Happy Fourth of July!! Big day for us today! 28 or so miles. We didn’t set our alarm this morning so it was nice being able to wake up naturally around 6:15. We packed up and set off relatively quickly, about quarter of 7. The morning’s miles seemed to fly by. We passed a bunch of NOBOs (northbounders) and chatted with a few, mostly telling them about the snow they had ahead and also finding out where these hikers flipped to (none of these people did the Sierra, they skipped them and decided to walk north to Canada and later go back, rather than do our south then north plan). Eventually Wolf Bird used the facilities, in the woods that is, and I kept hiking. I wanted to try to get as many miles as possible out of the way before lunch so I set a goal for myself of reaching a certain stream before stopping. This would make about 17.5 miles done before lunch.
The walking was pretty easy until I came to an uphill section. I popped in some music for a while and before I knew it I was at the stream id been aiming For! And good timing, because Wolf Bird caught me not five minutes after. We stopped and had a nice long lunch break by the stream. We discussed where we wanted to aim to camp tonight. We were eying two options, one 7.5 miles ahead and one 10 ahead. We decided to go 7.5 and see how we felt.
The walking again was really nice–the terrain in this section has been super gentle and gradual, even for the PCT which already tends to be pretty gradual. We got to the campsite at 7.5 around 6 or so. It was on a ridge and thus had a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains including Mt Shasta. We debated staying so we might have a chance to spot fireworks somewhere in the valley below. We both were feeling like we could walk more though so we decided to keep going the last 2.5 to the next campsite. It was all downhill and flew by.
There was one person already camped there but he kept to himself. We cooked dinner–I made mac and cheese, quite the luxury as it weighs a lot and I don’t carry it often. We also washed up in the stream nearby… I always find a way to get the dirtiest legs imaginable. Then we watched an hour of Brokeback Mountain, which I made Wolf Bird rent on amazon prime on his phone. All in all a good day! Although it didn’t feel like Fourth of July to us at all–we didn’t even hear fireworks in the distance or anything. Still, it was a beautiful day and we are very grateful to be out here.
Happy 4th…miss you and love u big