PNC Days 18-20 – Inland!

This stretch of trail brought us farther away from the ocean and closer to the Cascades. Exciting! We climbed and descended several 3,000-4,000 foot “hills”, but we’re not quite back in the mountains yet. We walked through Nuwhaha, Nooksack, Skagit, and Coast Salish ancestral lands.

Day 18 – PNT Mile 317.2 – Bellingham

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night to hear a roaring chorus of frogs. We were camped near a lake, and the frogs were super loud there! I enjoyed it for a little while and then fell back to sleep. We woke up early to get some miles in before visiting my sister, Jenny, and her family tonight. They live in Bellingham, which is just a few miles from the trail, so we’ve been planning to visit as we walk by. They picked us up at about 10 from our planned meeting spot and we headed to their house. We had a fun day of doing trail chores, catching up, and being aunt and uncle to our nieces and nephew. We also did most of our trail chores (showers, laundry, and charging), and I did a few work-related things. The highlight of the day came at evening when we lit up their wood-fired pizza oven and made a bunch of pizza. Jenny got tons of yummy fresh ingredients that we don’t eat on the trail. Yum! At bed time Renee and I opted to sleep in our tent in the back yard — the amenities of the city are nice, but there’s just something peaceful about being in our tent.

Day 19 – PNT Mile 330.8 – Into the mountains

I got to sleep in a bit today, but Tim woke up before 5 am to do some work. He meets with his team in Germany about once a month while we’re on the trail. My job let’s me be completely away. While Tim had meetings, I went to the grocery store to resupply. Jenny and family drove us back to the trail around noon. It was a fun overnight at their house! Thank you, Jenny! The trail today continued to take us up into the Cascade Mountains. We caught glimpses of some big peaks ahead and luckily it looks like the snow has been melting a bit. The PNT is notorious for “bush-wacking”, and today we got a taste of it. A small section of the trail was being reclaimed by the forest or even completely non-existent in spots. We had to push our way through pokey raspberry bushes and little trees so thick we couldn’t even see our feet at times. -R

Day 20 – PNT Mile 356.0 – Logging

Today we followed a network of logging trails down and up and down a few really big hills. This must be the forgotten part of Washington, in terms of recreation — when up high we can see the ocean to the west and the Cascades to the east, but we’re surrounded by only evidence of logging. We can’t complain too much — after all, we use wood products (e.g. our canoe), and the wood has to come from somewhere!

Lunch today was rice and beans with veggies. We usually cold-soak our lunches, which means we reconstitute the meal from dry to moist without heat. We use instant rice, dehydrated beans, and dehydrated veggies, and after about an hour of soaking (in a pot in my backpack), it’s ready to eat.

At the end of the day we had to do some more bushwhacking — not fun! Then we saw two elk — a mother and fawn. They were the first elk we’ve seen so far on the PNC. For dinner we had Ethiopian-style lentils and rice. Yum! -T