Oregon

California/Oregon border. Nothing too spectacular, but still exciting since we'd been in CA for 3 months or so!

Crater Lake, with Wizard Island behind us. We stealth camped on the rim, and got to see a spectacular sunset AND sunrise!

A sunburst.

Oh, the wonderful mosquitos that were with us for much of Oregon!

At Elk Lake Resort the ladies working the ice cream counter would bring us out the empty ice cream barrels and let us scrape them out with our spoons....yum!

Mark silhouetted on some volcanic rock.

The trail wound through some volcanic rock areas. It was a cool change of scenery, but at times it hurt your feet to walk over the chunks of rock used to make the trail.

These cairns marked the 2000 mile mark of the PCT.

You can see the burned trees behind the alive new trees. We walked through quite a few sections like this.

As we were going around Mt. Jefferson, we had one night with a thunderstorm that dumped hail and tons of rain on us in a span of 10 minutes. Since we had a tarp, the hail was bouncing in under the tarp!

Mark and Mt. Jefferson

rainbow

A sunset at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood.

Ramona Falls. We had to take a short alternate route to see these falls, but it was definitely worth it!

We took the Eagle Creek Trail into Cascade Locks, and this trail boasts tons of beautiful waterfalls....this one is called Tunnel Falls because the trail goes through a tunnel bore into the rock behind the falls.

This sign wasn't for us, although Mark thought it was at first. There was a wedding at this hotel and the bride and groom had our names. We were bummed, though, that we didn't have a room waiting for us!

The city park in Cascade Locks, right on the Columbia River, that we were allowed to camp in for free.



People thought we were in the woods alone all the time, but for most of Northern CA, Oregon, and WA, we were hiking with a group of 8-10 people. It wasn't often we all actually hiked together (mostly we camped together), but at times, we ended up in a line like this.....