Freakin' Canada!

9/30: (ZERO) Again, I shouldn't have written about this zero before it happened. My intention was to take the Chelan ferry down to Chelan and get a ride that same day up to Winthrop. I was hoping to find someone heading to Winthrop on the ferry and I did....but they were going a couple days later. Instead, someone else offered to let me stay in the extra room of the cabin at the resort they were staying at! So I stayed with them in Chelan and it was awesome! Shower, salmon for dinner, watching the sunrise from the dock, etc!

10/1: (15.5 miles) The nice trail angels that let me stay with them last night were also kind enough to drive me to Pateros, WA. Then it was hitching from there. It took me about an hour and someone finally picked me up on their way home. Fortunately he was able to take me about 28 miles towards Winthrop. Unfortunately, it was still 6 miles to the nearest town. After another half hour, someone picked me up and drove me those 6 miles into Twisp. ~20 minutes of hitching later someone drove me into Winthrop where I was able to pick up my box of food and get lunch from the grocery store. Then I hitched for another half hour just to get driven to the other end of town, but someone picked me up immediately after that, taking me to Mazama, WA (the closest town to the trail). I was trying to hitch into Hart's Pass (the nearest road access to the US/Canada border) so that I could be done with the PCT soon. After about an hour and a half of hitching (everyone was friendly and waving, but no one was offering to drive me any distance whatsoever) I finally got a ride up to the pass. Starting at around 4:30pm, I hiked just over 15 miles today of classic Washington before camping late (just about 10pm). Fortunately, this would be my last night sleeping on the PCT!

10/2: (25.5 miles) Got going as early as I could stand with the cold (8am) and pushed hard today! I hiked quickly and it was difficult because of the long hill immediately out of camp. But after that the hills were either gradual or flat and I was able to get going pretty quickly. So quickly, in fact, that by the time I stopped for lunch at 1pm, I was only 2.8 miles from the border! I had gone 14 miles! I had "freeze-dried" (or "powdered") cheesecake for lunch that another hiker had given me and it was ehh...pretty good. Then I hiked quickly to the border. I got there and I was the only one around (I had seen other hikers coming back from the border, through) so I did some selfies with the monuments and hiked on into CANADA! A couple hundred feet into Canada I realized that I never signed a trail register at the border, so I went back to look for it. I searched all around and couldn't find it. The perfectionist in me decided to try to fix the off-kilter top half of the metal monument (check out my pictures) and it fell off! Apparently the top comes off and the trail register was inside! Sneaky, sneaky. I signed it, replaced it, and heaved the very heavy top half of the monument back into place (leaving it slightly off-kilter on purpose so that the next person would find it). Then I hiked on into Canada (it was about 2:45pm). I passed a couple hikers that were camping just past the border, but I pressed on and over the last long, slippery, and annoying hill (and down the other side) before I finally got to the road (and then to Manning Park Lodge). Unfortunately, they were fully booked but they had hostel rooms available. All along, "hostel" has meant "bunkhouse" but this actually meant "your own room with your own bed, it's just super tiny and not decorated or anything" which was fine by me! All night long as I was drifting in and out of sleep I had these dreams that I was still hiking. Oh boy, this might take a while to "decompress".