Mile 1660 to 1685.
“Boom boom, did Jet find my underwear?” - Animal Style
I'm writing this over dinner, only 4 miles from the Oregon border. So close I can feel it.
We woke early to a beautiful sunrise and set off with hopes of sleeping with our feet in Oregon and our heads in Cali, but it didn’t quite happen. The trail was steep and the day was hot. Animal and I belted out some Frozen lyrics as we climbed, “Let it gooooo, let it goooo!” And had an enjoyable morning cruising along and making each other laugh.
Around midday we bumped in to “All the way,” a 70-year-old from Medina, OH who fought in Vietnam. He’s a relatively quiet fellow, but asked me for some help with his iPhone 5s, worried that the maps he downloaded wouldn’t work in Oregon. I got him all squared away, and he showed me some pictures from back in the day. One was when he was 21, next to his brother without shirts on and holding axes. The others were from Vietnam, where he had a 110lb rucksack in which he carried all of the radio gear. It was really cool to see the same man years down the road with a slightly smaller rucksack on.
The rest of the day passed quickly, now looking back toward Mt. Shasta and into the rolling Cascades of Oregon to the North. California has been wonderful and thrown all types of terrain at us, but I don’t know a single person that is sad to be leaving. After more than 4 months, it’s time for a change. Perhaps Oregon really will be “flat!”
