Day 140

Mt Adams road detour to PCT mile 2253, 25 miles

Cost: Camped, free

I woke up at 7am because of the sound of the heavy rain outside. It was grey and it looked like the rain was here to stay all day. We went for breakfast back at the cafe for another delicious burrito, followed by another slice of their delicious apple pie – best pie ever! I ordered a grilled ham and cheese sandwich to takeaway for lunch, I love having “real food” on the trail 🙂

We had originally arranged for a lift back to the trail at 9am but when we confirmed it before breakfast we’d somehow lost our place on the list. Never mind, it meant we could have a leisurely breakfast and hopefully the rain would’ve died down by the time we found a new ride. 

On the way back to our room, we popped into the grocery store to buy a couple of extra supplies and a local offered us a lift back to the trail. His name was Gary and he said my trail name should be “tan line” because of my hideous knee brace tans! We accepted his offer and went upstairs to grab our packs, then drove the 13 miles back to the trail where the road detour started. He offered to drive us all the way to where the trail was open again (skipping the road walk) and said this was what most of the other hikers were doing, but we didn’t mind walking the road and it would hopefully give the bad weather a chance to clear up (it’s not supposed to clear until tomorrow so no point getting to Goat Rocks today).

It was cold and raining quite hard when we got dropped off… It was hard to get out of the heated car 😦 

  
The road walk was pretty uneventful except for a couple of nice waterfalls. We had to make quite a few turns to stay on the right roads which we hadn’t realised initially so there were quite a few times we had to look at the paper map and try to figure out where we were. We thought there might be some PCT signs or obvious ribbons or something, but not yet. 

   
    
    
 We came to a campground and decided to make it a lunch break. There were lovely picnic tables we could’ve sat at but it was pouring with rain so we took shelter under the toilet awning and ate lunch there – trying not to inhale too much for fear of shelling the pit toilet next to us! We were cold and wet so the toilet awning was a saviour. 

Back on the dirt road, Ladiesman and DLux drove past with Dan – they stopped to chat and said they had gone back to Cascade Locks to go to PCT days, sounds like they had a lot of fun there. 

We eventually got back onto the PCT (maybe after a 22 mile road walk, not exactly sure of the distance) and walked 3 miles to a campsite (passing a campsite with Ladiesman, DLux, Trailbride and Copenhagen. We set up our tents under some trees hoping for good cover from the rain and wind and also hoping that none of the trees would fall down during the night!

Hopefully the sun will come out tomorrow! 

The pond opposite our campsite