September 10-18:The Time In-Between

We finished the trail on the 9th and hopped on a bus to Vancouver the next morning. This is where we parted ways with Flippy, hopefully just for a short while. We were meeting up with our friend, Katie, whom we went to school with our freshman year at IWU and hadn't seen in a long time. Flippy was staying in a hostel and was heading back to Seattle the next day. We were hoping to connect again to hike the CA fire sections in a few days.

We stayed with Katie and her husband, Mark, for a couple nights; it was so fun to catch up with her and hear how life had been going for her the past few years. I also got to add her to the long list (and growing) of friends and family who are pregnant. To put it in perspective, I am one of two women (out of 7) from our home group in the Quad Cities who is not pregnant. There are also several others who have joined that club lately, but I am not one of them. Regardless, we had a lot of fun exploring Vancouver with Katie, and then hopped on another bus that took us to the Seattle area.

We stayed in a hotel (no mice!), and were picked up the next morning by a hiker friend named Old School. We had first met OS near White Pass in southern Washington, and had crossed paths with him again in Stehekin. He was only hiking Washington, and offered to give us a ride down to Bend, OR on his way back to CO. We took him up on his offer, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with him.

He is an avid biker, hiker, and sailor, so we enjoyed picking his brain on these subjects (well Mark did most of the picking since I slept a lot). He drives an awesome van that had a bed in the back and enough room for us to sleep on the floor, so that's what we ended up doing. The State Park near Bend was full, so we found a little pull-off near the river and slept there. After a brief stop into Starbucks in the morning, he was on his way to CO, and we were on our own.

Our friends in Bend were out of town for the day, so we spent our time in REI and just sitting around chillin' out. We ended up spending a few days in Bend since it has become a prospect for us to live in this next year. They were busy with family most of the time, but we had a blast cruisin' around town on their 1950-esque bikes (they are all the rage in Bend). Very fun.

We were planning on leaving on Thursday, driving (we rented a car) to Crater Lake, camping there, and then driving to Yreka, CA and hitching to Etna to hike. Well, on our way out of town we had a few quick stops to make, which should have taken us no more than an hour tops. The last of these stops was WalMart to pick up a couple prescriptions. When we got there, only one was ready, so we had to wait. Fine. I can handle waiting. But to spare you my ranting, we didn't leave WalMart for nearly 2 hours. Yes, it took THAT long. It was rediculous. REDICULOUS. But I'm over it :).

We left WalMart intending to drive a ways and camp, our dreams of Crater Lake left smashed on the floor of the WalMart pharmacy. We got 20 minutes down the road, and then I realized I had left my sunglasses in WalMart. Now the dilemma: do we go back for them? Is it worth it? since we weren't sure where we were going to camp, and it was almost dark, we knew we weren't getting far tonight. Luckily our drive was only 4-4.5 hrs total and could be made in the morning.

We ended up sucking up our pride and calling Aaron and Annie back up and asking if we could come back for the night. We felt horrible, but they obviously didn't care. So 4 hours after we left, we were back at their house and headed for the same bed we woke up in. Go figure. Well...we tried to leave. Really, we did...

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