Day 123-125: R&R in Portland, Cascade Locks, and Hood River

Date: Sat 8/18 – Mon 8/20*

PCT Start Mile: NA

PCT End Mile: NA

PCT Mileage for Day: 0

Total PCT Mileage: 2146.7

The Highlights: lots of time with friends and family, exploring Portland and the Columbia River Gorge

*Apologies to our faithful readers for breaking from my typical format of daily posts for this particular blog. After hiking into Cascade Locks on Friday, we’ve spent all of our time catching up with friends and family, and I’ve been exhausted every night, so it’s easier for this particular blog for me to just sum up our long weekend break with one blog post. Once we hit the trail again on Tuesday, I’ll be back to the normal daily posts.

I’m going to deviate a bit from the normal blog format and do a bit of a photo recap to sum up our awesome past three day break from the trail, taking time to enjoy Portland, Cascade Locks, and Hood River.

Saturday

After taking care of some gear cleaning and other errands on Saturday, we head for downtown Portland to eat donuts, stroll the Portland Saturday Market, and catch up with some friends of ours for dinner and ice cream. On our way home for the night, we even made a quick stop by an 80s block party.

*Sifting through the awesome care package put together by my mom and our nieces.*

*Strolling the Portland Saturday Market*

*Dinner with our good friends Amra and Ian, who were home visiting their family in Portland.*

You’ll notice in this photo that Shawn got his beard trimmed up while we were in town today!

Perhaps one of the biggest errands of the day was… getting my shirt tailored!!! My blue shirt was basically to the point of looking like I’d been mauled by a bear. This makes for a good story, but is not so functional. So… we found a tailor in Portland and dang they did a good job. Almost too good, I kinda wished it looked just a bit more hobo.

The before:

And after:

Sunday

On Sunday, we had a leisurely wake up and breakfast at our AirBnB before packing up and heading out for the day. After picking up the remainder of the groceries we needed, we made our way to the historic Mississippi Avenue area for beer, lunch, ice cream, and Sunday strolling.

Beers at Prost and food truck lunch.

*Dipped ice cream sandwiches for dessert.*

Full up, we headed east, back to Cascade Locks to check into another AirBnB for the next two nights. Here, Shawn and I organized our food resupply boxes that we’d send forward for the next several stops in Washington.

After relaxing a bit, we all went to Thunder Island Brewing to meet up with hiker trash friends for dinner.

*Columbia River views from Thunder Island Brewing.*

In October-November 2016, Shawn and I hiked the Annapurna Circuit and Everest Three Passes trek in Nepal.

On the Everest trek, we met a hiker named Nathaniel who was from Missouri. He had hiked the PCT the previous year and when we were preparing to hike the trail this year, Shawn had gotten in touch with him. It turned out his girlfriend, Megan, a Kiwi he had met while traveling through New Zealand, was also hiking the trail this year, and just happened to be starting the same day we were.

So, we’ve gotten to know her during our time on the trail, leapfrogging with her in the desert, northern California, and Oregon. Nathaniel had been hiking the Continental Divide Trail this year, but just recently came to meet Megan in Oregon to hike with her for the rest of the PCT. And so, we all got together at the brewery, the first time we’d seen Nathaniel since Nepal in 2016. He looked the same. It was great to catch up and we should see them on the trail a bit throughout Washington.

Monday

Our last zero day before we hit the trail tomorrow! After breakfast at the AirBnB, we took care of mailing our resupply boxes before exploring the Columbia River Gorge for the morning.

Scenes from the Columbia River Gorge, hazy with smoke, but still a great area to explore:

In the afternoon, we made our way over to Hood River for a bit, hitting up the Double Mountain Brewery and walking around the downtown a bit. Very cute little town.

We also picked up an awesome care package sent by Eric, a friend and former co-worker of Shawn’s.

Eric and his daughters put together a great package of goodies and cards for us. Thank you so much!

We especially loved Olivia and Audrey’s cards, with really awesome drawings of pictures we have taken on the trail:

We wrapped up our evening by stopping by the hiker camping area for a bit and visiting with Helen, Nathaniel, Megan, Huck, Hiccup, and some other hikers for a bit before returning to our AirBnB for the night.

We finished organizing our gear to head out in the morning before watching Super Troopers 2. (Not as good as number 1, as to be expected).

*Helen chilling in her tent in the hiker area.*

A huge thank you to Melissa for coming out to visit us this weekend. We had such a great time. Also a huge thanks to both my mom and Eric, Olivia, and Audrey for the awesome care packages. We appreciate it!!!

Tomorrow it’s back to the PCT for our final section on the trail. Into Washington and on to Canada!! 🇨🇦

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