Day 98 25.6 miles

Alright, so I have to say sorry in advance for the text-only post. Up until now my camera on my phone has been acting up, with occasional periods where it won’t come on at all. Today is the first day that it just wouldn’t come on no matter what I did. Just a black screen all day! Good news is that my ankle feels a bit better today, although still a bit sensitive. 

Pretty early on I entered the Rogue River National Forest. I really wanted to take a picture of the cool sign. This is where I first fought with my phone. I tried restarting and all the other techniques I’ve learned to use to try and get the camera to reboot. After about 10 minutes I gave up. Sorry!

There were lots of huckleberries today all over the place! At first the ones I saw didn’t look quite ripe, but soon I was in fields of plump and juicy huckleberries! I really am in Oregon!! To make things better, I hit some small trail Magic about 12 miles into my day. Someone had left a 16 pack of Pepsi near a road and O was it tasty! 

I was there eating some food and drinking my magic Pepsi when I met a hiker named Daniel-San. I had seen him before at Drakesbad Guest Ranch and again at Burney Guest Ranch, but never got his name. Daniel-San has recently been a victim of a crime! He got to Callahan’s where mom picked me up and hitched to Medford to meet a girl he met on Tinder. She picked him up and went to her house, and six people robbed him at gunpoint! They took many of his belongings, and he pleaded with them not to take his tent and clothes and backpack itself. He had to replace his headlamp, external battery for his phone, his SPOT device, and around $200 cash, along with many more items. Thank goodness they didn’t take his wallet which he had in his pocket! They also stole his prescription medication. He couldn’t get any more meds as he had just refilled, so he had to use the police report of the incident just so a pharmacy would give him what he needed! He still had to pay ~$200 out of pocket for the refill! Poor kid, I felt so bad...  :(

There was a neat shelter called the South Brown Shelter, which had a large fireplace right in the middle

Of it and a lot of chopped wood inside the structure. There was a large pump faucet outside that provided clean and cold water! The faucet was around 5ft tall! I wish I could’ve taken a picture. 

After that there were thimbleberries all huckleberries all day! Occasionally there were also wild raspberries! The trail wound through lave fields and in and out of forest segments. When crossing a lava section, the trail had red cinder packed in between the sharp rocks and there was a very smooth, elevated red path over most of them. 

Daniel-San and a few others had told me about Fish Lake Resort, a small store and cafe 2.2 miles west on a highway coming up about 11 miles after the cabin. I wasn’t planning on stopping before Crater Lake, but a burger and milkshake sounded so good so it motivated me to push on quickly through the early afternoon. 

When I got to the highway I saw some hikers on the other side near a river and went to go see who they were. Guess what?! It was Tumbleweed and Vortex! I haven’t seen them since Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite, but I’ve been watching their names get closer and closer in the trail registers as I’ve been flying through! We caught up for a few minutes before a familiar face got dropped off on the highway and came to say hi.

It was JAKE!! I haven’t seen Jake since Mt. Laguna! He was the 19 y/o who I met in mile one back near Campo! He had been doing 30+ mile days in the desert so I thought I’d never see him again. Then he got sick with ghiarrdea and took Flagyl and had an even worse reaction to that! That caused him to take a lot of time off trail to recover, and now I’m finally catching up!

As much as I wanted to stay and catch up with him, Fosh Lake Resort closes at 6:00pm and it was already after 4! I decided I had to go begin hitching in case it took a long time! I went to the road and got lucky in about 5 minutes. A lovely lady named Sue and her dog Max gave me a ride! 

When I arrived at Fish Lake Resort everyone was super nice to me. It was the moment I’d been waiting for; time to order and then eat a ton of food!! I got 6 mozzarella sticks, a huge “Hungry Hiker Burger” (Two 1/3 lb patties and with double cheese and all the fixins! I got the side salad with that and the cook still put my burger on curly fries and the salad in the side! Score! I also had a great Blonde Ale beer and then to top it all off a chocolate strawberry milkshake! Whew!! That was a lot!

After all that I didn’t want to move, but I knew I had to get going if I was going to make my 25 miles for the day. The hitch out was a LOT tougher than the hitch in... I stood out on the road for probably about 45 mins before someone who already had two other hikers in their van stopped and let me squeeze in. It was a super cool dude who manages three water catches up ahead in trail and has been driving hikers all over.

Back on trail, I chugged a liter of water and then filled up two liters as I was starting an 11 mile waterless stretch. 3 miles up a hill later, I arrived at a nice campsite. There are a TON of mosquitos here, even though I’m not near any water. Apparently it’s going to be pretty bad for the next 10 miles or so. Can’t be as bad as the Sierra right? ...riiiiiight? 

Well, I’m glad you still read all the way through even though there was no pictures to go along! I think I’ll turn off my phone tonight and hopefully tomorrow the camera will be operable again. Sorry again about that!

Thanks for reading!!