Oregon Part 2 will follow this post. My lovely mother will guest post it.
So. To leave Oregon, I had to cross the Bridge of the Gods over the Columbia river. I giddily walked across the 1,856 feet of open steel grating. See, the Beidge of the Gods, to me at least, is probably the second most important milestone on the PCT (Kennedy Meadows South, the gateway to the Sierra being first). It signifies all the hard work I've put in over the last four months. The California-Oregon border was certainly a big deal and certainly signified a hue milestone, but it was just a sign in the forest. There is something magnificent about crossing the Columbia river into my home state.
Literally as soon as I stepped off the bridge and onto Washington soil, the sky that had been blue in Oregon, opened up and began to dump buckets and buckets of rain. I threw on my new raincoat and pack cover, thankful that I had finally seam sealed my tent (after 2150 miles on the trail and after carrying the seam sealer since South Lake Tahoe, mile 1094).
About half an hour later, I stopped to take off the raincoat, not because it had stopped raining, Because it hasn't, but because it was so warm and I was getting swampy in the raincoat.
WeeBee caught up with me and I shouted to the heavens, shaking my fist: I have been gone for four months an THIS is how you welcome me home?!! The heavens responded with a peak of thunder. Awesome. And so began the final leg of the journey.
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