think my limit must be 25 miles, ’cause my body was NOT pleased with those last few miles- I nearly crawled into camp!

Since the mosquitos seemed to have been better, we set up the tent and enjoyed our dinner on a dirt road. Turns out the mosquitos weren’t entirely better, and since I wasn’t prepared for them, I went to bed feeling itchy.