Day 122: Cascade Locks

Date: Fri 8/17

PCT Start Mile: 2138.6

PCT End Mile: 2146.7

PCT Mileage for Day: 8.1

Total PCT Mileage: 2146.7

The Highlights: hiking into Cascade Locks, a visit from Shawn’s cousin, PCT days, and yummy Thai food in Portland.

On Friday morning we woke early, as usual, and were ready to get a move on before 6am, beyond excited to head into town for a nice long weekend break from the trail.

After blitzing our way through Oregon, we were ready for some R&R. Leaving Ashland on August 3rd, we’d made it to Cascade Locks in two weeks, averaging 30.5 miles per day for this stretch.

We were ready for hot food, coffee, showers, and beds for a few days.

The last eight miles of the trail from our campsite into Cascade Locks was all downhill, sometimes steeply so. We hiked over smooth trail of hard packed dirt and crushed pine needles and also extensive sections of rough rocky trail, no free rides – even on a town day.

With the crisp morning air, a slight breeze, and dead leaves on the ground, it felt like fall. We quickly realized that it almost was fall. Crazy. We had left the Mexico-California border on April 18, and here we were at the Oregon-Washington border four months later.

We continued our descent into the Columbia River Gorge. Coming down off the trail, within the last mile we met the “welcoming committee”, as we called him.

An older man with a sleeveless top sagging from his thin frame greeted us on the trail. He asked all kinds of questions about when we had started, what we did before the trail, what we planned to do afterwards. “Well”, he said, wrapping up the conversation, “the party’s at the bottom of the hill.”

The party he was referring to was PCT Days, which was being held in a park in Cascade Locks August 17-19. We had made it a goal of ours leaving South Lake Tahoe back on July 5th to make it to Cascade Locks in time for this – for several reasons.

First, it would be cool to be here for the trail event and see other friends from the trail who were also attempting to time their hike to arrive for it. Second, Shawn’s cousin, Melissa was flying in from New Hampshire to spend the long weekend with us. And finally, it was a good timeframe to begin Washington to ensure we made it to the Canadian border in good time before snow began in the Cascades (hopefully). So anyway, here we were.

As per usual, walking into town in the morning, our first order of business was breakfast.

We headed straight toward the Bridgeside Cafe, which sat on the banks of the Columbia River in the shadow of the Bridge of the Gods. For those that read the book or watched the movie Wild, you’ll recognize this as the bridge where Cheryl Strayed finished her PCT journey.

It’s an iconic landmark on the PCT and to have even made it this far was somewhat surreal. Not that we didn’t believe we could go the distance, but we couldn’t have even imagined this moment from our beginning days in the desert four months ago. When we get back on the trail on Tuesday, we’ll hike over this bridge into Washington to begin our final state of the journey.

But for now – breakfast. I dug into a plate of chicken-fried steak, eggs, hash browns, and a biscuit, and Shawn an omelet.

Even after finishing our breakfast, we sat in the cafe for another couple hours drinking warm coffee. The area along the river was cold and windy and we were in no hurry to leave our cozy booth in the cafe with our hot coffee.

A little before noon, we finally made our way down the streets of Cascade Locks, stopping at the Post Office and an ice cream place – apparently already hungry again – before venturing down to the Marine Park, where PCT Days would be set up.

While the event didn’t start until 2pm, vendors were busy with set-up and – for the third time on this journey – we ran into the girl working on her graduate thesis project about smart phone use on the trail.

We had first met her in Big Bear Lake, CA, and then again in Reds Meadow over a month and a half later, each time taking the same survey for her. Running into her here in Cascade Locks, we sat down to take the survey one last time, her first hikers that had taken the survey all three times.

After finishing the survey for the last time, we made our way to the Cascade Locks Ale House.

Packed with hikers ripe from the trail, the Ale House had a mixed smell of pub grub and major BO. Pretty standard event for us. We did feel bad when Melissa arrived though, like walking into a very stinky locker room.

*Excited to see Dead Zone again, first time since Bishop, CA, back in the Sierras!!*

After eating lunch and picking up some shoe and resupply packages from the Ale House, we wandered back down to PCT Days. Open now, the area was full of vendors, along with some food trucks and brewery taps.

After grabbing a beer, we walked through the vendor booths for awhile, checking out some of the gear, chatting with hikers, and finding a few furry friends along the way.

After making a round through the park, we decided to head for Portland, where Melissa had booked an AirBnB, a cute little house in NE Portland.

Shawn and I finally took much-needed showers and did our laundry and, after a bit of relaxing and a short nap for Melissa, we head out one last time for the night to grab dinner.

We went to an awesome little Thai place about 15 minutes from our place. The establishment was completely run by a man and his wife, with only five or six tables set up in a cute little brick courtyard that was full of trees, plants, and climbing vines.

The wife, from Thailand, did all of the cooking, while the husband did everything else – taking orders and serving. A two person operation, the meal took longer than your typical restaurant, but was worth the wait – absolutely delicious.