Day 102

22 miles

Lunch at Big Lake Youth Camp, trail magic and stayed at the Bunk and Brew hostel in Bend

Today was a very full day! We hiked as quick as we could through the morning to get to the Big Lake Youth Camp by 1pm when their lunch buffet opened! This camp is so kind to open their doors to hikers. They allow hikers to eat with their staff, do laundry, take showers, and have a PCT hang out house. We were doing pretty well on time to finish 16.5 miles before 1pm, until we reached the lava fields. The trail was so rocky with ankle turning baseball size rocks. After that it was small tiny rocks or sand while going uphill so it felt like I was taking one step and falling back two. I was so glad to be done with those painful miles even though it was wild imagining what the molten lava flow would have looked like as we crossed the miles and miles of rocks.

After we left the camp, we ran into some trail magic! We stopped and ate more food with a section hiker and her husband! She had just finished her hike and her husband picked her up to go camping and do some trail magic! They were super nice people and it was fantastic to eat two real meals back to back!

Finally, we got going again to finish the 3.7 miles to the road. There we crossed the 2000 miles marker! It felt surreal to reach this marker, in awe that we have walked here! But also because we have missed 218 miles in northern Cali so actual walked miles is closer to 1800. Either way, it is a long ways.

At the road, we spent about fifteen minutes with our thumbs out until a car turned around and came back for us! It ended up being a previous thru hiker back in the area for work. She is a dam safety inspector which I thought sounded fascinating. We needed to get about forty miles into Bend which is a long ways so the first hitch dropped us off half way in Sisters.

After another fifteen minutes of hitching, a huge earth cruiser overland truck camper thing pulled over and brought us the rest of the way to the hostel in Bend. The driver said he had a friend who had done the triple crown so he tries to pick up hikers whenever he can. Usually people who pick us up all have some connection to the trail community.

When we arrived to the hostel, I knew immediately it wasn’t mostly PCT hikers because I said hello to someone and they completely ignored me. Most hikers always say hello, the non hiker world was rude to the system! It was very fun, however, to visit Bend and stay in a neat hostel! We are prepared for our day tomorrow heading up for trail days! After a few days of feeling a dead end when figuring out how to get to trail days, we finally have a ride! Trail days is the big festival with hikers and tons of gear companies, lots of free stuff and fun times!