Daily miles – 21
Total miles – 1818
Nice evening of sleep as well as great sunset colors last night.
We got a slightly earlier than normal start and we were walking 6am. We passed our only on-trail water within the first mile and loaded up to our full capacity for the day.
Early on we passed the 1800 mile marker. Passing each 100 mile marker is coming quite quickly these days and it feels like we are gaining on the end faster. It usually seems to be the case for us. We really have not experienced a trail where we are aching for the experience to be finished, which would slow time (at least relatively).
The blow downs continued much of the day. After a while it seems almost laughable how much effort it becomes to get around some of the piles of trees that lay over the trail. Once we hit the National Park Boundary for Crater Lake National Park, the blow downs were pretty much cleared out. That was unexpected, but certainly welcome. We did not get many views during the hike today, and the forest was a steady pine forest with the exception of a burned area. Sometimes these areas have extra color in them because of the flowering place to that grow before there is a canopy of pine regrowth over head.
After stopping to pick up water in the first mile, we did not see many hikers. Only a couple other northbound and a few southbound. We moved fairly quickly throughout the day wanting to get to Mazama Village and take care of resupply chores and get dinner at the restaurant. Once we got in, we saw lots of hikers.. Plenty of new-to-us faces as well as others we have met over the past month or so.
Our package and Mountain Man’s package were found, but unfortunately, Gazelle’s was not here and after some calls and tracking, it was found to have been routed to Sisters, Oregon instead of there, so she needed to buy food from the meager convenient store here at the park.
We ran into Buff’s son, Rob, who kindly invited us to stay at the campsite he had, so we have taken him up on and are camped with their family. Rob has been doing trail magic in the sections where his dad, Buff, has been hiking. Our timing seems to be off and we never catch him at the road crossings, but it was nice to run into him tonight.
We capped off the evening with some food at the restaurant in Mazama Village. It was good and we were satisfied, although tired after a long day.
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