August 31
Miles: 0
Miles to Canada: 80.7
Listening to: The Barr Brothers – Valhallas
I hate goodbyes, so I didn’t want any kind of long drawn out thing with everyone this morning. I woke up and around 7am, finished packing up all my things. I wanted to be ready to go.
We had breakfast in a chaotic fashion. Everyone was running around packing and doing last minute things. Someone heated up the leftover potatoes and cut up some melons. I made some coffee.
Bap gave me a giant bag of food for him, Rocky and Roses for me to take to Stehekin. My bus wasn’t until 9:08 but I left at 8:45. I hate sitting around waiting to say goodbye, so I quickly said goodbye to everybody. Gave everyone hugs and then left the house. Mama and Papa Paint were driving everyone else to the trailhead at Steven’s Pass and they drove by the bus stop and honked and waved. I missed them already.
The busses were free to get to Chelan from Leavenworth. I took the 22 bus all the way to Wenatchee, and then took the 21 bus to Lady of the Lake, which was the company that the ferry to Stehekin was operating through. The busses were free, which is really nice and when I went to the website to confirm they said that less than 5% of their revenue came from fares which I didn’t really understand how that worked. Throughout the trail, both in California and in Washington, there were a lot of free buses in these smaller towns, which is really nice. I was worried last night because the bus wasn’t running on September 1st on Labor Day and I got confused about it at 1:00 in the morning but it was already Sunday so it ended up working out. It was still August 31.
When I arrived at Lady of the Lake, I went into the office, and I was a bit early for the ferry. There were two guys in the office, and when they asked if I was on the 1:00 p.m. ferry I said yes and I think they watched my face drop when they told me that it actually left from a location 17 miles away. They asked if had taken the bus there and was hiking the PCT and I said yes. They seemed to know all about it, and it seemed like maybe this happened a little bit often, so they offered to give me a ride up to the other dock where the ferry was actually leaving from since they had to go there anyway. One of the guys said To be fair, our website is a little bit confusing.
They gave me a ride to the dock, and in the truck, I was asking them questions about how they operated on the lake and about the ferry boats. I told them I had had a Catalina 25 and had rewired the entire boat electrical system myself. One of the guys asked if I wanted a job helping them build a new ferry boat, and I said if you’re actually serious maybe I would in the summer on a break from school! They’re building a new catamaran boat and it’s interesting because Lake Chelan is in the middle of the mountains and they’re hiring in engineering company to basically design a boat and then they’ll customize it themselves but they have to do it at Lake Chelan because it won’t be able to fit on a trailer and go over the mountain passes. It was really interesting talking to them because Lake Chelan is made through a dam, and the lake actually drops 18 feet per year because of the dam.
The ferry ride was really relaxing. I love being on boats, and I could have fallen asleep. I was a little bit tired, but I went back on the deck for a while and watched the mountains go by. Lake Chelan is a very long and narrow lake and it’s about 44 nautical miles from Chelan to Stehekin and the trip is about an hour and a half. So the boat goes about 38 knots which is pretty fast. I’ve missed being on boats, and it was a really nice ride over to Stehekin.
I was warned by one of the guys to try to find a campsite as soon as possible because it’s Labor Day weekend and there would be a lot of people camping. I completely forgot about the holiday. Based on the farout comments, I went over to Lakeview campground, which is I guess owned by the National Park Service. I went up to the PCT area, and there were a few other hikers over there, including the fighting German couple that I last saw in Oregon the day I was skinny dipping. They were still fighting about which campsite to set up in, and one of the options was the one exactly next to me, even though there were lots of other open ones. Of course. Thankfully, they set up somewhere else.
I dropped off the package for Bap, Roses and Rocky at the lodge and asked them to keep it for them for 4 days and then I bought a beer and sat by the water for a while trying to finish some of my blog entries that I was behind on. There’s a little marina here and there’s two sailboats – one looks like a Buccaneer maybe 22 to 24 feet. And then there’s another boat that kind of looks like a newer Catalina. Maybe 18 to 20 feet. I didn’t see anybody on the boats. I think if I did, I would have asked if they wanted some crew. But the wind is basically non-existent today, so it might be a boring sail.
I hung around on the porch at the lodge and had dinner. There a falafel gyro from the restaurant. My hip still kind of hurt and I didn’t really want to walk too far. There were some other hikers around but nobody that I really knew. After dinner I just went back to the tent. I was pretty tired and went to bed early.
If you are enjoying this blog you can subscribe here to get email updates! If you are really enjoying the blog, please buy me a coffee and help me on my PCT journey! ☀️
