Oregon ended a lot faster than I anticipated. In the morning humidity, we went down the last miles (with a long blackberry break) to Bridge of the Gods, the bridge separating Oregon and Washington. On our side of the bridge lay Cascade Locks, a sleepy little town that, tomorrow, would be flooded with hikers from far and wide, coming to attend PCT Days, the big trail convention that everyone was so excited about.
But that is for later. I let it sink in that I crossed another state. What remained was about 500 miles in Washington, less than the desert. The climate here is definitely more wet, a stark contrast with southern California, a place that seemed a lifetime ago now.
Since we wanted to attend trail days and that wasn’t until tomorrow, we went to Portland by bus for the day. This was the biggest city I’d been to in 4 months. Portland made a rebellious impression, a hub where young people protested against the powers that be, bursting with cafes and hip restaurants. I quite liked it, despite the ubiquitous homeless people camping and aimlessly pushing shopping carts down the streets.
We spent the afternoon in the airbnb we’d rented, blissfully doing nothing. Dinner was at a Vietnamese restaurant, where I had a massive bowl of pho. Tasty and double tasty as it wasn’t another 6/10 burger in a trail town.
The evening derailed when we headed out to two different bars and a donut place in between. Fitz crashed halfway through and decided to take a powernap on the sidewalk. Mash was the most talkative I’d ever seen him. What a good, but exhausting night. I got the same feeling in Bend, but it felt unexpectedly nice to be in places that were not set up for hikers, but for people who actually lived in the city.