I packed up my tent in record time while Moose and Bugs were eating breakfast. It was uncomfortably humid – we were now over the Cascades and out of their weather shadow, and I felt like I was a whole world away from the dry Okanogan scrubland. I gave Moose his hiking pole back and told the two of them I’d catch them down the trail. I was shooting to refill my water at the Shannon Creek car campground.

I found the campground a couple miles down the road and monopolized a campsite across from the water pump to eat some breakfast. Getting my water from the pump was actually more of a nuisance than just finding a stream. I could barely use the pump with just one of my tiny T-Rex hiker arms, and all of my water receptacles had narrow openings. And the water was brown and cloudy, so I had to filter it anyway.

I wasted plenty of time there – first getting my water, and then eating a double-serving of sugary Aldi granola from my Ross Lake package. It was a town day, so I had no excuse not to eat through the rest of the food on my back.

After finishing my breakfast, I got back on the road and caught the Baker Lake trailhead a few miles later. At the trailhead parking lot, a group of four college-age day hikers saw me coming and made a beeline for the trail to make sure they could stay in front of me. I was vaguely annoyed at this and feeling petty, so I hiked at an obnoxiously fast pace to pass them.

I would spend the rest of my day hiking around Baker Lake until I made it to the road that would take me into Concrete. I had no plans after that, but I hoped that the universe would provide.

I caught up to Bugs and Moose again as they were eating lunch at the Noisy Creek campsite (C819). There were some day-hikers there who had camped there the previous night and met Rebecca and Marguerite. We ate on the edge of a steep drop-off above the water’s edge with a clear view of Mount Baker. Moose gave me an extra mayonnaise packet (a valuable thru-hiker commodity) for my tuna wrap lunch. The three of us were in good spirits, excited to take a break from hiking.

After sitting with them for a while, I continued on down the trail. My pack was light and my head was empty. The miles slipped by and I sped down the trail along the southern half of the oblong lake. The weather transition from the east to west side of the Cascades had brought with it a noticeable ecological transition: Grasses and brambly bushes had been replaced by prehistoric-looking sword ferns. The forest even smelled different – I kept picking up some new scent of organic decay, kind of like rotting hay.

I crossed the Upper Baker Dam (a much less impressive ordeal than the Ross Lake one) in the mid-afternoon. I had drained out the last of my phone battery listening to Nivhek’s meditative electronic album, After Its Own Death / Walking in a Spiral Toward the House. The official PNT route took me pointlessly off of the dam road through an extremely-confusing forest pathway for about a quarter mile, and I ended up in private property coming out of someone’s driveway. A really nice house, I thought, with a view of Mount Baker through a gap in the trees.

In any case, I made it to the road and stuck my thumb out, and it was only about two minutes before I saw a small red Toyota flash its turn signal in my direction. I saw Moose’s head poke out of the passenger seat and couldn’t help but laugh. They had missed the confusing PNT route altogether and gotten picked up a bit further north on the road.

As the three of us rode down the long, windy road into Concrete the driver explained that this road was a popular track for car commercials. It wasn’t hard to see; the road wound through a forest along some beautiful rock walls. Ferns burst from every crevice, illumininated by sunlight streaming through the trees.


We made it into town with a lot of the evening to spare. We got dropped off in front of the tiny motel that Bugs and Moose were planning to stay in. I was feeling exhausted, so I decided to go into the office just to see how expensive their cheapest room was. The office was decorated wall-to-wall with little trinkets, statues, thank-you notes, and Korean-language signs. The couple running the motel was so kind that I found myself unable to refuse the $50 hiker-discounted room that they offered me.

And so, I broke my two-month streak of not paying for a place to stay. I got my own air-conditioned motel room, which felt absolutely luxurious, and the motel owner even came by to ask if I had any laundry! I warned her that it would smell awful, but she wasn’t phased in the slightest. I collected it in a plastic bag and left it outside of my door for her.

I took a long shower and shaved, and then it was food time. I slipped on my rain jacket and rain pants (my only remaining garments) and went to find Bugs and Moose in a nearby restaurant. I felt so totally relaxed, like I was floating instead of walking. I sat with them in the restaurant for a bit, but after seeing the menu prices I decided to go to the supermarket next door for some disgusting grocery store hot food.


My rainy zero day in Concrete was a firestorm of errands: I planned my next resupply and bought some food, got a whole haircut from an older woman who talked to me the whole time about her newfound interest in painting, tried to find a replacement hiking pole, failed that and settled for a $2.99 125-centimeter flexible plastic ground post that I found in the grocery store, ordered some gear replacements (hiking poles and socks) ahead to Sedro-Wooley, went to the library to upload some photos and call my loved ones, and through all of that still managed to shove some food inside of me.

Teddy and Karma showed up that evening and I hung out with them inside of their adjacent room. We talked about trail stuff, mostly. Rebecca and Marguerite had apparently also made it to the motel, but I didn’t see them around. After checking my bank account, I decided to stay another night in luxury.

Sometime in the evening, I was outside of the motel when an middle-aged bike-touring guy rolled up to me and yelled, “So how bad is it?” I was so taken aback. Here I was staying at the nicest place I’d stayed in months, and this asshole probably expected perfect beautiful lodging every single night. I glared at him and told him it’s actually really nice, thank you very much, and turned around and went back to my room.