Anya leaves Seattle for a month-long intensive Spanish language class in Cadiz, Spain. She’s joined by her friend Reina — the two of them hatched this Spain plan back in December. We’re sorry to lose Anya for a third of the summer, but it seems like a great opportunity and should be a fun trip.
Happy Fourth of July! Liya proposes we celebrate with a bike ride along Lake Washington Boulevard to Seward Park. Bree elects to stay at home, but Jan and Angela join Liya. The weather’s a little chilly as we set out, but the sun comes out. We have a nice ride to the park and around it, then back up towards home. Liya and Jan want to have lunch in Leschi; Angela isn’t hungry so pedals back home.
Sabirya turns 12! Angela makes yummy mini cheesecakes using her brother Johnny’s recipe. After dinner, Jan gives Bree a Lego “Pop-Up Party Bus” set that Bree had been trying to score by fulfilling a challenge Jan had issued a year ago: memorize the complete text of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”. Bree memorized half of the very long poem before running out of steam. With that as background, Lyn recites a poem she’s written for Bree that follows the structure and rhyme scheme of “The Raven”:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BREE
Once, some summer cold day dreary, while I pondered, old and weary,
Over a glum newsprint story of our country’s dying glory—
While I mourned a priest’s unfrocking, suddenly there came a knocking,
As of one who sought unblocking, sought unlocking at my door—
“’Tis a salesman,” first I mumbled, “outside my apartment door—
Only that and nothing more.”
Then so clearly I remember — though my life draws near December,
How I heard it like a birdlet, her voice calling at the door.
Eagerly I ran to meet her, happy once again to greet her,
Saved by her from inner sorrow rescued from a grim tomorrow
There she stood, my good granddaughter, named Sabriya, not Lenore.
Famous here for evermore.
Her bright smile broke into grinning, her soft laughter was so winning
That it sent my old heart spinning, gave me hope not felt before.
I started slow but then spoke faster, heart now primed against disaster:
“Bree bear, I’m so glad to see you, standing here outside my door.
It’s a thrill to have you visit with your cheerfulness exquisite—
Your grandma could not love you more.”
Jan and Lyn drive to Oroville, WA, in the eastern part of the state so that Jan can start this year’s longish hike: 156 miles along the Pacific Northwest Trail from Oroville to Ross Lake.
The Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT) is a relatively young National Scenic Trail; it became an official trail only 10 years ago. Compared to the older and much more popular Pacific Crest Trail and Appalachian Trail, the PNT gets only a handful of hikers each year. It also receives correspondingly less maintenance, and is currently known as a rather rugged trail. The trail isn’t always clear in sections, so it’s easy to lose one’s way. Jan will be hiking the portion of the PNT that passes through the Pasayten Wilderness, a vast chunk of roadless, mountainous land on the US/Canada border.
Jan and Lyn stop at the Summit Motel and Pancake House at Snoqualmie Pass for a mid-morning break. As they walk through the motel lobby, they both smell a strong odor: the smell of unwashed Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers. There are three hikers in the lobby, resupplying their packs with backpacking food they had shipped to the motel. They had started in mid-Oregon and are hiking northbound; when they reach the border, they’ll go back down to Oregon and finish the hike going south. Jan talks with the three of them for a while about what they can expect in the rest of Washington state.
When Jan and Lyn arrive at the Camaray Motel in Oroville — the small town’s only motel — Jan’s pleased to see that the motel has an enormous map of the Pacific Northwest Trail over the motel’s entrance. The town could stand to make more tourist revenue, and is evidently hoping that their placement on the PNT will bring in more hikers.
The temperature is in the 90s, so rather than walking around town, Jan and Lyn drive to Veterans Park on Lake Osoyoos and go for a swim. Dinner is good Mexican food at Trino’s.
Jan’s hike on the Pacific Northwest Trail, Day 0. I get up at 6:00 am to hike west and complete the first 17 miles of this PNT section before coming back to Oroville for the night.
Besides the comfort of another night in town, this arrangement means I’ll only have to carry 8 days of food into the wilderness instead of 9 days. Food is really heavy; 8 days is already the most I’ve ever had to carry for a single stretch. I can’t even fit 8 days of food inside my pack, and instead have to put a big portion of food in a mesh pocket on the outside of my pack. 9 days of food would require a bigger pack altogether.
Mom joins me for the first mile or so of the walk out of Oroville. The PNT follows a trail called the Similkameen Trail that runs alongside the beautiful Similkameen River. The trail is still in shadow, so the air is still pleasantly cool. After a mile or so, Mom stops and I go walking ahead. A short while later, the walking trail ends, and I begin walking along the Loomis–Oroville Road.
The Similkameen River valley is gorgeous, with rocky hills, a river gorge, cattle grazing land, and lush green farms. I see a number of deer, and I spook some cows which are crazing near the road. As I walk up the river towards Palmer Lake, I see an osprey that’s built a large nest atop a pole. The osprey is unhappy with my approach, and calls out over and over as it makes large circles over my head. When I’ve finally moved past, the osprey returns to its nest and quiets down.
I arrive at the Palmer Lake Campground around 11:15 am, and Mom arrives shortly thereafter. The air has really warmed up, so it’s nice to sit down in the air-conditioned car. We drive back to Oroville and have decent pizza for lunch at Hometown Pizza. In the afternoon, we have a coffee at the nearby Steam Bee. We drive back to Veterans Park again and go for another swim, then lie out on the beach for a while.
We have dinner at Pastime Brewery. We both order hard ciders to drink. Mom enjoys a pear cider made by a brewery called Bad Granny Cider. At the motel, we watch the first half of the movie “A Beautiful Mind”, and then I stop so I can make final preparations for starting the hike in earnest tomorrow.
Pacific Northwest Trail, Day 1. Mom and I have breakfast at the American Grill, then we drive back to the Palmer Lake Campground where I’d ended yesterday’s day hike. I say goodbye to Mom, she drives off, and I start walking.
The mid-morning air is pleasant all the way to a bridge over the Similkameen River. The country two-lane road turns to a one-lane road, and finally to dirt and gravel. I say goodbye to the last bit of asphalt I’ll see for 8 days, then begin a long, hot climb up to Chopaka Mountain. I’m passed by a number of huge pickup trucks pulling horse trailers up the mountain to Cold Springs Campground. I come to a large gate with a “No Trespassing” sign. In point of fact, the road is public land; it’s the land on the side of the road that’s private — but the landowner probably didn’t care to be specific if it means fewer people come near their property. The dirt and gravel road eventually turns to just dirt, then less-traveled dirt. I finally cross a cattle fence and begin following faint tractor wheel ruts.
My planned stop for the night is at an old log cabin at the edge of a grazing pasture. There’s a cow standing next to the cabin when I arrive. I’d thought I would pitch my tent next to the cabin, but the cabin is open and in good enough shape that I decide to sleep in it. The cabin’s smell could best be described as musty. For some reason, there’s an old microwave inside, although I can’t imagine the cabin has ever had electricity. In any event, the microwave makes a convenient mouse-proof box for storing some of my food.
It’s a fairly pleasant, mild evening. I can hear the occasional sounds of horse trailers moving back and forth on the road to Cold Springs Campground. I can hear a river in the forest down below the cabin, as well as the sound of cows in the forest arguing with each other. There’s some light drizzle, and I’m happy to be spending the night in a shelter. Shortly before I go to bed, I see a deer up in the pasture above the cabin. The deer stomps its hooves and snorts at me. It does this for a while, then turns away and snorts and stomps around the pasture for a while before running off. In the middle of the night, I hear a mouse scritching at the window near my head. I have no idea why it can’t find its way inside, but in any event, it moves off and things are quiet again.
Pacific Northwest Trail, Day 2. I begin the day by hiking up the pasture that sits above the cabin where I’d spent the night. I’m making for a point marked on the map as “Piped Spring” so I can refill my water bottle. The spring turns out to be a water trough surrounded by cows. I shoo them away from the trough, and am relieved to find that the trough is fed by a spigot above the trough — I can fill my water bottle with clean water that hasn’t been touched by the cows.
I keep running into cows all morning. Occasionally, as I hike up the steep, rutted forest trail, I’ll see a large black animal suddenly move in the trees nearby. A bear?!? No, it’s another big black cow.
I also see a large, adorable bunny with thick gray fur and large white paws. [I look it up later — it’s a snowshoe hare with its summer coloring.]
The weather is decent: clouds with holes of bright blue. I slowly make my way up the mountain to Cold Springs Campground. There’s no one at the campground at the moment. Further on, I come to the Cold Springs trailhead. There are a few horse trailers parked there; the last vehicles before the wilderness.
The trail from that point on has very few downed trees across it. A volunteer group called Backcountry Horsemen come in often to clear trees from the trail so they can get their horses through. Every time I pass between sections of sawn trunks, I give a silent “Thank You” to the trail crew.
The trail begins climbing Goodenough Peak. Eventually the trail fades away, and I end up following orange tape markers, metal posts, and rock cairns that mark the best route. Near the top of Goodenough Peak, I cross the boundary of the Pasayten Wilderness.
I haven’t seen another person all day, but as I approach Horseshoe Basin, I see another hiker camping a short distance from the trail. I walk over to say hello. He’s from Seattle, and it’s his first time hiking this area too.
My destination for the day is Louden Lake, and I’m almost there when it begins to rain. It’s frustrating to have to stop and pull out rain gear when I’m so close to camp, but I don’t want to get my clothes wet, so I take the time to don rain gear and stow everything that can get wet.
Louden Lake is more of a pond, but it’s pretty, and sits in a beautiful Alpine basin with grass, streams, and tons of wildflowers. I set up at the south end of the pond. The rain eventually stops, and the sun comes out for a bit. I take a freezing cold sponge bath at the edge of the pond.
Around dinnertime, another hiker comes down the opposite hill on his way back to his tent nearby. He’s just done a day hike to the top of the hill, where a small obelisk marks the boundary between the U.S. and Canada. (Although the PNT stays very close to the border, and in places I can see the strip of cleared ground that delineates the border, I never end up touching the border on this trip.)
The hiker said that a day or so earlier he’d been up on a ridge away from the trail, and had seen three wolf pups playing in a meadow. (A Forest Service ranger will later explain that the pups were most likely coyotes, not wolves. There is a pack of wolves that live in the park, but they’re elusive. In this area of Horseshoe Basin, there are more coyotes than wolves.)
I have curry noodles for dinner. The sky clears, and the weather is perfect. I go to bed at “hiker midnight”: 9:00 pm.
Pacific Northwest Trail, Day 3. I’m up at 5:45 am. I usually leave at least one of my tent flaps open to let air in and prevent condensation from forming inside the tent. Since it had been rather windy last night, I’d closed both doors — but as soon as the sun had gone down, the wind had died. So, alas, in the morning I find condensation inside the tent, and the foot of my sleeping bag is just a tiny bit wet. From this point on, I’ll have to be more careful about that.
I’m on the trail by 7:00. There are patches of sun this morning. I come across another snowshoe hare, which runs ahead of me along the trail. I also startle a grouse hen and her chicks. Grouse have the unfortunate habit of sitting beside the trail, and suddenly making a lot of noise and motion — in an otherwise silent forest, this kind of outburst is extremely startling.
I meet four women hikers who are breaking camp. One has been section-hiking the Washington PCT, and is considering section-hiking the Washington PNT.
I come to a Pasayten landmark: an old tungsten mine on Wolframite Mountain. There’s a trail crew of young adults from Northwest Youth Corps who have been working in the area clearing trails. I thank them for all their work — the trail’s been in much better shape than I had expected. They’re staying in two old cabins near the abandoned mine, and it’s a good place to stop for lunch. I take a look at the ruins of the mine, but there’s not much to see. The trail crew is heading back to civilization today. After they leave, I peek into the nicer of the two cabins. It has a box furnace, and the cabin is still very pleasantly warm. It’d be really nice to spend the night here, but I have miles to go before I sleep.
I make my way up to Cathedral Pass, the highest point on the PNT. The spires and turrets of Cathedral Rock are massive. There are low clouds, but I do get a bit of sun as I get up to the pass. From the pass I can see rain falling in the distance. I hurry down to Upper Cathedral Lake, where I’m planning to camp. The lake is surrounded by tall, looming black cliffs. Like yesterday, the rain catches me before I can get to camp, and I have to stop to pull out my rain gear and stow everything I want to keep dry.
There are some people walking around the far side of the lake, and I’d like to say hello, but it’s raining, and I’d prefer to set up my tent and dry off. I crawl into tent, and then the rain begins to really come down. The rain stops, starts again, off and on.
I can hear horses and horsemen talking loudly not too far away. When the rain lets up, I emerge from my tent to see if I can say hello to them — but I can’t reach them without crossing a lot of wet grass, so I give up. Instead, I follow a small trail around the lake in the other direction, and come across a group of four campers: a young couple, and the woman’s aunt and uncle. They invite me to sit around their campfire with them, and we spend a long while talking. The young couple are avid hikers who have hiked about half of the PCT. We occasionally hear a whinny from the horses across the lake.
Pacific Northwest Trail, Day 4. It’s a sunny morning, and there are beautiful views for miles. The start of the day’s hiking is mostly downhill and quite easy — so easy that I fail to make a required turn-off, and end up going downhill for a while before I discover my mistake and have to hike back up.
I come to a wilderness crossroads at a place called Spanish Camp. The Forest Service maintains a cabin there as a base for ranger patrols. When I arrive at the cabin, a ranger and his wife are sitting outside enjoying the morning sun. We talk for a long time. The wife, Christie, asks me where I grew up, and it turns out that she grew up in South Orange, NJ — next door to my hometown of Maplewood, NJ. She even attended the same Columbia High School that I did (although ten years later).
Spanish Camp turns out to mark the end of the well-maintained trail that I’ve been following for the past two days. Crossing a creek behind the ranger cabin, I almost immediately lose the trail, and it takes a while to find it again. Later, I descend toward the Ashnola River through a forest that was recently burned. The forest looks bleak, and the trail is lined with thick bushes laden with rainwater. A trail like this is often called a “carwash”: you get brushed on either side, and end up just as wet as if it were still raining.
At the Ashnola River, I meet three hikers who have just forded the river. One silver lining to having thoroughly soaked my shoes on the descent to the river is that it doesn’t matter to me that I’m going to have to walk through the knee-deep river. On the other side of the Ashnola River, however, the trail is in even worse shape. I make a long climb up an overgrown trail, carwash all the way.
Finally, I come out to sloping alpine meadows near the summit of Quartz Mountain. I’d thought the meadows would make a nice place to camp, and they are indeed. The view from Quartz Mountain is amazing: dozens of peaks to the east, south, and west. I walk uphill from the trail to find a flat patch of meadow on which set up my tent. The sun comes out, and so for the first time in a few days, I have the chance to hang up my sleeping bag and clothes to dry everything out. (Sadly, my wet shoes will remain damp for the rest of the trip.)
I go to bed around 9:00, but stir sometime after dark (11:00?) to hear the end of an animal howl. A coyote or wolf, I think, somewhere far off. How wonderful to be able to hear that, I think!
Then the howl comes again — and it is really close by. The animal, whatever it is, is maybe 100 feet from my tent. Hearing the howl so close produces an instinctive reaction like an electric shock. The animal is moving around the meadow, howling from time to time, never going that far away. The rational part of my brain tells me I’m not in any particular danger, but it’s still hard to feel safe with the whatever-it-is out there. I finally decide that the animal must already know I’m there, and figure it’s better to let it know I’m awake, alert, and not a source of an easy meal. I turn my headlamp to its brightest setting, and shine it back and forth into the darkness. The animal shuts up, and doesn’t howl again. After a very long time, I finally fall back asleep.
[Back at home, I listen to recordings of both coyote and wolf howls. The deeper, clearer howl I heard sounds almost certainly like it was that of a wolf.]
Pacific Northwest Trail, Day 5. Today’s going to be a big day. A neighborhood friend of ours, Marc Frazer, is hiking in from a trailhead at Slate Pass to meet me late this afternoon. After several days of solo hiking, I’m looking forward to having some hiking and camping company.
However, between my campsite at Quartz Mountain and our meet-up point lies one of the worst sections of the Pacific Northwest Trail. A series of forest fires has burned nearly all of the territory I’ll cover today, completely obliterating the trail in many places, and covering the ground everywhere with countless fallen trees that are hard to scramble over or around.
There is one nice section in the middle of the morning as the trail crosses the summit of a mountain called Bunker Hill. The trail follows a series of rock cairns across a pretty alpine meadow. There’s also an odd spot where someone has used rocks to form enormous digits that can be read from the air. These digits give the longitude and latitude of that particular location; it’s a mystery as to why someone found that useful to do.
From the top of Bunker Hill, the trail descends into an endless burned forest. The trail becomes faint, and then virtually impossible to follow. Thankfully, someone from the Forest Service has recently come through and left a series of red plastic tape markers. The tape markers are far apart, but from one of the markers, it’s usually just barely possible to spot the next marker. I’m deeply appreciative that someone’s left this trail of tape — if it weren’t for the markers, I would simply be walking through the burned forest in the general direction I wanted to go, and would make much slower progress. There are still miles of blown-down trees to contend with, however. To make matters worse, it continues to rain off and on; getting across huge logs with large, spiky, broken limbs is dicey enough in dry weather, but can be treacherous in rain.
The trail reaches the broad but shallow Pasayten River, and fording the wide but shallow river isn’t too difficult. I have lunch on the far side of the river. The trail on the western side of the river is slightly better maintained, and is in any event flatter, so I’m able to make better progress in the afternoon.
At 3:30 pm, I finally arrive at the designated meeting place: the abandoned Pasayten Airstrip. Somewhat humorously, the Forest Service personnel all refer to it as the “Pasayten Airport”. The airstrip is now a flat, rectangular meadow that makes for an incongruous landmark in the middle of the wild. At the south end of the airstrip, there’s a Forest Service cabin (locked), a water trough, an outhouse, and hitching posts for horses.
In fact, as I arrive, a cowboy is hitching his team of eight or so horses to the hitching posts. I ask if he’s part of a trail crew. He replies that he’s packing in horse feed to supply a Backcountry Horsemen trail crew that will arrive shortly. Before they arrive, I set up my tent right next to the front of the cabin. Even though the cabin’s locked, it does have a small but wonderful covered porch. After five days of on-and-off rain, I’m looking forward to being able to eat my dinner under a roof.
The trail crew shows up with seven or eight people and maybe twice that number of horses. The camp becomes a beehive of activity as they tend to their horses and set up camp for themselves.
I have an afternoon cup of tea, then take a nap. Marc arrives around 4:30 pm. His hike in included some rough stretches, and he’s fairly wet from both river crossings and the wet trailside carwash. We have our dinner under the cabin’s porch roof.
It’s fun having the horses around, although they make a lot of noise. There’s a lot of back-and-forth whinnying and snorting between the horses, possibly between horses from different crews. During the night, sometimes a horse will make a sound that sounds a lot like a human scream. Marc and I both have to put in ear plugs.
Pacific Northwest Trail, Day 6. One of the horsemen tells Marc and me that the trail up Soda Creek should be in good shape as far as Dead Lake. He’s right, but after that point, the trail is a mess of blowdowns. Marc and I are continually grateful that neither of us slips while crossing over the countless trees. It rains off and on, so there’s a wet carwash along the trail all day. While crossing a particularly muddy patch of trail, I take a step and leave one of my sneakers behind in the deep muck. When I laugh and stop to extract it, I almost lose the other sneaker.
Making our way up to Frosty Pass, Marc and I have lunch in a meadow where we see bear scat. The view from Frosty Pass is nice, then we descend to Castle Pass. At that point, the Pacific Northwest Trail joins the Pacific Crest Trail. This means we’re now covering trail that I first hiked back in 2016. Earlier this year I hiked from my house to the PCT at Snoqualmie Pass. By some transitive property of hiking, I’ve now laid a continuous trail of footsteps from my house to Oroville in eastern Washington.
We begin seeing SOBO (southbound) PCT hikers who have come in at Hart’s Pass, hiked up to the US/Canada border monument, taken a selfie, and are now hiking southbound to the US/Mexico border. We meet a Belgian solo hiker who asks plaintively, “Is this weather usual?” No, we assure him, it’s not usual for the second half of July to have temperatures in the 40s and persistent cold rain.
We pass above Hopkins Lake and begin ascending the ominously-named Devil’s Staircase. From there, we mostly stay high all the way to Powder Mountain and Woody Pass. By the time we get there, we’ve hiked about 17 miles, and we’re cold and tired. I’d originally thought we’d hike for another few miles, but we decide to stop at one of the campsites below Woody Pass. The wind at the top of the pass is strong, but we descend a little bit, and find a reasonably sheltered site not far from a stream. A weary WA PCT section hiker from Texas arrives and asks if he can share our site, and we say sure.
As we hurry through dinner, the temperature continues to drop. The drizzle turns to snow flurries. I go to bed wearing essentially all my dry clothes, including my surprisingly dry rain gear. I’d originally planned to make this July PNT hike with very light equipment, but had been nervous about some of the long-range weather forecasts. I’m extremely glad that, at the last minute, I’d swapped in a warmer sleeping bag and warmer clothes. It’s windy throughout the night, but I’m able to stay comfortably warm.
Pacific Northwest Trail, Day 7. Marc and I break camp at 7:30 with a long day ahead for both of us. We hike up to Rock Pass, then down to Holman Pass. There the PNT separates from the PCT, so Marc and I part ways: he will continue south to his car at Slate Pass, and I will now head west on the PNT again.
It was nice to hike on the meticulously-maintained PCT for a while. The minute I leave the PCT, I immediately hit a huge tree pile-up, and fight blowdowns for the next hour or two up a slope to Sky Pilot Pass. At one point, there’s a big blowdown at a switchback. I climb over it, and can’t immediately see where the trail continues. I eventually spot the trail downhill from the fallen tree. I drop back to the trail and begin hiking. A minute or so later, I notice the trail is heading downhill, and discover that I’m now hiking back the way I’ve come — I’d accidentally reacquired the trail going back down instead of the trail continuing upward.
A short while later, I meet a friendly Canadian man who’s solo-hiking a loop that started in Manning Provincial Park in British Columbia. It’s not at all legal to enter the U.S. on a hiking trail, but he hasn’t had any trouble so far.
I’m very glad when I finally make it to Devil’s Pass. The pass sits on a popular hiking loop, and so it’s quite well maintained. For the rest of my trip, I’ll be hiking good, obvious tread with few trees across it. At Devil’s Pass, there’s a big group of people breaking camp as I arrive. I sit down to treat some blisters that have started as a result of the days of constant soaking, and chat with them about the PNT.
From Devil’s Pass, the PNT climbs up to the summit of Devil’s Dome at about 7000 feet. This summit ascent will be the last significant climb of this section of my trip, so while it’s tiring, it’s also a relief to attain the summit and know that I’m done with the hard climbing. From the summit, there is a 360° view of dozens and dozens of peaks. Jack Mountain to the south is particularly impressive. A little further off to the northwest is a steep, spiky mountain whose head is lost in the clouds — that peak is Mount Hozomeen, just south of the Canadian border.
I finally begin a steep descent of 5000’ to Ross Lake. The trail is in good shape, but it takes the rest of the afternoon to reach the lake and the Devil’s Creek hiker campground. I have a reservation to camp there, although the actual sites are first come, first served. I find one positively enormous site that’s occupied by a young man and his grumpy dad. The dad makes it obvious he has no interest in sharing their site, even though it could probably accommodate 15 people. I find an adequate site nearby that’s next to a friendly couple.
Dinner is a surprisingly good rehydrated “hamburger” in a tortilla wrap. It’s nice to have the last dinner be a good one.
Pacific Northwest Trail, Day 8. Today I’m meeting Angela at the Ross Lake Dam, some 17 miles away, so I’m up at sunrise at 5:00 am and on the trail by 6:00. It’s an extremely easy morning of hiking along a flat trail that runs down the east bank of Ross Lake. And, for the first time all week, it looks like this will actually be a warm, sunny day with no rain.
The level of Ross Lake is extremely low this year — with low winter snowpack, the lake is some 25–30 feet below its normal level. This exposes a wide rim of gray rock around the entire lake, pockmarked with tree stumps that had been logged out before the Ross Lake Dam flooded the river valley.
I come to a bridge over Devil’s Creek, a spot where I’d eaten lunch with my brother Chris on a canoeing trip on Ross Lake back in 2015. It feels odd now to have reached the same spot on foot.
Several hours later, I approach the Ruby Arm trailhead and begin to hear cars for the first time in 8 days. I pass that trailhead and walk a few miles further to the Ross Lake trailhead. The topo map had shown a trail gently climbing up to the final trailhead. The map is wrong. In fact, the trail drops down to the lake, and from there I have to make a long, final climb in the hot sun.
The Ross Lake trailhead is crowded with families on summer vacation. The parking lot is packed full. As I wait for Angela and the girls to arrive, families keep stopping at the trailhead sign to see what they can do at this place. Most decide to hike down the steep trail to the lake, which isn’t a particularly great hike, and requires that they end with a steep climb back up.
Just before 2:00 pm, Angela, Liya, and Bree pull up. Liya actually did most of the driving. She’s getting close to completing the number of driving practice hours she needs for her license, and so wanted to get some more hours in.
On the way back, we’re passing through the town of Marblemount when Liya mentions that there’s a good ice cream place ahead. (Her cross country team stops there whenever it goes to their running retreats in the Methow Valley.) Liya eventually spots the place — Cascadian Farm — and we pull over. The farm grows blueberries, which they make into homemade blueberry ice cream. It’s quite good!
A couple of hours later, we’re back at home. No one wants to go out to eat, but Pagliacci Pizza delivered for dinner tastes fantastic.
Overall, this PNT hike went well. I would have liked less rain and warmer temperatures. But I was able to do the hike more or less as planned, I was never lost for more than a few minutes, I didn’t get injured, I had enough food, I didn’t lose anything, all my gear worked, there were no bugs, I met a lot of nice people, and I got to spend 9 days in beautiful country.
Anya’s month-long Spanish language intensive class in Cádiz wraps up with its final day of classes. Anya shares virtually nothing with us — the photo (with Anya on the far right) is from the program director — but it sounds like she and her Seattle friend Reina been having fun. They’re spending one last week in Spain visiting Córdoba and Barcelona, and will come home soon.
Liya heads out on weekday mornings on her bike for her American Sign Language class at the University of Washington. She’s enjoying the class, and each day comes back to share some of the new signs or insights she’s learned that day.