Day 102: A Truly Boring Trail

August 10, 2015
Little Hyatt Reservoir Outlet (1748.8) to Tentsite before Hwy 140 (1775.2)
26.4 PCT miles today
1815.5 miles total
Today’s Elevation Gain/Loss: + 3,600 ft, – 3,196 ft

It took another full day of hiking, but I think we’re finally starting to get our trail legs back. Apparently, taking two zeroes requires that you spend two full days on trail feeling sluggish and sore. Now that we’re well into the state of Oregon, I can officially say that this portion of the trail lives up to its reputation…it is fast, flat, and somewhat boring since it lacks much in the way of views and the environment is mostly unchanging. I’m pretty sure I could never get sick of being surrounded by greens, browns, and blue, but if it was going to happen, this would be the place.

Today was marked more by the hikers with whom we leap-frogged and the alternating hours of audiobook and silence than by any particular geographical landmarks or beautiful scenery. We are still working our way through Andrew Marr’s “A History of the World” and today we found it especially interesting and distracting. We’re hoping to get through it in the next week so we can download a “Great Course” book next. We would occasionally take a break from listening, either to give our brains a rest or to start preparing for a packs-off break, and then we would find ourselves shrouded in silence, too tired to chat about even our favorite topics.

This afternoon the trail managed to liven things up a bit with a neat little log cabin shelter that had a well pump where we got water, and then a few miles of walking through a lava field created by nearby Brown Mountain. The rocks were especially rough on our tired feet, but we did notice that we were much more awake and had more energy this evening than we had at the same time yesterday. We were also energized by a small sign near the cabin that announced that we’re now officially two-thirds of the way done with our trail. 1,779 miles down, only 889 miles to go!

We stopped for camp when we found the perfect trailside tentsite, and are now indulging in our favorite part of every day, our evening tent time, where we enjoy a huge dinner, Pickles reads his book, I write and go over maps, and then we get to sleep by 8pm, enjoying deep sleep until our alarm goes off at 4:30am and we do it all over again.