July 21
We woke up at the hotel and went downstairs for breakfast. Good news is my shoes will be delivered earlier than I had expected. Normal mail shows up at the hotel around 1 o’clock, the tracking says it will be here before 11. We ate breakfast and 10 o’clock they arrived.
We are headed down to the bus stop to go from hood river back to the bridge of the gods, where we will once again resume our hike today in the state of Washington
We arrived at the Bridge of the gods and headed into Washington!
The trail passes by Gillette lake and then alongside this beautiful stream and footbridge feeding it.
Just in the first few miles, the trail has taken us along berry bush lined flat trail, green tunnel with ferns and continuous tree cover, over some bare dirt roads, barren rock hillsides, past lakes, along streams and over a couple small bridges.
Time for a water break from this small Trailside stream.
There is a straight vertical mountain side, close to the trail that is much cooler than the picture can show.
Although well camouflaged, if you look closely, you can see the snake. It was sitting on the trail when he heard me coming and slithered into the bushes. It’s the second one I’ve seen this hour.
We’re on a long, uphill climb, it’s hot and very humid. I am sweating like crazy. We are on our way to a dry campsite. I saw this trickle of water. Coming out of an under trail culvert and stopped to drink a liter and refill.
Towards the top of our climb, we had expansive views. Washington welcomed us with nice trail but lots of climbing for our first day.
Today’s PCT miles hiked 12.8
Total PCT Miles hiked to date 1618.3
PCT mile marker 2161.0
(Flipped over 542.8 miles)
