Spending the night in a bed was not as comfortable as I’d expected. The room was really warm with no air-conditionning and having the windows open didn’t helped enough.

 

The hotel was build in 1939 an renovated in 1955. Since then everything has been kept the same way. It was some kind of historical flashback beeing there for the short time.

 

We sat at the famous buffet at 8am. Everyone on trail tells you to go there and that it is amazing. But compared to european standards it mediocre at best. No cheese, no ham, no bread, no croissants, 1 sort of jam, 2 different cornflakes, very few fruits,…

 

Don’t get me wrong, it was still great to have all the things they had after eating breakfast on trail for almost a week but for me it is overhyped.

 

After breakfast we went to the Sauna which has different standards than europe too. 75 °C was almost to cold for comfort and so the session ended quicker then expected.

 

Another shower and then we had to leave the room and sat in the hallway for a while before eating lunch (leftovers from yesterdays dinner).

 

The weather was great an so we decided to play the bag-tossing-game for a while. I might build it at home too because it would fit well on my rooftop terrasse 🙂

 

 

After taking the obligatory axe-picture we set of and got back to the trail again.

 

 

It’s going to be a long and steep downhill part from the lodge at 6’000 feet to Cascade locks at 79 feet over the next 3 days.

 

The views were amazing going down on the trail 🙂

 

 

We only did 8 miles and camped next to this waterfall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got up quite late but still were the first of the 3 tents at the campside to be on the trail again.

 

The morning was dominated by the last major climb in Oregon but we managed it without any problem 🙂

 

Somehow Fabienne decided that she wanted to do 25 miles tomorrow because “that’s what all the hikers are going”.  So we decided to place the campsite for tonight at the right spot exacly 26,25 miles away from town to make it to the full marathon distance.

 

Smoke started to apear again during the day, but a lot less then I had back in southern Oregon.

 

 

We did arrive quite early in the afternoon after spending the whole day in the forest with nothing but trees.

 

We had enough time to start a netflix marathon and almost made it trough the entire serie of “the sinner” before we decided to go to sleep.

 

There are really not a lot of hikers on the trail right know, within the 6 hours we’ve been on that campside only 2 northbounders and 1 southbounder passed us…

 

 

 

Because of the long distance we wanted to cover we had to get up early and so did we! After I flew the drone for a few minutes to get a good shot of the sunrise we were on trail at 7h05 🙂

 

 

 

After an hour we had to get water for the rest of the day because there wouldn’t be any more sources until close to Cascade Locks. The spring was flowing very slow and it took us almost 15 minutes to collect 4 liters of water…

 

We managed to hold the needed pace to arrive early enough to make it to the diner in time even with the long water- and the breakfast pause. Motivation was high and so we kept going 🙂

 

The trail was mostly in good conditon an there were no big climbs anymore so we did not had any problems with the time schedule.

 

We had to stop quite often to enjoy the views tough 🙂

 

Shortly after lunch we arrived at the last downhill section. A massive 4’000 feet drop down to town. The trail was very steep and covered with stones which made it hard to hike fast. We had about 30 minutes backup because we did well the last few hours on trail but we would lose a lot of time now.

 

Fabienne soon realized that it was a mistake to hike that far but it was too late. There were no more campsites the last 8 miles to town and so we had to continue.

 

Shortly before we got into town we decided to skip the bridge part for today and go straight to the supermarket and diner.

 

With the burger and a large coke the mood did get better fast and after a milkshake and ice-cream we went to the camping to set up our tent and take a well earned shower 🙂

 

We drank the beer we bought and fell right asleep hoping for the muscles not to hurt too much tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

We got up late because we had nothing planned for today except walking into Washington and back over the Bridge of the Gods.

 

I had another shower before Fabienne got herself a bagle with scrambled egs and bacon and I had a coffe and a blueberry muffin.

 

We wandered around in town for an hour before we walked over the bridge in heavy wind.

 

 

 

The bridge marks the border between Oregon and Washington and is known as a major milestone on the trail.

 

We passed the postal office on our way back to the tent to get the box with stuff we wouldn’t need on trail and did send ahead in Sisters.

 

After another shower, we don’t have deodorant and in the heat one does sweat fast so we are happy that the showers are included in the camping-fees, we headed out to get dinner.

 

Pizza and a few IPA’s later we were looking at cars to buy when we’ll be back from Asia 🙂

 

We did spend the rest of the evening in our tent relaxing and planning the next few days in Portland were we are going tomorrow morning by bus.

 

Next update will be from the trail again in about a week!