Day 156: first day in Washington!

Friday 9/21/12
Miles 2156-2175 (19 miles)
Elevation 1,464'

Dang. First day in Washington and it is cold and overcast the whole day. Holy crap wtf?!? Bleh. I don't like Washington, I think I'm gonna turn around now and walk back to Bend! Haha just kidding :). Ultimately I am grateful that it's not raining and not that windy. Plus I'm sure it could be a lot colder.

I ran into Mark Trail today! I haven't seen him since about mile 500! He is southbounding from Snoqualmie Pass in WA to Cascade Locks OR, then going to Big Bear CA and southbounding from there to the Mexican border to finish the trail. It was nuts, when I first saw him he didn't have a shirt on. I thought, holy crap you're nuts!! I had my beanie, jacket, and gloves on. Lol. He was making a big deal about bad weather in the goat rocks area. One of the first and best pieces of advice a previous thru-hiker gave me was: don't buy into the hype. Seriously. If its bad weather when I get there I'll deal with it then, but I'm not gonna stress out over a bunch of hype. Lol.

Oh, I experienced something new today. There has been a rolling mist blowing over the trail the entire day. On some parts of the the trail, the mist would condense on the pine needles of the trees, so when you walked under the trees it would be raining. Lol! That was so weird!! Ive never experienced that before! It would rain when you walked under the trees! Haha. Washington is weird. :)

Oh, I meant to say this a long time ago. To Denise from San Francisco who sent me the care package, thanks!! The sobriety test gum was hilarious. Coincidentally, I got that, and your letter while I was in Bend (land of epic beers), and I was staying in the "San Francisco" themed room at the Mills Inn B&B. Cool. :). Oh, whoever you were looking for, do you remember their trail name? I might have their contact info, the trail is a small world. :)

Anyhow, I survived day one in WA, and it didn't rain. Yay!! Thus far WA is not very pretty. In fact it is very grey and Bleh. But then again I just went through Oregon, the land of Epicness! So yeah. Washington, you have a lot to live up to. :)