Day 80 - Friday, July 16

Tenting in a planted pine forest (mile 1367.2). Walked 25.5 miles today.

Woke up and started to get ready this morning. I looked outside my tent and inquired to Frank "Why are your shoes outside my tent?" Apparently I was snoring VERY loudly last night and starting to wake up the others in camp, so she threw her shoes at my tent to get me to wake up and stop snoring.  It apparently worked.

Got out of camp and started the long climb up to the boundary of Lassen Volcanic National Park. The air was fairly smokey and I found myself coughing a little bit as I ascended.

At the boundary, I got water at a spring and then hung out and snacked. Cleopatra passed by and we said "See you on the other side" to each other before she pushed on through the park. Frank rolled up with Minnesota Jocko, a guy from Wales whose name I can't remember, and Phantom Dooker (who has said she won't take the name because there's someone named Phantom and the names are too similar).

She, Frank, and I walked into the park and after a mile or so, Frank and I went on a side trail to Terminal Geyser which isn't a geyser, it's just steam pouring from the earth. Still neat.

We went back to the junction and met up with Forrest who just had to skip about 70 miles because of the fire. We walked sort of together for a while past Boiling Spring Lake until Drakesbad Guest Ranch where he was going to hang out for a bit.

He told us the whereabouts of people and that Arugula had gotten off trail. That was sad to hear as she was really cool.

Frank and I agreed to meet at a lake about 7 miles away for lunch and I went ahead and hiked up a couple of climbs and made it to the lake, averaging over 3 mph along the way. When I got there, I found my way to the shore where I ran into Cleopatra who was hanging out with Dirty Knuckles and Burps. I hadn't seen them since Wrightwood so it was great to catch up.

Frank rolled in and chatted with them too while eating lunch. They rolled out and we followed after about another hour. We saw Habenearo and his hiking crew roll in and said hi. Frank and I then hiked briefly with Minnesota Jocko as we entered a long burn area. This continued for a number of miles.

When Frank stopped briefly, I continued on and a couple minutes later, I saw a bear up ahead right near the trail.

I scared it off and Frank caught up, disappointed that she didn't see the bear. We walked on with her in front and a few minutes later, she got my attention. There was another bear near the trail.

This one was pretty big but lumbered away without incident. We hiked past the northern boundary of Lassen and after another mile or so, arrived at our camp for the night. Both of us were a little underwhelmed by Lassen.  There were a lot of trees, a large burn area, and not much in the way of views.

At camp, we celebrated the halfway point. Since we missed the real spot (which was 36 miles away when we skipped the fire closure), we decided we'd celebrate it when we reached here as this is 36 miles from where we picked the trail back up. We made a sign and rocked out to Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer".

Forrest rolled up and we chatted briefly before he hiked on to the next site. We were eventually joined by a few other hikers later in the evening including Phantom Dooker who told us earlier today she had shit her pants, so she is growing into her name.  Tonight was the first time that we got to see the sunset from camp.  I thought I'd see many more of these on the trail, but this one was fantastic due to the smoke from the fires.

We've now left the Sierra Nevada mountains and have moved into the Cascade Mountain Range.  Lots of volcanoes coming up.