PCT 2019 ver 2 Day 9 July 18

Daily mileage 0

Home

I got up early to be able to use the showers (traveling on public transportation like small airplanes, you know), charge my phone and pilfer the wifi before all the other plundering hikers got on.

I made a somewhat vague plan as to how to get home from the rather remote Shelter Cove Resort. I had promised to travel out as far as Portland with a very nice young Tennasseean lady named Vitamin C  but when she got down to the eating area, she said she wanted to wait until later in the day because her friends from the trail were not in yet.

Had breakfast with Scooter with whom I have leapfrogged with pretty much the whole 8 days. Super nice lady.

The owners of the resort made arrangements to provide a ride up the two miles to the highway for me. Then I stuck out my thumb and the third vehicle past picked me up and gave me a ride right to Eugene. The only odd part was they dropped me off literally on the side of the I5. Rather odd hiking along the busiest freeway on the west coast after having spent 8 days in relative solitude hiking.  Oh well, it is all part of the adventure.  I limped into a Starbucks and started plotting a course home.

A Lyft ride to Target to get a shirt that did not have hiker stench embedded in it and then off to meet my hastily arranged four flights home.

Yesterday, I saw one other hiker in 25 trail miles. Today, I am in an airport crowd like this. Surreal.

After a few flight delays, my long travel day ended at around 1:00 am where my ever amazing wife was waiting patiently for me to limp home (this time literally) from the PCT once again.

So in summary, over the two seasons that I have been out beating my head in a very enjoyable manner on the PCT, I have hiked 1,530 miles of unique (discounting the repeated 167 miles of trail that I hiked this spring) PCT trail over a total of 81 days.  Will I return?  Not this year.  But never say never.  I still have 365 miles of what should be jaw dropping Sierra Mountains, 239 miles of Oregon which has been surprisingly beautiful and 509 miles of the Cascade Mountains in Washington to hike.  That is not a bad line up to keep me amused over the next few summers.