Another Long Walk

A Mountain Fit for a King!

2013-05-10T21:18:00.001-07:00

View Kings Mountain in a larger map.
This is, roughly speaking, the route
we followed up Kings Mountain.
For experienced hikers only!

The day Leora and I finished snowshoeing around Crater Lake, we headed back to her place in the Coast Range west of Portland. I had a day to kill before my train ride back to Seattle, and Leora offered a few hiking options to choose from. One of which she described as a little off-trail adventure up Kings Mountain.

I’ve been up Kings Mountain once before, but I used a decidedly on-trail option when I did that hike. Leora has done it countless times since she lives near the trailhead, but had never tried this particular off-trail option and wanted to do it with a hiking partner. And she knows I’m a hiker, and that I’m not at all inhibited by the idea of going off trail with nothing more than my wits and a topo map. =)

We parked at the regular trailhead for Kings Mountain, then followed the trail off to Elk Mountain. But no, we weren’t headed to Elk Mountain. We only followed that trail about halfway to the Elk Mountain trailhead. At which point we intersected a small creek without a bridge. That was our landmark to head off trail.

Leora leads us up our first off-trail landmark: this small creek.

The directions Leora had included an old, overgrown road, but we quickly lost that and scrambled upstream, trying to avoid all the plants with sharp thorns that seem so prevalent in the Pacific Northwest. We found the old road again further upstream, having realized that parts of it had fallen into the creek over the years. The going was quick on the old road—at least when there was an old road to follow. Quick, being a relative term, as compared the speed of crawling on one’s hands and knees, which was probably our average speed when we got of the road.

Eventually, we passed an old log sticking up over the creek, and I joked that Leora should go out to the end of it and pretend to ride it like a horse for a dramatic photo. It would have been a dramatic photo, I thought, but I was just joking. Crawling out to the end of the log would have been needlessly dangerous! But Leora took the challenge a little too seriously and immediately beat a path through the brush to it.

“I was just kidding,” I told her. “I really don’t think you should be doing this!”

But no, she kept going, and when she was sitting out at the end of it, I went a head a took a few photos. May as well! After she got back off, safely (thank goodness!), I said that I would have never even joked about the idea if I realized that she was going to take it so seriously. I learned a valuable lesson, though—don’t joke around Leora about bad ideas. =)

I made the mistake of joking that Leora should pose on this log.
She did… against my own advice!

Fortunately, she didn’t fall off and the log didn’t snap under her weight!

We bushwhacked further up the creek, looking for a junction with another creek, finding a bunch of trash in some rather surprising places. Like an old homeless encampment. And another bunch of trash like some kids threw a party. But they had to do some seriously work to get out here!

We started up one particular slope—far steeper than anything else we had done before, and I started getting the feeling we were going the wrong way. That gut instinct that had my spidey sense on high alert. Part of my concern was the fact that the creek was a lot smaller than when we first started following it. I didn’t remember seeing a fork in the river, but maybe we missed it through all the brush? And if we did miss it, then we were going the wrong direction. And the slope just felt wrong to me. Too steep, too sketchy. We stopped and looked at our topo map, but deep in the valley, we really couldn’t see much to confirm our position or not. But I still felt we were headed in the wrong direction and convinced Leora to backtrack a bit.

We did so, and it was a good decision because we found the fork in the creek. We actually did see the fork before, but we thought it was one of those places where the creek split into two channels and would reconnect behind the “island”—but it never did.

We followed the other branch a short ways, then started veering up a steep hill directly away from the creek following some old game paths. The going was slow, mostly due to the steepness of the terrain rather than the brush. Once we got away from the creek, the brush wasn’t nearly as thick and the thorny bushes were largely left behind. But the route was steep. Very steep.

We took a break at a small landing to catch our breaths and admire the view, then kept pushing ever on and ever higher. We occasionally consulted the map, but it wasn’t particularly useful anymore. Basically, we just had to head ever upwards. The topo map showed a ridge with two towering cliffs on each side, and we were to follow up the side of the ridge all the way to the top of Kings Mountain. As long as we didn’t end up on the sides of the ridge, we’d be fine…

Can you spot the snake in this photo? Watch your step! =)

As the air became more rarified, though, our ridgeline became narrower and narrower, the cliffs becoming steeper and longer, and I started growing a bit more concerned about how safe this route actually was. At this point, tripping or slipping could prove to be quite painful and lead to injuries. The going got slower again as we picked routes ever upwards. Leora and I didn’t always follow the same routes upwards. I tended to follow less steep trails when available while Leora would tend towards the ones that went straight up. So I’d switchback away from her, then switchback towards her.

Sometimes we’d find a relatively good game trail that would be easy to walk on and we’d shout out to each other to let each other know it was there and follow it as long as we could. Then it would peter out and we’d slowly pick our way up the mountain again.

Then the trail came out to a particularly narrow ridgetop with a towering thousand-foot cliff on one side and an extremely steep slope on the other—a catwalk that looked more than a little dangerous to cross. The views were wonderful, but I didn’t feel at all comfortable with the idea of crossing it. I realized now that Leora was trying to kill me!

Leora had no problem going out onto the catwalk, but I was leery. In fact, I could probably get across it just fine. But there was no coming back if you tripped or stumbled along this section. You’d be dead before you hit the bottom of the cliff! Even if I could safely cross the catwalk safely 999 times out of 1000, those odds weren’t good enough for me. Nope. I wanted to know that if I should happen to slip or trip, I could survive it!

The fearless Leora crosses the catwalk… You can’t really see it
well in this photo, but that’s a good 1000-foot cliff on her left! Not quite
so bad on the right, but it would still be a bad fall either way! I backtracked
and went around on the steep slope on the right hanging onto branches
and roots the entire way. *nodding*

Yeah, this would definitely be a bad place to slip and fall!

So I wound up scrambling down the right side of the ridge and slowly navigated around a steep slope that was more vertical than horizontal, grabbing into branches and brush to prevent myself from falling down the slope. If I did slip or fall, I could certainly suffer from some pretty bad injuries and probably need to be rescued, but at least it wouldn’t be a fatality!

Leora made better progress than I did along this section—it was a lot easier to navigate the catwalk than trying to navigate around it. And I was using my hands to get around as much as I was using my feet. Which was exhausting—I walk a lot, but I have absolutely no upper-body strength!

The views really were spectacular—clear all the way to Mount Hood far in the distance!

We took more breaks as natural landings presented themselves. Leora reminded me that she told me it was going to be a rough, off-trail trek, but I insisted that she did not. Well, okay, technically, she did say that, but a lot of people say a trail or route is “difficult” and it turns out to be no big deal at all. I’m conditioned to not believe people who claim a route will be difficult! So even if she said that, it didn’t matter because she didn’t tell me that she meant what she was saying! It’s an important distinction. *nodding*

After nearly five hours, we finally spilled out onto an established trail at the the top of Kings Mountain. In all, we probably covered… what? Two miles? I tried creating the route in Google so you can see the terrain it follows.

The top of Kings Mountain, and a box for a register that hikers can sign.

I’m signing the register on Kings Mountain.

There’s a register at the top of the mountain, which I signed. Then Leora signed it. Then I signed it again. Then Leora signed it again. And… we’ll, I’ll let you read the details. =)

There was a “heated” exchange in the register between Leora and myself….

Then we walked back down the established trail, which took us less than an hour. Nearly five hours to get up to the top, and less than an hour back down to the car. Not an easy hike, but—sheesh, it was more difficult than snowshoeing around Crater Lake! And it doesn’t help that Leora is FEARLESS! Completely FEARLESS! =)

Day 4: Avalanches!

2013-05-05T11:18:00.001-07:00

When I woke in the morning, I sat up and looked out over Crater Lake. The lake was a bit blurry, and I rubbed my eyes trying to get that sleep out of them, and looked at the lake again… and I was a little slow to realize that the blurriness of the lake wasn’t my eyes, but rather the lake itself. Ice had formed on it during the night! This was a genuine shock to me since I had read that Crater Lake had only frozen over twice in recorded history, and the last time was 1949. Deep bodies of water with a relatively small surface area tend not to freeze very easily.

Is that what it appears to be? The waters of Crater Lake… with ice forming on it?!

Ice formed all over Crater Lake, all the way out to the other size near Wizard Island,
even if there were pockets that hadn’t frozen over in places that reflected the
mountains behind it like a mirror.

But here I was, looking at Crater Lake frozen over! Now, to be fair, there were clearly spots that had not frozen over which reflected the mountains behind it perfectly as a mirror. And I very much doubted the ice was thick enough to actually walk on had one been so inclined. So somehow, I doubt this is going to count as a new “freeze over.”

The other reason I found this surprising was that according to my little weather forecast, the low overnight was supposed to be 36 degrees—not only the warmest low of our trip, but not even below freezing! And yet… the lake froze during the night but not the other two nights. Very surprising…

But it was a delight to see, regardless! Another shade of Crater Lake that few people ever get to see. I suspected what little ice there was on the lake likely wouldn’t last long and melt in the morning sun.

Loera and I packed up camp, and made a special point of checking our avalanche transceivers since we’d be going through three, yes, three particularly problematic avalanche zones according to our maps. We went through two small areas on our first day, and none on our second or third days. But today we would not only pass through three different avalanche zones, but they’d also be the longest avalanche zones.

The sign marking the avalanche bypass—which kind of looks like it’s already been hit by an avalanche! We ignored it, though, and continued directly through the avalanche zone. =)

Dutton Cliffs marks the first of the day’s avalanche zones.

And immediately upon leaving camp, we would hit the first avalanche zone by Dutton Cliffs where the Rim Road was blasted out of near-vertical cliff. Leora didn’t think that avalanches would be problematic today for several reasons—no new snow, it was early in the morning when avalanche dangers were at their least, and no unusually high temperatures after following some cold ones. But you can never be too careful, so Leora suggested that we should cross the avalanche paths separately so in the unlikely event that there was one, it wouldn’t sweep both of us off our feet at the same time.

Leora took the lead, and I held back to watch. When she reached a safe location, I followed. The towering cliffs on my right were intimidating, and evidence of rock slides were readily apparent. In fact, I could hear small ones happening even as I crossed the avalanche zone. They were rocks the size of a finger—hardly lethal projectiles. But I didn’t like what they represented—the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

But the biggest mistake I did was to look down the cliffs! Far down below, I could see an avalanche bypass, which was partially covered with an avalanche. Even the bypasses weren’t immune from avalanches! And in a couple of small sections of the road that were covered with heaps of snow, I felt that the biggest danger of all was slipping on the snow and sliding off the Rim Road down the cliffs on my left. So I ended up walking a lot slower than I thought I would through the avalanche zone, taking each step carefully, and making sure my MicroSpikes had a good, solid grip in the snow before taking the next step. At least I had the MicroSpikes, though. Leora didn’t even have those!

Leora passes under Dutton Cliffs, where the risk from falling rocks can be as great as the risk from avalanches!

Not exactly an avalanche, but falling snow could be a danger too!

This particular section probably scared me more than any other.
Although you can’t really see it in the photo, there’s a very
large drop-off on the right side, and the old avalanche I’m
crossing over did not make for even, steady footsteps!

Don’t worry, though—I do make is across safely! =)

I called this the Icicle Cliffs, which is essentially a frozen waterfall.

Looking down, you can see the edge of the Rim Road lined with stone.
Below that, you can see an old avalanche. Which, if you notice,
actually runs right over one of the avalanche bypasses!

The end of the avalanche zone—SAFE!

Yep, nothing to see here…. Keep moving! =)

We safely made it to the far side of the avalanche zone, though, and continued onward.

Crater Lake itself we couldn’t see, but as we neared a summit, I wanted to head up to it to see the view again. Leora gamely followed me, and we pushed to the top of the ridge where a view that seemed to stretch out for a hundred miles in every direction opened up… and there was absolutely no sign of Crater Lake.

I got a little ahead of Leora, and when Leora caught up, I asked, “Okay, so what happened to the lake? I was sure the lake would be right below us!”

She pointed down the ridge, to a bunch of trees in a valley. “It should be right there!” she exclaimed with equal surprise.

“Well,” I told her, “that’s one place where we definitely know it’s not located!” =)

We took a closer look at the terrain around us, and it looked like there could have been a rim for Crater Lake off to the right, perhaps a mile away, and perhaps the lake itself was hidden behind it. But it was a little unnerving to get up on that ridge and realize we had misplaced the entire lake!

We looked at our maps to get our bearings, and decided that that was definitely where Crater Lake must have been located, and that we were overlooking the valley that led up to Sun Notch.

What am I doing, you ask? I’m taking a photo! This is Leora’s photo taking a picture of me taking the next photo….

I just love these V-shaped ski tracks as skiers scramble to get up even the smallest of slopes. =)

Leora follows me up to what we believe is Crater Lake’s rim….

It certainly looks like a rim, don’t you think?

But this is what we actually saw from the “rim.” Where the heck did Crater Lake go?!

We continued onward… or rather, we backtracked back to the road that we left to head up to the top of the ridge where we now stood. We passed some old ski tracks along the way, also heading up to the ridge, and we were in a relatively flat area with few trees making the road difficult to find. Usually, the road was obvious since it left an obvious cut through the trees or it would largely follow the contours of the ground, but there were no trees and no contours to follow.

We walked to the far side of the clearing having never found any trace of the road. We might not be able to see the road in the clearing, but surely we’ll see it where it cuts through the trees on the edge of the clearing, so we followed our way around the parameter of the clearing looking for signs of a road.

While the clearing was mostly flat, that wasn’t the same as completely flat, and I stopped and studied the terrain carefully. If I were building a road, where would I put it through? And I saw an ever so slight dip between two barely discernable hills, and I thought, “That’s it. That’s gotta be it. Right through that gap. They wouldn’t build a road over those five-foot-tall hills on each side, they’d build a road right through that gap.”

So I started heading towards that point, encouraging Leora to follow me. Perhaps suggesting that I was more confident than I really felt about my gut instinct. =) If the road really wasn’t over there, though, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. We’d just have to continue the “perimeter sweep” that we had started and I was now short-cutting. The road had to exit this clearing somewhere!

We once again crossed over the old ski tracks we had seen earlier—ski tracks I dismissed as people who wanted to see the “crater rim” like we did—but in hindsight, I now realized that they were actually following the road.

And we saw a cut through the trees. We found the exit!

We’ve finally found the Rim Road again… if only we followed the ski tracks, we’d have found it a lot quicker than we otherwise did! Leora looks out in the direction of Sun Notch. We can’t actually see the lake from this viewpoint, but the rim of the caldera is quite obvious.

Rockslides were prevalent on this stretch of the Rim Road, even if avalanches were not!

Then it was a relatively quick march down to Sun Notch. This section didn’t show any danger from avalanches on our map, but the road was littered with countless road slides from the broken rocks above the road. Several times I heard rocks careening down the cliffs, and I’d look up for them to judge their size and location and if I needed to dodge them, but I didn’t. I veered over to the left side of the road, staying away from the cliffs on the right.

At Sun Notch, we got off the road again, climbing perhaps a 1/10th of a mile to Crater Lake’s rim with yet another view of Crater Lake. I also noticed a snow structure near the rim and headed towards it to check it out. It looks like someone camped here at some point, but it was abandoned now.

Between the sun and reflected snow, it was growing surprisingly warm, so we found a place to rest in the shade and eat lunch.

I veered towards this snow structure I saw on the rim.

Somebody certainly put some effort into creating this structure at Sun Notch!

Phantom Ship, as seen from Sun Notch.

Much of the ice in the lake has already melted, but there’s still quite a bit in places!

And after that quick break, we finally put on our snowshoes for the day. The snow was growing too mushy in the morning sun to keep walking without them. And almost immediately, we were in avalanche zone #2 for the day—the slopes of Applegate Peak. This zone didn’t scare me quite so much because I didn’t get that sense of vertigo from a steep cliff on the left side of the road and the slope on the right just above us wasn’t raining down rocks like that first zone was doing. And this zone was probably half as long as that first one. That first avalanche zone did seem like the worst of the bunch, so this one went quickly.

Leora heads towards the second avalanche zone of the day—the slopes under Applegate Peak.

More avalanche bypasses that we decide to ignore. =)

And a half hour after that, we reached the third avalanche zone by Vidae Ridge—even shorter and less scary than the second one. By this point, Leora and I were both eager to reach the end of the trail, which was now just a few miles away. Leora seemed to be having a tougher time of things today, though, getting tired a lot easier than before. The sun seemed warmer and reflected off the large expanses of snow without any tree cover, and it was taking its toll on me as well. Today was positively hot compared to previous days, even if the expected high was only 49 degrees. If felt a heck of a lot warmer than that! The highs for the previous two days were actually higher, but we had a wind chill factor the last two days helping us keep our cool. The wind today was absolutely breathless, though, and it felt so much warmer.

After a couple of short rest breaks, we finally reached the first sign of civilization we’d seen since the day we started our trek—and shortly thereafter arrived back at the park’s visitor center from where we started. Woo-who!

Civilization! We’re getting close to the end of our journey! =)

We left our packs at her car, and I took our permit inside to let the rangers know we made it back. I walked into the empty visitor center where two rangers were at the counter, and I exclaimed, “Good news! You can call off the search and rescue parties! We made it out alive!” as I waved the permit around in the air. =) They thanked me but didn’t seem to have much else to say, so I bought a few postcards, purchased some stamps at the post office next door, and made liberal use of the restrooms because, hey, flushing toilets! AWESOME! =)

Once all that was settled, we started the long drive back towards Portland…

Is that the end of this adventure? Not quite…. there’s a postscript I’ll be writing soon which explains the title of my first post about Leora—the woman who tried to kill me. =) She waited until after we were safe and sound and off Crater Lake before she tried pulling that stunt. ;o)

We can see the administration building now! Which is right next to the visitor center and the end of our hike!

Our first plowed road since leaving the road plows behind us on our first day.

Back at the Visitor Center, where the snow doesn’t
look like it’s melted at all since we left three days earlier!

Day 3: The Day of Detours

2013-05-04T10:25:00.001-07:00

We woke up, once again, to a beautiful morning. Both Leora and I slept a lot better than that first night on the rim where we had been exposed to such strong wind gusts, but we both stayed tucked into our sleeping bags waiting for the sunlight to reach over the trees and actively start warming us.

That caterpillar thing next to the pack is Leora trying to stay warm. =)

Leora is trying to squish out the air from her air matress. I saw her doing this and
quickly said, “Don’t move! I need a photo of this!” So she held this position for a
minute or two for me to get this photo. =)

I started the day again with my MicroSpikes while Leora simply went without any traction devices for her feet at all. I didn’t use the MicroSpikes for very long, though—the air definitely seemed a lot warmer this afternoon and the snow started to soften a lot earlier in the morning than it did the day before. At least on those stretches that had snow. For the first part of the morning, there were still some relatively large sections that were completely free of snow.

Installing the MicroSpikes on my feet again this morning.

The black bag I’m carrying contains my snowshoes. They’re kind of a hassle to carry when they weren’t in use, but it would have been even more of a hassle to walk around with them on when it wasn’t necessary! I took off my MicroSpikes since there wasn’t even snow on this section, which is what is that red thing dangling from my hand.

Someone spent a little effort creating this little snow shelter along the road!

Cracks in the Rim Road! These roads certainly do take a beating every year!

I’m a little amazed that pieces of the Rim Road can be seen through the
snow like this, and several feet away there are snow drifts 10+ feet in height.
The Rim Road might be relatively flat, but you couldn’t always say that
about the path we followed!

Love the cornices…

View from Skell Head with Mount Thielsen in the background. (That’s the
sharp, pointy mountain the right. I’m not sure what the one on the left is.)

I love the image on this sign about the legends Native Americans have
about Crater Lake. =)

Leora trekking along the Rim Road.

Mini-avalanches!

Mount Scott rises before us…

Leora with Mount Thielsen as a backdrop.

As we worked our way onto the east side of Crater Lake, the snow thickened once again and we lost sight of the Rim Road more-or-less for good. Late in the morning, we reached a point where three roads intersected, which we identified because one, small section of it had melted free of the snowpack. One small island oasis in a sea of snow. The three roads didn’t intersect at one point either—they intersected at three points, forming a triangle in the middle. Two of the directions were the Rim Road north and the Rim Road south. The third road veered westward to a viewpoint of Crater Lake.

Our island oasis from the snow!

Leora makes her way up Cloudcap Mountain. That’s Scott Mountain in the background,
and you can see our little “island oasis” between Leora and Mount Scott.

Looking at our maps, though, it didn’t make any sense. Our sense of direction was perfect—it was a clear day and Mount Scott (the highest point in the park) loomed over us like an overbearing parent which made it really easy orient our map. Except it had the road facing the wrong the way. We scratched our heads over this oddity. It wasn’t really all that important, all things considered, and Leora didn’t worry too much about it, but it bothered me how this tiny section of road that we could see seemed to be facing in an entirely incorrect direction. Our maps had been pretty accurate thus far, and it seemed wildly out of character for it to off by so much. It was tempting to write off the anomaly as being in a section so small that the map couldn’t accurately portray it, but it nagged at me.

I kept looking at the map, confused, when it finally clicked—we weren’t where we thought we were! The roads intersected at three different points, and we assumed we were at the first intersection of roads that we would have hit by following the Rim Road. But we weren’t at that intersection. No… We accidentally cut off one of the Rim Road’s switchbacks and were at the one intersection that we hadn’t expected to pass over at all! As soon as I figured that out, everything on the map lined up perfectly.

The mistake was pretty minor—it put us perhaps 50 yards from where we thought we were. Certainly not more than 100 yards away. We might not have realized where we were, but that’s not to say we were lost either! =) But I do get a little uneasy when things on the map don’t match up with the terrain that I’m looking at, so I was relieved to finally figure out the discrepancy. =)

With that figured out, it was time to do a little sightseeing. Leora wanted to try to summit Mount Scott, which I was all in favor of doing. By this point, I already decided that I wanted to add Crater Lake to the list of available hikes in http://www.Walking4Fun.com, but it was such a short hike, I would have been willing to take just about any detour in order to lengthen the walk! As a result, I also wanted to follow the third road out to the viewpoint of Crater Lake. Since we were at that intersection of roads, that’s where we headed first. We left our packs behind on the dry asphalt since we’d be going out and back—no sense carrying our heavy packs around with us!

“Leora,” I said, “I have this idea for a photo… What if I pretended to ski using my snowshoes? What if pretended to be a really awesome skier that does jumps and backflips? Except I’ll do them on snowshoes…?” =)

Panoramic view from Cloudcap Mountain that I stitched together from three different photos.

We didn’t get far, though, before we turned a corner and see a towering wall of snow ahead. I’m not exactly an expert on avalanche safety, but the path the road followed seemed rather dangerous for us to follow. That did not mean we gave up, though. Nope. It looked like we could follow the ridge up to Cloudtop mountain and go around the particularly steep and dangerous-looking snow, so that’s what we did.

As it turned out, this little detour was perhaps my favorite section of trail of the entire hike. We weren’t following other people’s tracks anymore. We weren’t even following a well-graded road. And we weren’t carrying our heavy packs! We did spy some ski tracks along the way, but we didn’t necessarily follow them either. It probably took us a half hour or so before we reached the summit of Cloudcap with incredible views overlooking the whole of Crater Lake. Wow!

We took photos—a heck of a lot of photos—and I hoped that my camera’s batteries wouldn’t choose to die at this moment since my spare batteries were still in my pack that we left behind. =) We could see the overlook for Crater Lake, the end of the road we initially wanted to follow ahead, but it seemed pointless to continue on to it—we were already at the top of the world with the best overlook of all at the summit of Cloudcap. And we both still wanted to climb up Mount Scott as well, so we turned around here and headed back.

Back at our island oasis, I lay down and rest. But being too lazy
to take off my snowshoes, I just left them in the snow. =)

After a quick lunch break with our packs, I wanted to carry our packs to the trailhead for Mount Scott, but Leora wanted to leave them at their current position since they would be sitting on a dry, snow-free road. I didn’t put up much of a fuss, though—it was a good place to leave our packs, and it’s not like the trailhead was miles away. It was probably 100 yards away at best. Not exactly a huge distance we’d have to backtrack. So once again, we left our packs behind and continued on to the Mount Scott Trailhead.

We found the trailhead easily enough. Although the signage for the trail was long gone (it appears that the park service removes all road signs at the end of the summer season so the snow pack doesn’t damage them during the winter), we could see the posts that would have normally marked the trailhead. Then we followed a ridge of small cornices towards Mount Scott. We knew the trail went in this direction from our maps, but we could find absolutely no trace of the trail itself.

The park service seems to remove all road signs during the winter months. You can clearly see that a sign used to be here, but we can only imagine what it says! In this case, I imagine it says, “Mount Scott Trailhead.” =)

Following a ridge of cornices to Mount Scott.

We followed the ridge into some thick trees, still looking for a sign of the trail, but we saw nothing. We knew approximately where the trail would go and could make some reasonable educated guesses about the trail, but the hillside was growing ever steeper and more difficult to navigate. The trail should move towards a south-facing slope which we hoped would be largely clear of snow and allow up to get to the top not unlike our hike down on the Cleetwood Cove Trail the day before, but the snow did not seem to thin at all and we finally bagged the idea. Too steep and too much snow. We actually weren’t concerned about avalanches here—in such a thick group of trees, it was obviously that the slope wasn’t particularly prone to avalanches. Trees do help keep the snow in place! But we were counting on the trail being mostly snow-free and easy to follow, and this was clearly not happening.

Less than an hour after we left our packs, we were reunited once again with them. And this time, we would have to carry them. No more side trips…

Another panoramic photos that I stitched together from multiple photos.
This time, near the Pumice Castle Overlook.

First good view of Phantom Ship—the name of that little island in the lake.
(This was not taken from where we camped, though!)

Leora checks our position on a map.

Sometimes, rock slides were of a greater concern and avalanches!

The Rim Road led us to a few more amazing overlooks of Crater Lake, then turned away from the lake a bit before returning at the Phantom Ship Overlook. Leora remembered there being a clear patch of road, free from snow, when she traveled around the lake the month before, so we continued just past the overlook to where the Dutton Cliffs avalanche bypass started and found… nothing. Just lots and lots of snow. No bare patch of ground anywhere.

We turned back and set up camp at the Phantom Ship Overlook. Leora still isn’t sure what happened to the bare patch of ground that she remembers seeing, but it certainly wasn’t anywhere in view around these parts. I didn’t mind camping our third night on the rim of Crater Lake again. =) This time, we were even in the trees which would largely block my view of the stars during the night, but I could still see the lake from camp. Leora also wanted to stop before Dutton Cliffs—a notorious avalanche zone—so we could do that section in the morning when the chances of avalanches were less. Not that she was particularly worried to begin with—there had been absolutely no new snow for at least three days, and temperatures hadn’t been usually warm after being unusually cold. But even though there was no reason to believe there was a high avalanche danger, there’s no reason not to stack the deck in one’s favor either! =)

So we set up camp at the Phantom Ship Overlook. Right in the parking lot where, in the summer months, the lot would probably have been packed bumper-to-bumper with cars. It felt like we had the whole lake to ourselves at this time, though!

The one dry spot to sit down was the edge of the parking lot, on a rock wall built to keep people and cars from driving over the edge and into the lake. It stuck up just high enough to be out of the snow, so I sat down on the stone wall and made myself comfortable. I wouldn’t sleep on this wall—heaven forbid, it would have been a very miserable night indeed if I tried to roll over in the middle of the night and went over the cliff into Crater Lake! No, I’d have to sleep on the snow in the parking lot, but at least I could sit on the rock wall now where it was dry, make dinner, and read my book.

And that’s what I did. Near sunset, I threw out a groundsheet, blew up my Thermarest, and setup camp in the parking lot for the night. Another beautiful campsite! =)

View from the Phantom Ship Overlook…. and our campsite for the night. =)

Leora likes to raise awareness and money for the Cure JM Foundation.

My campsite in the Phantom Ship Overlook parking lot. =)

Sunset from Phantom Ship Overlook.

A short video of our camp at the Phantom Ship Overlook

Day 2: The North Side of Crater Lake

2013-05-02T11:47:00.001-07:00

Sunrise over Crater Lake.

The wind picked up during the night, but in hindsight, that shouldn’t have been a big surprise. The weather forecast predicted “Clear, with a low around 25. Breezy, with an east wind 16 to 23 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph.” I know that prediction with such precision because the ranger at the visitor center gave us their sheet with the week’s weather predictions and I saved it. =)

My campsite in the morning.

I figured Leora would probably be protected from the worst of it in the little gulch she set up camp in, but the small berms around my campsite seemed to do absolutely nothing to break the wind and I felt every gust blowing against my sleeping bag. I stayed warm, wrapped in my fleece and in my warm sleeping bag, but I could sense that I was reaching my limits. If the temperature dropped much more, I’d have been on the wrong side of uncomfortably cold. The temperature wasn’t the problem, though—it was the wind chill that was causing problems!

Sunrise at Crater Lake. Sorry you can’t hear me very well. Apparently, the wind was talking louder than I was! But I didn’t really have much to say anyhow. =)

I couldn’t see Leora’s tent down in the gully, but I could see the tree she was next to shaking violently with every wind gust and wondered how she was doing. She was worried about being too exposed and too cold, and I’d hate to be responsible for her having a miserable night in the woods.

The stars were absolutely beautiful, although a nearly full moon blotted out all but the brightest stars. They must have also blotted out the meteor shower that peaked overnight, because I didn’t see any shooting stars until just before sunrise when the moon was just about to set and the sun just about to rise.

For the frozen snow, I preferred to use MicroSpikes rather than my snowshoes. For those who are fascinated by my use of regular, cheap walking shoes through just about every type of terrain imaginable, I did “upgrade” to actual boots for this hike. Both to help keep my feet warm and dry, and because snow can really rip up regular shoes at a ferocious rate!

And when the sun did come up, I didn’t immediately rise with it. It was COLD outside of my sleeping bag! One good thing about being on an exposed location, however, was that some of the morning’s first sunlight washed over me which helped considerably. =)

I just loved the view of Mount Thielsen from Crater Lake!

Eventually I heard Leora stirring in her tent—she probably suffered the same problem I did. Not wanting to leave the protective warmth of the sleeping bag, but having to leave it in order to pee. =) She told me that she barely slept at all last night because of the wind—a miserable night all around for her. I felt a bit bad about this, but there wasn’t much I could do about that at that point.

We ate breakfast and headed off. This early in the morning, the snow was frozen solid, so we didn’t put our snowshoes on. We walked with the snowshoes on our packs. Actually, mine were in a bag that I carried separately around my neck and shoulders. I also carried MicroSpikes, however, and did put those on my feet. These were the same MicroSpikes I used in the High Sierras on my PCT thru-hike, and they’re absolutely wonderful when used on frozen snow. Leora didn’t use any special gear at all, though—just her normal hiking shoes.

Leora takes in the views of Crater Lake with Mount Scott in the background.

We walked like this for an hour or two before the snow started to soften and our feet started sinking in with each step, which point we stopped to put on our snowshoes. I quickly had to stop again to add some moleskin to the back of one of my feet where it was rubbing me raw. For a snowshoeing trip, I figured something a bit more sturdy and warm than my usual walking shoes would be in order, so I wore “hiking boots” that weren’t all that comfortable. Between it and my snowshoes, they were really ripping up the back of one of my feet.

A short while after that, I had to stop again and saw that the moleskin had completely shifted to be under my foot, so I used some athletic tape from Leora to tape the moleskin in place where it was needed which solved that problem for good. Or at least for the rest of the day. =)

I do a little first aid on the back of my foot.

As we turned around the north side of the lake, the snow levels fell considerably. These slopes faced southward, exposed to the sun, and increasingly large chunks of the Rim Road were fully exposed. At one point, for about a quarter of a mile, I even took off my snowshoes and just walked on the bare asphalt.

Holding Wizard Island in the palm of my hand….

I take a rest at a pullout built for cars. =)

Then we reached the parking area for the Cleetwood Cove Trail. It was obviously a parking lot—a huge, empty clearing filled with snow, unnaturally rectangular in shape, and bathrooms surrounded to nearly to tops of their doors in snow. Which meant that there was a trail down to the lake’s surface on the other side of the road…. That was not obvious at first—a trail is much smaller and less noticeable than a giant parking lot. =) But we found the trail quickly enough and decided to head down it. Although the parking lot was filled with several feet of snow, the south-facing Cleetwood Cove Trail was almost completely bare of it. We left our packs at the top of the trail—no reason to carry them all the way down the steep trail just to carry them all the way back up again! And there was obviously nobody around to steal the packs in any case—except pine martens and such.

Leora soaks in the views!

The Cleetwood Cove Trail was a mess. The fact that the winter had treated it quite harshly was plain to see—branches and twigs littered the trail like a tornado had blown through. A large tree had fallen across it, and signs of multiple rock slides of various sizes littered the trail. Leora and I cleared the trail of much of the smaller debris, but it was still going to need a lot more work before they opened the trail to summer visitors! The rock slides were a reminder that we probably shouldn’t hang around the steep, crumbling cliffs for very long!

Parking lot for the Cleetwood Cove Trail. That’s the restroom buried in snow!

At the bottom, we reached the waters of Crater Lake. We drank some of the water—how can you not? And we admired the deep blue waters of the lake, amazingly clear water. Without a single person around as far as the eye could see. It was wonderful, and only then did it occur to us that this would have been a wonderful place to camp. No snow on the ground, plenty of fresh water available that didn’t require the melting of snow, and well protected from the blustery winds found along the rim. There was even a composting toilet here which, I checked—the door for one of them was unlocked and stuffed with a giant roll of toilet paper. The proper way to dispose of human waste, the ranger at the visitor center told us, was simply just to bury it in the snow. (Used toilet paper, however, should be burned or carried out. That should not be buried in the snow!)

You can see the boat dock near the bottom center of this photo.

It might have been a bit early in the day to quit and set up camp, but wow—what a wonderful place to camp! Except in our thoughtless haste to lighten our loads, we both left our packs at the top of the rim. Shoot.

Tree on the trail! Tree on the trail!

Rockslide on the trail!

Retaining walls on the trail!

After taking a boat-load of photos, we eventually headed back up the trail again and reclaimed our possessions. We took a break at one of the benches near the top to snack and rest, then put on our snowshoes again and headed off in search of our second campsite.

If only we carried oars… maybe we could have paddled out on the lake! =) We think the one boat that’s on the ground was originally tied up like the other one but fell down during the winter at some point.

The boat dock.

Solar-powered composting toilets—LOVE IT! =)

Shadow games….

The beautiful waters of Crater Lake!

On a lark, I threw a rock into the water. I’ve never seen ripples flow out so far from their source before! They probably went out at least a quarter of a mile before I couldn’t see them rippling anymore….

The Rim Road, even when it was melted of snow, was quite a wreck—not unlike the Cleetwood Cove Trail. Dirt, rocks, and other debris littered the trail, and large cracks crisscrossed the road all over the place. The edges of the road also suffered badly from erosion. The snowplows might get through this section without much snow quickly, but there was still a lot of work left to do on the road before it was opened again for cars!

The Rim Road was in rough shape—even in the spots where the snow has already melted!

Yep, the Rim Road was a real mess…

I got tired of walking, so I started floating over Crater Lake instead. Oh, wait, I’m not supposed to talk about that. No, I sat down on a guard rail and stuck my feet out when I took this photo. Yeah, that’s what happened. =)

I take a nap on Crater Lake’s rim. =)

Leora stopped at viewpoint of Crater Lake, a pullout usually meant for cars, and suggested we camp there for the night. A small, stone wall that marked the edge of the pullout—so cars didn’t plunge into Crater Lake—provided a small wind break, although the wind wasn’t bad at all at this particular point to begin with. So that’s what we did, once again setting up camp right on the crater’s rim. We didn’t have to camp on the snow this time either! But we had plenty of snow surrounding the parking area to melt for water.

The predicted weather tonight wouldn’t be quite as harsh as predicted for the night before. My forecast read, “Clear, with a low around 29. East northeast wind 9 to 17 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph.” Four degrees warmer with wind gusts 9 mph lower. I’d take that. *nodding* =)

Hamburger Helper for dinner tonight!

Camping at the roadside pullout. (My camp is on the right, Leora’s is the one on the left.)

Sunset over Crater Lake

Snowshoeing Crater Lake Without Snowshoes!

2013-05-01T12:06:00.001-07:00

Leora and I woke up relatively late in the morning—no reason to rush off since she said that we couldn’t get our permits until 10:00 in the morning anyhow. But we arrived at the park’s visitor at around 9:30 in the morning and it turned out to already be open. Apparently, their hours had changed since Leora skied around Crater Lake the month before. But it also meant we didn’t have to wait for them to open either. =)

The front door of the visitor center was blocked by a giant pile of snow—I could barely see the top of the front door, but signs directed us around to the side of the building where it said there was a snow tunnel into the building. We went through the snow tunnel. (That’s a photo of the visitor center on the right.)

They issued us our permits and explained the backcountry rules we would have to follow. Bears, they told us, would not be a concern since they should all still be hibernating, but we should sleep with our food since there are smaller animals that are still active such as pine martens and I don’t remember what all else. =) I was also surprised that they allowed campfires pretty much anywhere as long as we used already downed wood. Given how cold it was supposed to be at night, I figured that might be useful. Of course, the thick layer of snow might make finding downed wood difficult! Obviously, wildfires weren’t a huge concern at this time of year, but I was still somewhat surprised that the park service even allowed campfires at all. Seemed like the type of thing that they would discourage.

They also showed up a map of the trail around Crater Lake and where the avalanche zones were along with bypasses for some of them. Not all of the avalanche zones had bypasses, though…. This wasn’t new for Leora, but it’s the first time I had a good look at where we should be most worried about avalanches!

The ranger took us outside to show where we should park the car—they wanted to make sure it stayed out of the way of snow plows if that became necessary.

Then we were off! Well, the ranger went off, back to the visitor center. Leora moved the car to where it would stay while we made our epic journey around the mountain. She also pulled out a couple of avalanche transceivers she had and gave me a quick tutorial on their use. We only planned to carry one shovel between the two of us, which she was planning to carry, but she told me if that she was caught in an avalanche that I could also dig her out with a snowshoe. Perhaps not an ideal shoveling instrument, but certainly better than nothing!

Then we packed up all of our gear. I sorted out most of my gear back at the campsite before we even arrived here so that didn’t take long. I carried my snowshoes across the parking lot until we reached the Raven Trail trailhead. Leora said we could take the one-and-a-half mile Raven Trail to the rim, or follow the plowed road three miles to the top. The fact that the Raven Trail was half the distance of the road walk had absolutely nothing to do with my preferring the Raven Trail—I just didn’t want to road walk! I came out here to snowshoe!

Stupid tourists….

We put on our snowshoes and took our first steps around the mountain. Almost immediately, we passed the first avalanche zone—a zone that even cars on the Rim Road were not immune from passing. We followed blue diamonds that marked the trail, zig-zagging our way up to the rim. Near the top, we lost track of the blue diamonds, but Leora didn’t care—she knew we were near the top and charged up the steepest route she could find to the rim. One four or five foot section of it was so steep, I had a lot of trouble getting up it and wound up digging shoe holds in the snow large enough to fit my snowshoes while seriously straining the muscles in my upper thighs. But eventually I made it to the top, exhausted, and got my first view of the deep blue waters of Crater Lake.

Following the blue diamonds on the Raven Trail to Rim Village.

We took off our snowshoes again by the lodge—we were back on the plowed road again, after having traveled barely a mile on the snow.

We stopped for a quick lunch break near the lodge, overlooking the lake, took loads of photos, then continued following the plowed road clockwise around Crater Lake. During the winter, the road is only plowed up to Rim Village—the Rim Road around the lake isn’t plowed for most of the year. However, they did recently start plowing the road to get it open in time for summer—it takes park personnel a couple of months to plow and open the Rim Road, so they start plowing in April. The ranger told us that so far, only the first three miles have been plowed, but even those still weren’t open to vehicular traffic.

Wizard Island, in Crater Lake, as seen from Rim Village.

So we walked through the “road closed” sign and continued our snowshoeing trip with the snowshoes on our backs. It was kind of neat walking through the plowed section—actually being able to see exactly how deep the snow was on areas along the road. Some sections appeared to just be a few feet deep, but other areas had us between two towering mountains of snow that were twenty feet high! And Crater Lake was absolutely magical, with Wizard Island covered in a blanket of snow.

The building on the left has restrooms at Rim Village, but they added these snow tunnel extensions to make sure people could still get to them through all the snow. =) Leora said when she was here last month, the snow completely covered the tops of these tunnels and they thought the doors were pit toilets not realizing that they opened to tunnels that actually led to real restrooms. =)

While the rim road was still closed to vehicular traffic, quite a few people made use of the snow-free road to walk and bicycle along the cleared section.

The Rim Road was closed to vehicular traffic, but they had already started plowing it to prepare it for the summer crowds.

Some of the information signs about the park were difficult to read because of the snow, such as this sign about Discovery Point.

There was one snow plow parked on the side of the road, unloved and unused.
So I figured out a way to make use of it—as a warning to others to
watch out for snow plows! =)

Leora shows just how deep the snow level was at places. This was taken in late April—AND it’s considered a “low snow” year!

A break in the snow!

And then we reached a parked car near a turn in the road and from behind the turn, we saw a rainbow of snow shooting into the air. I turned to Leora, “I can’t be 100% certain, but I think we’ve reached the snow plow and the end of our snow-free walk.”
Leora agreed, and suggested that it was probably safe for us to proceed at least as far as the truck. “They wouldn’t bury their own vehicle in snow!” That seemed sensible enough, and we stopped to rest at their truck.

I can’t be 100% certain, but I’m feeling pretty confident that there’s a snow plow around this corner!

The snow plow stands down for us to pass. Look at the chains on those tires!
That’s gotta be a real pain-in-the-you-know-what to chain up! Those tires are
probably five feet tall!

The guy running the snow plow stopped and appeared to be getting out of his machine—probably to talk to us, we assumed, although I was ready for a short break anyhow. Another guy was running a bulldozer ahead, who seemed to push snow from the top of the snow banks down a ramp to where the snow plow could get at it. A third guy ran another bulldozer even further ahead—I’m not entirely sure what he was doing, though. Perhaps his job was to actually find the trail under all that snow. Mark it and delineate its extents. We were located right on the side of a steep cliff and it would not be difficult at all to imagine one of those giant machines accidentally going over the side if they weren’t careful. I once read that they’ve built transceivers into the road so these crews could locate the trail under the snow each year. With modern GPS technology, perhaps those wouldn’t be needed anymore, but it still looked like a sketchy place for these people to be working.

The snow plow fellow told us that they had managed to clear 0.3 miles of the road the day before, and so far today had already cleared 0.2 miles. It was already well into the afternoon, and they hadn’t even cleared a quarter mile of road? This was not a fast process… but that shouldn’t have been a surprise. I knew it took them a good two or three months to get this road open. But I still found it surprising how slow going it really was for the crew.

The three guys running the heavy machinery stood down while we hiked by, climbing up the ramp they had built into the snow. When we reached the top of the ramp and walked into the fresh snow, we immediately started postholing a bit. It was just a few inches deep—not that big of deal, but there was a wonderful viewpoint just probably a tenth of a mile down the trail and I didn’t feel like putting on my snowshoes just to take them off and rest five minutes later. So I kept walking without them, but that only lasted a minute or two until I grew so frustrated walking through the snow I had to stop and put the snowshoes back on. Then we walked for another five or ten minutes to the wonderful viewpoint just at the Watchman Overlook where we stopped for an “official” rest break.

Leora heads up the snow ramp that the snow-clearing crews have created.

So far, we spent more time hiking without our snowshoes on than with our snowshoes on—although now that we were beyond the plowed roads, that should change soon!

We ate snacks, chatted, and admired the views. Eventually, we put the snowshoes back on and continued our journey. We followed the road—not that we could see the road most of the time, but you could “sense” where it went—generally following the contours of the land and through suspiciously clear cuts through otherwise dense trees. The Rim Road wasn’t marked like the Raven Trail was, but we had no trouble figuring out where it went. As the ranger at the visitor center told us, “Just keep Crater Lake on your right and you can’t go wrong.”

This restroom at Watchman Overlook wasn’t really accessible, but I suppose if you wanted a snow-free place to stop and rest, you could set up “camp” on top of it easily enough! =)

View from Watchman Overlook.

This is the same snow plow from the other side of the valley. I find it a little incredible that the snow plow itself is hidden behind the giant wall of snow! Although you can see one of the bulldozers at the top of the snow ramp.

I pose with Mount Thielsen in the background.

Leora follows the Rim Road around the Diamond Lake Overlook. (Not that you can actually see Diamond Lake in this photo, but it was visible off to the left.)

Shadow games I like to play. =)

Near the North Junction—where cars could enter the park from the north entrance during the summer months—we came out to another stunning view of Crater Lake. We also spotted two skiers ahead, but we never got so close to them as to actually talk with them. We didn’t know it then, but they would be the last human beings we’d see until we arrived back at the visitor center three days later.

At this point, it was getting pretty late in the afternoon, and I begged Leora to crash here for the night. “The views!” I said, waving around, “Look at these views!” She was skeptical of the location, thinking it was too exposed. Indeed, it was exposed, but “look at the views!” I exclaimed. =) She found a nook in the snow that she felt was acceptable to set up camp, but I took a more exposed position above the lake for the better views.

Closing in on the North Junction.

View of Wizard Island from the North Junction.

I also had another reason I wanted to camp in an exposed location—the Lyrid meteor shower would peak tonight. I wanted a better view of the meteor shower, although a nearly full moon would blot out all but the brightest shooting stars.

I was a bit nervous about camping here as well. There was absolutely no snow-free ground around these parts. None, zip, nada. I’d never actually camped ON snow before. Oh, I hiked through it. I grew absolutely sick of hiking through it during my PCT hike a few years earlier. But we always descended low enough to camp on bare ground at the end of the day. This time, I had to actually camp on snow, and I wasn’t really sure how that would work.

So the first thing I did was walk around where I wanted to camp, stamping down the snow. I figured hard-packed snow would probably be better for camping on than fluffy snow that I’d sink into during the night. So I walked around in circles packing the snow down as best I could. Then I borrowed the shovel Leora carried and built a small berm around it. The location was very exposed to the already strong winds blowing around, and I figured a small berm to break the wind wouldn’t be a bad idea. Then I threw down a groundsheet (a waterproof one, since I figured I’d probably melt snow under it during the night). And I blew up my Thermarest—something I’ve never carried on a backpacking trip before! Not only would it help insulate me from the snow, but it would help insulate the snow from me. I didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night sinking into a deep snow hole that my body heat had created. =)

I cooked dinner on my soda can stove—Leora would have been more than happy to share her MSR Whisperlight stove with me, but I wanted to get some first-hand experience in how a soda can stove performs in such arctic conditions.

The biggest problem it suffered, which I kind of suspected would happen, was that the stove started sinking into the snow after I lit it! The stove does get hot when it’s lit, and by the time the fuel ran out, the top of the stove was nearly level with the snow level. I also threw in snow instead of water to cook my meal, and by the time the fuel burned out, the snow had merely melted. My food wasn’t warm or even hydrated at all.

I did carry a windscreen I made out of aluminum foil, but I didn’t really need it for wind. Leora and I built a “kitchen” in the snow, carving out a protected area from the snow near her tent. I wondered if putting that under the stove would help prevent it from sinking into the snow, so I tried that, putting the stove on top of my windscreen, filling the stove with fuel, and lighting it again. This time, the stove stayed above the snow—I was rather pleased that such a simple fix fixed that problem. And my dinner turned out just great. =)

So I wouldn’t have to melt so much snow for water, I tried to avoid using water whenever possible—which included when it was time to clean up my dinner mess. Usually I use water to clean my pot and spoon, but snow can be quite abrasive, so I filled my pot with snow that I swished around and did all of my cleanup with snow. Worked great! I felt like I was getting the hang of this snow-camping business. =)

Then we headed off to sleep…

Leora sets up camp in a small gully.

Dinner is in the oven! No, I didn’t use “yellow snow”—that yellow color is part of my dinner which I’ve mixed in with the snow.

My campsite for the night—with Mount Thielsen in the background.

Meet Leora—the woman who tried to kill me!

2013-04-30T11:09:00.001-07:00

I used to work with Leora back in my Intel days, and last month, I read about her skiing trip around Crater Lake on her Leora Lore blog. I was a little jealous because I’ve always thought it would be so incredible to snowshoe around Crater Lake, and I wrote her an email saying as much. I’ve never done it myself mostly because I feared that I wouldn’t know enough about what I was doing. Could I survive in the outdoors in weather colder than anything I ever experienced before? Could I recognize avalanche dangers so I didn’t become a statistic? Could I actually set up camp on snow-covered ground and live to tell the tale? I’ve done a lot of hiking in my day, and I’ve even had a lot of practice hiking through snow when I traveled through the High Sierras on my Pacific Crest Trail hike, but this was a whole new level of skill sets that I wasn’t sure I could do on my own. So I never really pursued my idea to snowshoe around Crater Lake.

But then Leora replied saying, “Okay, let’s do it. When is good for you?” (Okay, that may not be an exact quote, but you get the point.)

I was stunned—I certainly hadn’t expected an offer to take me around Crater Lake! I had so many things I was working on and wanted to get done and my knee-jerk reaction was to push it off—I don’t have time for that! But then again, this was Crater Lake we were talking about! Something I’ve dreamed of doing for years! When would another opportunity like this happen? So obviously, of course I had to go!

We selected some dates, and I started doing a bit of research. I learned, for instance, that the average high temperature at Crater Lake in April was 43 F (6 C), and the average low temperature was 23 F (-5 C). That wasn’t so bad at all…. I certainly learned to survive in temperatures that cold when I did the High Sierras a few years back. The average snowfall in April was 20 inches (114 cm), and the average snow depth was 112 inches (284 cm). The numbers might even be more in my favorite—we’d be doing our trek closer to the end of the month than the beginning of it!

My campsite outside of Crater Lake National Park. One thing you might notice for people who are
familiar with the gear I usually carry—there’s a Thermarest in this photo. I’ve never carried a Therarest
on any of my thru-hikes, but since I knew I’d be camping IN snow, I figured it was finally time to buy one.
It was still a relatively small, light-weight “summer” Thermarest and Leora didn’t think it would be
enough for me, but I was going to make it work! I didn’t really need to use the Thermarest on
this ground (no snow!), but I figured since I had it, I may as well use it…. *shrug*
The black bag on the left has my snowshoes in it—another piece of gear that nobody would
likely recognize!

Crater Lake is a jewel of a lake, and it gets about half a million visitors per year. Practically all of them visit during the summer months, however, and all of the lake’s viewpoints can be packed with tourists and noisy cars. Almost nobody, however, travels around the lake when the Rim Road is closed. According to their little newsletter, a mere 70 people skied around the lake last winter, and only 20 people snowshoers made the trek. Less than 100 people in the world do this trip every year! Even the PCT gets more action than that!

Which is how, about a week ago, I took a train from Seattle to Portland where Leora picked me up and we immediately started driving down to Crater Lake.

The train trip was uneventful, but Leora noticed a gravel road on her map and decided to use it as a shortcut. For the most part, that was uneventful—except one small section where her small, low-clearance, 2WD vehicle got stuck in the snow. Not a big deal, all things considered, since Leora brought shovels for our winter camping expedition. Nothing a little sweat couldn’t dig us out of! But in hindsight, the shortcut wasn’t as short as it otherwise could have been. =)

We set up camp off to the side of the shortcut for the night, which we figured was about a half hour drive away from the park’s headquarters. We planned to get an early start on the trail the next day!

As for the “woman to tried to kill me” part of this post, I’m getting a little ahead of the story. I’ll get to that in another post, though… =)

I’m reading my Kindle, nice and warm in my sleeping bag. =)

Getting stuck in the snow!

Digging out from the snow!

Getting out from the snow!

The Dry Tortugas

2013-03-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

Our boat, as seen through a "window" in Fort Jefferson.

Who's calling me dry?!

So this trip to the Florida Keys is a working trip for me. I gotta do a lot of walking--most of my waking hours, in fact, is walking for www.Walking4Fun.com. However, to get Amanda to go and shuttle me to and from the trail each day, I needed to bribe her. Not only is this a vacation for her, but it was a birthday vacation. I once brought her to Alabama for her birthday. Not only did it not go well, but she reminds me of that horror every birthday.

So in case a visit to the Florida Keys wasn't enough to entice Amanda to the Florida Keys, I dangled a trip to the Dry Tortugas in front of her--a place she's always wanted to visit but never managed to do so. It's a little bit inaccessible--a tiny cluster of islands 70 miles from Key West in the middle of nowhere. It served as a fort, fueling station, and a prison over the years. The Alcatraz of the 1800s. (Several of the "Lincoln conspirators" served time there.) Now, it's a national park and bird sanctuary.

I took a day off from my walking, and we booked a boat on the Yankee Clipper II and headed off to the Dry Tortugas. The guy at the check-in station tried to talk us out of it--rough seas and choppy waters, he told us. But we woke up too early and drove too far to back out at the last minute. Nope, we were going--hell or high water.

Fort Jefferson, still standing proud more than a hundred
years after it was abandoned!

The trip out was rough, but I laid down and tried to nap. We woke up at 5:00 in the morning to make the trip and I needed my beauty sleep! So I tried to sleep through it, but I have to admit the severe rocking of the ship made that difficult. Amanda took a tour of the boat and reported back that "90% of the people on the top deck were throwing up." Oh, joy. Fortunately, both Amanda and myself seemed immune from the sea sickness.

Eventually, we reached the Dry Tortugas and immediately got off the boat and started exploring. For an 1800s fort that's been abandoned for over a hundred years, it's in remarkably good condition.

Very cool. But it's a tiny little island and after an hour or two, we pretty much saw everything there was to see.

Then we boarded again and headed back to Key West. It wasn't quite as rough on the way back, but not by much. Once again, I went back to sleep. Life was good....

You won't see any of these photos on www.walking4fun.com--the Dry Tortugas are NOT walking distance from the rest of the Florida Keys that I'll be walking! This was my one non-working day. But not to worry--I've already taken over 2,000 photos for the "Florida Keys Trail," and I'm still not even done! You'll barely notice that this side trip to the Dry Tortugas is missing from the hike. =)


I have absolutely no idea what kind of spider this is, but he seemed right at home at Fort Jefferson.


Lighthouse at Fort Jefferson.


This is a chug--one of the boats used by Cubans to escape to the United States.

This building was used to store explosives. =)

Looking down the perimeter of the 2nd floor of Fort Jefferson.

This jellyfish was seen floating around in the Dry Tortugas, but I'm a little
tempted to sneak him into walking4fun.com somewhere. How
would anyone know I didn't see it while walking over the Seven Mile Bridge
or something? =) I'd use a jellyfish photo that I actually took on
my walk, but I haven't actually seen one ON my walk....

Bumming around Key West

2013-03-16T16:52:00.002-07:00

Amanda and I pose at the so-called southernmost point
of the contiguous United States. Check out the wave
crashing in the background!

So I'm currently here in the Florida Keys working on a new route for Walking4Fun.com. I walked the length of the Florida Keys once before, five years ago, then kept going up to the Florida Trail, the ill-fated Alabama Trail, and eventually hooking up with the Appalachian Trail. This hike is a bit less ambitious--I only plan to do the Florida Keys. I like the idea of adding this route since it's so different than the first three routes--walking through a tropical climate, in a part of a country without any supported trails, a relatively short route that barely passes 100 miles.... it's quite different than the PCT and Camino de Santiago! And that really appeals to me. =)

So I started at the so-called southernmost point of the contiguous United States. I'm still convinced it's a giant scam--just look at a map and tell me how you can possibly orient it to make that point the southernmost one. It just can't be done! But it's a cute little tourist trap, even if it is a scam, and I decided the walk would begin there.

From there, I headed past Hemingway's old house, took a tour of the Little White House that President Truman was so fond of visiting, walked through Mallory Square, and headed out of Key West on the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage State Trail. (Which, for brevity's sake, I'm going to call the "Florida Keys Trail" from here on out. Which is just as well since I technically didn't follow that trail through much of Key West and I'll probably hike well beyond it's far end before I'm done.)

I walked 5.2 miles through Key West, managing to burn through the batteries in my camera and took a whopping 25 photos per mile along the way. I won't be using all of these photos for the website, but here are a sampling of some you'll see if you later decide to "virtually" walk the Florida Keys Trail.

As a note, the Florida Keys Trail is not currently listed as an option on Walking4Fun.com--I'm still walking the trail and I have a lot of photos to process, upload, caption and map before it becomes a selection. I'll announce when the route is available--this is just a taste of what's to come! =)


The Little White House. President Truman's room is the one on the second floor, at the rightmost window with the red, white and blue thingy under the window.


Cruise ships coming into Key West.


Giant dancing statue.


Only in Key West and San Francisco.... =)

Even in cities, I still needed to take detours....

Yes, we will probably come back again....
...but I doubt it'll be soon!
So many other trails need hiking! =)

25 Ways to Say Good Morning!

2013-02-04T11:51:00.001-08:00

For those of you who've been following my blog for awhile, you know I've been trying to learn to say "Good morning!" in as many different languages as I can because it's always fun to tell people that in their native language--even if it's not morning! =)

The Camino is an international trail and I picked up a lot of ways to say, "Good morning!" I thought I'd share them with you. Keep in mind, though--these are spelled phonetically so I could reproduce the sounds correctly. I cared nothing about the actual spelling since I wasn't going to stop to write a note that said, "Good morning!" for anyone. So sound out how I spelled it. =) At least for English-language speakers. Non-English speakers would probably sound them out wrong and think I've taken to Washington's legalized recreational pot laws a bit to enthusiastically. =)

I'll also point out that not all of these translate literally into "good morning." Some languages, I was told, don't use a literal translation of the word, so they gave me what they would normally say as a greeting which could be used appropriately at any time of day (such as the Korean). The French would say "bonjour" at any time in the morning or afternoon, but switch to "bonsoir" in the early evening. That kind of stuff. =)

Korean: ahn-nyon a-say-oh
Polish: jehn-dah-bray
Bulgarian: da-bro ul-tro
Dutch: who-yeah mor-ghan (There's almost a kind of cough between the g and h that I have no idea how to write!)
Norigean: goo-dag
Chinese: zah-anne (The person who told me this one kept telling me I was saying it wrong even though it sounded like, to me, exactly what she was saying. Then one time I said it correctly, but I swear I didn't say it differently than the other ten times I tried that she said was wrong! So I have absolutely no faith in this pronunciation!)
Portuguese: bone gee-a
Irish (Gaelic): gee-a gwitch
Welch: bor-da
Maori (New Zealand): key-or-a
Swedish: goh moh-ron
Italian: bone jour-no
Russian: doh-brah oo-tra
Hungarian: yoh-ray-get
High German: good-in mor-gan
Low German: good morn
Swiss German: gwit-a mor-ka
Hebrew: boker tov
Greek: cal-ee meh-ra
Basque: a-ru-nun (Don't roll the R! Apparently, I'm a terrible R-roller)
Danish: goo-morn
Estonian: tear-aye home-ee-coat
Australian: g'day mate!
French: bu-jour / bone-jour (I heard it both ways)
Spanish: buen-ohs dee-ahs

And, alas, this is my last post about the Camino. I've run out of material....

However! You can still do a virtual walk of the Camino on my new website Walking 4 Fun. There are currently 42 people virtually walking the Camino Frances (the Spanish section I hiked) and 7 people in the Chemin Le Puy (the French section I hiked). You can also drop in on it's Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/Walking4Fun and say, "Buenos dias!" or "Bonjour!" (or whatever suits your fancy).

Your Turn to Hike the Camino!

2013-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

You might be asking what I've been up to since I finished hiking the Camino. It's been about three and a half months since I ended my hike and headed home. At first, most of my time was spent catching up with work on Atlas Quest and writing blog entries. The blog entries became a morning ritual for me, writing until lunch each morning. I don't really much like writing and never really got into it--sorry about all the spelling and grammatical errors in my posts. I just didn't have the heart to ever go back and read what I wrote. I just wanted them DONE so I could get on with "better things." In the afternoons, I typically worked on Atlas Quest, catching up with all sorts of tasks and chores that piled up while I was gone.

I finished the blog entries the first week of December, though, which finally gave me time to work on a new project--a walking website--and nearly all of my free time has been going into this new project ever since. It's an idea I wanted to run with for years but never seemed to have the time or drive to make it happen, but it was finally time to turn it into a reality.

While I was walking the Camino, I made a point of taking at least one photo for every kilometer of the trail. By the end of the trail, I had about 7,000 photos--averaing about seven photos per mile. Not all of the photos are useable--many were essentially duplicates with different exposure levels while others were blurry--but I had a heck of a lot of photos, and I could turn them into a virtual hike.

It works like this. You walk around during the day, then you can log into http://www.Walking4Fun.com and enter how much you walked during the day. The website will show where you would be on the trail if you took all your steps on the Camino, including a nice little map with your position plotted onto it and photos of the section of trail you would have virtually hiked that day.

Here's a screenshot I took of http://www.walking4fun.com -- I started my virtual walk
of the Camino Frances on December 1st of last year and I'm already 75% done by January 20th!

I'm marketing it as a health/fitness/weight-loss type of website, because it's true--walking is healthy! I lost 20 pounds during my two months on the trail, and I could (and did!) eat absolutely anything I wanted to, as much as I wanted to, whenever I wanted to. In fact, I deliberately avoided anything labeled "low fat" or "diet" because I needed to consume more calories. It's like that on all of my thru-hikes. However, I'm well aware that walking around in circles around your neighborhood might grow monotonous, but I figured it might make walking a bit more fun to see your miles add up day after day and how far such miles could carry you.

It's more-or-less coincidence that my new website is ready at about the same time this blog is coming to an end, but if you'd like to see more Camino photos--I used about 4,000 of the 7,000 photos I took on this hike--there are, quite literally, thousands of photos on it that I never used on this blog! But to see them all, there is a catch: You have to virtually hike the Camino on my new website. So sign up now (it's free!) and get walking!

For those of you who'd like to virtually hike a trail somewhat closer to home, I'm also working on adding a route for the Pacific Crest Trail. I tried to take at least one photo for every mile when I hiked that trail as well (I've had this idea for a website incubating for a few years now, and I averaged about 2 photos per mile on the PCT). It's *almost* completely entered, but you can start hiking out from the Mexican border right now. The maps for the PCT are done and all of the photos for the entire trail are uploaded. The photos are only captioned through California, but I should have the rest of them done long before anyone manages to virtually walk that far. =)

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take so many photos during my thru-hikes of the Florida Trail, Alabama Trail, or the Appalachian Trail, so those routes won't be added to this website. But you can bet any future hikes I do will be added!

So what should my next hike be? My short list of candidates includes the Long Trail, the Tahoe Rim Trail, the Colorado Trail, the Arizona Trail, the New England Trail, and the Finger Lakes Trail. =)


You can also add friends to your account and see where they are on the trail in relation to you. (Don't let the fact that I'm so far ahead of all of my testers reflect badly on them--I started my virtual hike on December 1st, but my testers didn't come on board until nearly a month later!)

When I first wrote this blog entry (Jan 21), I added the PCT only as far as Lake Tahoe.
I've since finished mapping the rest of the PCT, though, and the PCT is
open and ready for hikers! =)

I divide the Camino route I followed into two separate sections since the two trails
were so different. They really did feel more like two separate trails, one
right after the other, rather than a single long trail. Both Camino routes have been
completely entered into the database, though.

Afterwards

2013-01-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

I have a few extra things to share that never made it into my blog posts earlier for whatever reason. Karolina, if you’re curious, did hike back to Santiago, then traveled down to Lisbon and walked back to Santiago a third time. She told me it had a lot of road walking, and apparently a couple of people driving down the road tried to pick her up thinking she was a prostitute. (To which, I replied, OMG—I didn’t know Portugal also had an Alabama Trail!!!!) It was also a lot lonelier of a hike for her since not only does the Portugal route get a lot fewer pilgrims, but she also made the trip far into the off-season. Despite all that, however, she seemed to have enjoyed herself and thinks I should still do it someday. =) She arrived in Santiago in late November, checking a different option for the reason she did the pilgrimage so she’d get a different compostela. And last I heard, she’s back in Poland and in search of a job. She has at least one job offer going so far--which would take her to the Netherlands. She'd rather stay in Poland, but jobs for water technicians (or whatever official title she has) are apparently much easier to score in the Netherlands.

Vivian, after finishing the trail, headed off first to Greece for a couple of weeks (she was born there and lived there for the first few years of her life), then back home to Australia and seems a little disenchanted with having to work for a living again. Not surprising, really. I suspect most people would feel that way! Maybe that's why she posts to Facebook so often? =)

Hilary is still in Paris, learning French, I suppose. I see her post to Facebook occasionally, so I know she's still alive. =)

The Australian girls I had given my contact information to, and they all seemed interested in building their own soda can stoves, but so far, I haven’t heard from them again since we’ve finished the trail. I don’t actually have their contact information either. I figured I’d get it when they drop me a note to say hi! But since they haven’t done that, I have no idea what they’re up to nowadays.

As for me.... I've been keeping quite busy since I've finished the trail. Yep. *nodding* Been working on a TOP SECRET project for the last couple of months.... but I'll tell you about that in my next post.... =)

Karolina pops Lady Gaga! This video is absolutely disgusting. ;o)

Next, a few photos that Karolina emailed to me after our hikes were done.

Karolina thought it would be amusing to take a photo of me taking a photo
of Lady Gaga. =)

At one of the sites where Karolina and I set up camp, I told her about my
tie. Figuring seeing is believing, I put it on to model it, and she
took this photo of the moment. It was actually the only
time I put on the tie until the day I left the trail to go back home.
I probably would have wore it more often if it wasn’t always at the
bottom of my clothes sack where I tended to forget about it.

I never saw this sign, much to my dismay when Karolina
showed me photos of it later. Apparently, though,
it was right there on the side of the trail in plain view.
I can’t help but wonder how big of a problem this must
have been to have had this sign created and posted!!!!

I can’t say I remember where this photo was taken. It looks like I’m headed to the water faucet.
I like the photo, though, because I really don’t have many photos of me carrying my pack.
It’s not the kind of photo I can take on my own! =) The fact that the trekking pole is
tucked under my arm like it is makes me think I have a water bottle in my hands,
perhaps taking off the lid to fill with water. I didn’t normally walk around with
my trekking pole tucked under my arm. Except, of course, if my hands were
occupied with something else! =)

I carved the sad little face into the sunflower… just before it tried
to eat my hand off!

Here’s another kind of photo I could never take myself—setting
up my tarp! =)

This is an interesting photo to me, since it was taken before
Karolina and I ever camped together and thus we didn’t really
know each other very well. I’m waiting for the running of the bulls
to start (the bulls would run down the street on the right side
of the fence). Us observers were on the left side. Vivian,
the Australian, is drinking a glass of something. And I appear
to be writing in my journal—so far as I know, it’s the only
photo anyone has ever taken of me writing in my journal. I never
really considered it a photogenic moment, but considering how much
time I did spend writing in that journal over two months, it somehow
seems right to have a photo of me doing it. =)

Karolina took this photo when we climbed the hill behind Fisterra
on our way to the End of the World!

Obviously, neither Karolina nor I took this photo since neither of us
are capable of flying without some help. So I ripped it off the Internet
to show the peninsula that marks Fisterra and the “End of the World.”
It’s as dramatic from 30,000 feet as it is from ground level! =)
The lighthouse is at the very tip of the peninsula. The town
of Fisterra is where the peninsula just starts to jut out into the ocean.

I wrote in this logbook the day I hiked into Fisterra. I wasn’t with Karolina
at the time, but I knew she planned to keep walking to Muxia and back
to Santiago and thus knew she’d probably read this logbook as
well, so I left the note saying, “Go, Karolina! Go! Go! Go!” =)
When we did meet up in Fisterra later in the day, I never mentioned
this particular note. It was for her to find if she found it, and
if she didn’t… oh well! =) Obviously, the next day, as I was
probably on a bus on my way to Santiago, she found my note
on her hike to Muxia and took a photo of her reply. =)
I can imagine that it had been a VERY wet day for her.
The weather in Fisterra the whole bus ride to Santiago was
miserably wet. *nodding*

Vivian took this photo of me resting somewhere along the trail. It was
obviously a lengthy rest since I had taken off my real shoes and put on
my Waldies. I don’t for for certain where this photo was taken, but
I think it might have been the day after I went over the Pyrenees
where I stopped for a four-hour rest break. If so, then it was
also, coincidentally, the first place I ever talked to Karolina. At the
time, though, I had no idea we’d end up becoming such good friends.

Vivian also took this photo, with me once again taking an extended
rest break. (Which is obvious since I had switched my hiking shoes
with my Waldies.) This photo was the taken late in the day
I left Burgos, and would be the last time I saw Vivian until we’d
meet up again in Santiago. (We’d swap emails for the duration of
our hikes, though. We just didn’t cross paths again until Santiago.)

My credentials are kind of long and don’t really photograph well—at least
not the entire length of it—but I figured some of you might want to see
what they looked like at the end of the trip. The one on the left
is the one I started with out of Le Puy. The one on the right was
used after I filled up the one on the left.

This is the other side of the credentials.

The Long Journey Home

2013-01-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 16: It poured rain all night which continued into the morning, and the weather forecast I looked up for Santiago showed rain every day for the next nine days. Looks like I picked a good time to leave the trail. =)

For kicks, I put on my tie. I carried a tie the entire distance from Le Puy in case I ever wanted to “dress up for a special occasion.” I had meant to wear it on my walk out to the Finisterre lighthouse but forgot it in my hotel room. I figured I could still be the best-dressed pilgrim headed back home, though. =)

I caught the 11:45 bus out of Fisterra to Santiago, a rather depressing feeling. It was the first time I stepped on any form of modern transportation since I exited the trail in Le Puy-en-Velay more than two months earlier. I wondered if it would feel “weird” to be moving at speeds faster than I could walk, but it felt no different than it would had I ridden a bus every day for the past two months. But it did give me the blues. I just didn’t want to ride it. If I had a car, I’d need a bumper sticker that read “I’d rather be walking.” There was a certain appeal to just walking back to Santiago, but it would just be putting off the unpleasantness. And I’d be walking in the rain which would be unpleasant in a different way.

I felt sad to leave the trail, though. Usually, I’ve always been happy when my long-distance journey has come to an end. I’d be worn out, tired, and ready to leave the trail, but I didn’t feel that way at all this time. The trail was, admittedly, shorter and easier than any I had done before, and I guess I just hadn’t grown sick of it enough to want to quit yet. I felt I could go another 500 miles. I wanted to go another 500 miles, but I didn’t have time for it.

The bus ride took nearly three hours to get back to Santiago. I sat in a window seat where I could watch the ocean views, but it was often fogged up and hard to see out of.

Back in Santiago, I headed down to the trail station and bought a ticket for the train to Madrid that would leave town at 11:30 at night. There was an earlier train that would get me into Madrid that night, but there wouldn’t have been any flights out of Madrid until tomorrow requiring me to find accommodation overnight in Madrid. I figured I’d save a few bucks by going overnight in the train and arrive in Madrid in the morning. My train ticket would be both my lodging and transportation for the night.

This gave me about nine hours to goof around in Santiago, though. I picked up a few souvenirs and gifts for some folks, wrote and mailed off postcards, and loitered in the square in front of the cathedral cooking the last the cookable food in my pack. Another pilgrim came by and warned me that fires weren’t allowed in the square and that the police might come after me for cooking. After that, I went ahead and finished cooking my meal, but I positioned my pack and body to mostly hide the meal I was cooking. =) After I was done, I threw the rest of the denatured alcohol I had into a nearby trash bin. I wouldn’t be able to fly with it, and I wouldn’t be cooking anymore meals before I left the country.

I didn’t find any pilgrims I knew loitering in town—everyone I knew was already off the trail. Except for Karolina, who I figured I was taking a zero day in Fisterra to wait out the rain or was plowing through the rain on her way to Muxia. Either way, though, she wasn’t in Santiago, and I loitered around town a little bored and spent most of my time reading my Kindle.

The seats on the train were terribly uncomfortable and I didn’t sleep particularly well, but it arrived nearly nine hours later, arriving on time in Madrid down to the minute. But a restless sleep is still better than none at all, and I did get a restless sleep.

In Madrid, I checked the routes and figured out that the train to the airport was on a different track. I plodded over there and boarded, which whisked me away to terminal 4. I couldn’t exit from the train station there, though—you know how subways and light rail stations often have machines that you scan a card on your way in, then scan it again on your way out? It was like that here, except I had nothing to scan. By riding the train in from Santiago, I entered the “secure” area without the ticket to go around on the local train. Which wasn’t a big deal—until I tried to leave! My train ticket to Madrid, however, also covered the local stops, and I only had to show my train ticket to an employee standing by the exit gates and he wave his card on it so I could exit without any additional charge.

So I made it to the airport, but this train only stopped at terminal 4. My flight was leaving from terminal 1. So then I found the free shuttle bus that would whisk me away from terminal 4 to terminal 1.

At the ticketing booth, a US Airways employee questioned me before I even got to a gate agent, asking how long I had been in Spain (about a month, I told her, not bothering to mention I had actually been in Europe for closer to two months). She looked at me suspiciously when I told her that. “How many bags are you checking?” she asked. “None,” I answered truthfully.

Now she really looked at me suspiciously, and I could see the next question on her face already: Why does a guy who’s been in Spain for a month not have any bags to check? That’s probably pretty unusual! But before she could ask, I told her that I had walked El Camino de Santiago and only had what I could carry on my back.

She visibly relaxed after that, and asked me a little about my walk before starting to question the next person behind me. I noticed two people who joined the line behind me, carrying nothing but a single backpack each with scallop shells hanging off. I recognized them from the train I had rode to Santiago. Pilgrims. I wouldn’t be the only pilgrim on this flight out of Madrid. =)

Once I was in the airport and through security, I did some window shopping to use up the rest of the euros I carried. I still had about 20 euros on me. I only managed to spend about 5 euros on knickknacks and candy, though. Not a big deal, though. I could just give the rest to Amanda. She’s always going to Europe and would no doubt find a place to spend the rest of the euros.

I also got online to check flights out of Philly. I hadn’t made any reservations for flights out of Philly, and was trying to work my way to my mom’s house in San Luis Obispo. Ideally, I’d fly from Philly to Phoenix, then from Phoenix to SLO. All flights to SLO go through Phoenix, no avoiding that!

Except all of the flights from Philly to Phoenix were full, as were all of the flights from Phoenix to SLO. And they were completely full for the next two days. So then I started looking at round-about options to get me to Phoenix. Philly-Indianapolis-Phoenix? Philly-St. Louis-Phoenix? Philly-Charlotte-Phoenix? Philly-Boston-Phoenix? Philly-Los Angeles-Phoenix? Philly-DC-Phoenix? All of these options did have seats available, although with only one or two open seats on one of the connections, it was possible I could wind up stranded in Indianapolis, St. Louis, Charlotte, Boston, Los Angeles, or Washington DC. The flight to Seattle was wide open, however, and it would have made a lot of sense to go direct to Seattle then head down to visit my mom when flights weren’t so full. Except I had relatives in town I wanted to see who’d be leaving in a couple of days.

I wrote out long lists of available options trying to decide the best way into SLO, but regardless of which route I chose, I’d still wind up in Phoenix at the end of the day with every flight to SLO booked at capacity for the next two days. Oh, sure, someone was bound to miss their flight for some reason and I might get on, but who knows how many flights I’d miss before that happened?

I listed myself for several options I had selected, including the flight direct to Phoenix because… who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky?

I boarded the flight which left on time, and arrived in Philly earlier than expected. I made it through customs and immigration without any trouble, although two different uniformed officers saw me walking through the baggage claim without picking up any luggage and told me I needed to pick it up before I left. “I don’t have any checked bags,” I told them, “Just what I’m carrying!” They seemed surprised at this, but let me continue out anyhow. I guess it’s very unusual for people to travel internationally without any checked bags.

During the flight, I was looking at my flight options when I had another idea…. what if I didn’t fly in to SLO, but rather I took the train? If I could fly to Los Angeles, there’s regular Amtrak service from LA to SLO, then I could get around the whole Phoenix-to-SLO bottleneck. Brilliant! But I would need to buy a train ticket….

So upon arrival in Philly, I checked in for the Philly-Los Angeles-Phoenix listing I had created earlier, then pulled out my laptop and checked train tickets from LA to SLO, so confident I’d get on the LA flight that I booked the train ticket immediately.

I had a couple of hours to kill in Philly before the flight to LA left, so I first hit up an ATM. I had no American money—not one cent, and I figured it might be useful to have at least $20 in my pocket. Then I hit up the Chic-fil-A—my first fast food chain visit in over two months. =)

The flight to LA was uneventful, and arrived late at night. The next train to SLO wouldn’t leave until early the next morning, however, which left me with about nine hours to kill in Los Angeles. I didn’t really want to pay for a hotel for such a quick stop, though, and lingered at LAX for most of the night, sleeping on the chairs there. It’s great for a free place to stay—you have restrooms, water fountains, and food all readily available. Yeah, well, most of the food options were closed that late at night, but there were always vending machines if push came to shove.

By around 5:00 in the morning, I figured it was time to get to Union Station—quite a ways from the airport. There was an airport shuttle that would take me there for $7, but since I had many hours to get there, I decided to go for the city bus which cost a mere $1.50. I took a free airport shuttle to one of the parking lots, where I jumped off the bus to catch the city bus which would take me the rest of the way to Union Station.

The city bus was an interesting experience. It took about 1 1/2 hours to travel 19 miles, and I felt a little uncomfortable after about a half hour when the bus was packed with standing room only and I realized that I was the only white guy on the bus. Where were all the other white guys? I’ve seen white people in Los Angeles before. I know they exist! Or at least they used to…. What happened to them all? Not that I have any problem with people of all sorts of races and nationalities, but people of all sorts of races and nationalities would have also included white people too. Why did they seem to be excluded? I had this strange feeling like I wasn’t supposed to be there, and it didn’t help matters when a guy carrying a large painting he made got into a loud argument with someone who accidentally bumped it on the crowded bus. There was a lot of anger and yelling going on, and I worried that one of them might suddenly pull out a knife or a gun and my little bus journey would wind up on the morning news.

Fortunately, they both got off the bus, at separate stops, without coming to blows, and I finally got off the bus myself near the end of the line at Union Station where I had another couple of hours to kill before my train to SLO departed.

I bought a sandwich, and read my Kindle while waiting for my train to depart, which it did. The train from LA to SLO is absolutely wonderful to ride if you ever get a chance. It follows along the Pacific Ocean for much of the route with amazing views practically the entire way. Although it seemed strange to be admiring the Pacific Ocean. It took me two months to hike the Atlantic Ocean, and now two days later, here I was looking at the Pacific with barely any walking at all.

The train route also takes you through Vandenburg Air Force Base—where they launch rockets and satellites on a fairly regular basis. The west coast version of Cape Canaveral. I wouldn’t be riding on any spaceships getting back home, but it seemed like that was the only form of modern transportation I wouldn’t be riding on this journey.

I finally arrived in SLO, a few minutes early, about 60 hours after having left Fisterra, covering a wide range of modern transportation options: Bus, train, train, bus, plane, plane, bus, bus, train. My mom picked me up in her car, rounding out my travels with a personal vehicle. Truth be told, though, after so much time in buses, trains, and planes, I could have been perfectly happy walking the rest of the way to my mom’s house from the train station. =)

My adventures were done.

For now. ;o)

Day 65: The End of the World!

2013-01-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 15: It rained once again overnight, but once again, the rain had stopped by the time I woke up in the morning. Early in the morning, the sun even came out for a bit. Just to say hi, then it curled up back in its blankets (i.e. clouds) and went back to sleep.

Walking to Muxia, I could count on one hand the number of people I passed along the route. Literally. I passed four people, all hiking in the opposite direction, heading back to Santiago. Walking from Muxia to Finisterre, I met nobody going in my direction, but I did pass half a dozen people heading into town as I left it, and today I passed an additional 30 or so people walking in the opposite direction. By all means, that’s not a lot of people compared to the rest of the Camino Frances, but compared to the numbers I passed on my way to Muxia, it was a dramatic increase!

And the walk into Finisterre was largely uneventful. The last several kilometers were downright awful—along a busy road with fast moving traffic.

My first stop was heading to my hotel to drop off my gear. Turns out, it wasn’t really a hotel at all—more like a multi-story house. It sat near the top of a hill with fantastic views of the city of Fisterra. The door was locked, and I knocked, but nobody answered, much to my annoyance. There was a phone number one could call, but that’s hard to do without a phone. I sat down on the bench on the porch and waited for someone to arrive and read my Kindle to kill the time.

But it was windy and cold outside, and now that I wasn’t walking around anymore I grew increasingly cold. Tired of waiting, I put my Kindle away and headed into town. At least I could see the sights and maybe find some people I knew. Karolina, I knew, was expected to arrive into town sometime today, but I didn’t know when to expect her. We agreed to look for each other at the municipal alburgue, though, and whoever arrived first would leave a note for the other. So I headed in that direction first.

I found the alburgue, which was currently closed and would be until 3:00 in the afternoon. Karolina, however, was clearly somewhere in town since she had written a note for me on a napkin taped to the door saying she’d be back at the alburgue at 3:00. So I knew Karolina was in town, but I didn’t know where in town. I scribbled a note under her note saying something like, “I’ll be back at 3:00 then!” and left, wandering along the waterfront admiring statues and in search of anyone I knew.

I hadn’t been walking for more than five minutes when I saw Karolina walking in the opposite direction, a fortuitous find! =)

We took an outside table at an empty restaurant, and Karolina went in to order us a couple of Cokes. She bought my drink for me saying she owed me since I had secretly paid for hers without her knowing it when we departed ways two days earlier. I told her about Muxia, and she told me her toe was doing better and she had arrived in town hours earlier and already had walked out to the lighthouse. “Hey!” I protested, “we were supposed to do that together!”

“But I want to go back!” she quickly insisted. “There are a lot of opportunities for silly photos!” And she wanted to watch the sunset from the “end of the world.”

Finisterre is known as the “end of the world” because, hundreds of years ago, people thought it was the westernmost land in the entire world. Of course, back then, they didn’t know that the New World even existed, and measurements for longitude were notoriously imprecise. Not only did they not account for the New World, but it’s not even the westernmost land in the Old World either! Portugal sticks out much further west, as do islands such as Iceland.

But back in the day, Finisterre was believed to be the “end of the world.” We clinked our glasses in celebration of reaching the end of the world. “I never imagined that the end of the world would be so pleasant,” I told Karolina. =)

Karolina suggested that we could return on December 21st, to watch the end of the world from the end of the world. “That would be very cool,” I agreed, “but I don’t see that happening.” =)

A little before three, we got up and walked back to the hostel for Karolina to check in. The line had formed outside of it, a line that went terribly slow, and I told Karolina that I was going to head back to my hotel and try to check in and dump my gear while she was standing in line there.

Back at the hotel, there were people inside this time, and I threw out most of my gear from my pack only taking my journal, camera, snacks, and water, then immediately headed back down to the hostel to meet up with Karolina again.

I was a little surprised to see that she still hadn’t gotten her bed yet. That line was moving SLOW! However, she was at the head of the line, and seated talking to the person doing the checking in, eventually taking her in back to show her around and where to find her bed. I waited in the lobby. The man doing the checkins returned without her, and I watched as he checked in a German girl I didn’t recognize. He liked to talk. A lot. A very friendly man, but given the size of the line, I thought, he really shouldn’t be making small talk with everyone right now. The German girl, apparently, had a problem with her credential. Due to the limited number of beds in Fisterra, they’ll only allow people who can prove they walked to town to check-in at the alburgue. And typically, you prove it with the stamps on your credential. Those who’ve bussed into town won’t have those stamps. I couldn’t see the girl’s credential from where I sat, but she had to pull out her digital camera and show him the photos she took along the walk before he was finally willing to let her check in.

Karolina came back out about five minutes later, and we headed out to the lighthouse at the end of the world. We decided to take the scenic route to the lighthouse, visiting a beach on the west side of the peninsula first. Karolina expressed an interest in swimming in the ocean. “You go,” I told her, “and I’ll take photos. That water is way too cold for me to swim in!” I knew it was cold, because I had touched the water in Muxia. The waves crashing on shore here were quite large, though, and Karolina wondered if it was even safe to swim there. I hadn’t really looked at the waves, but I did now, and I had to agree, they did look like they could be dangerous. Those waves could easily knock you around and pull you out to sea. “Yes,” I agreed, “Maybe you shouldn’t swim after all.”

She did, however, take of her shoes and socks and jumped in the shallow part of the water for a minute or two just get her feet wet. =)

Then we headed over a large hump overlooking the town. Not unlike the one I went up in Muxia, in fact. Fisterra was also located on a small peninsula and had a large hill between the town the tip of the peninsula. We didn’t have good maps of the area, but it was pretty easy to figure out which direction we ought to be going to get there—UP!

At the top, the wind was absolutely terrific, all but blowing us off. We took a few photos, then scrambled down the back side towards the lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula and the end of the trail. At least as far as my hike went, it was the end of the trail for me. Once I reached that lighthouse, I’d be turning around and going home.

The lighthouse was just your normal, typical lighthouse. Nothing particularly noteworthy there, but the wind was phenomenal and quite cold. A thick layer of clouds filled the sky, and we feared we wouldn’t see the sun set at all. We both really wanted to watch the sunset at the end of the world, though, and hoped for the best. We’d linger until after sunset, though—just in case things cleared up.

Pilgrims, at the end of their hike, have a long tradition of burning the worn-out clothes from their journey. Evidence of fires littered the place, although I’d been told by other pilgrims that fires were no longer allowed after one of them broke out into a wildfire years ago. If fires were prohibited, though, there weren’t any signs I saw saying so, and clearly a lot of people chose to ignore that rule. I had no intention of burning any of my perfectly good clothes, but Karolina had panties and a shirt she wanted to burn. The panties, she told me, were worn out already with lots of holes. The shirt she could still use, but she had bought a T-shirt at a souvenir shop that said, “No pain, no glory!” with an image of badly blistered feet, so she had an extra shirt now.

Given the incredibly strong winds, though, trying to find a safe place to light it was a little challenge. We eventually settled on an area next to a rock—a small cubby hole of sorts—and Karolina set to work to burn her panties. I gave her my denatured alcohol—I had emptied the inside of my pack, but the denatured alcohol was in a pocket on the outside of the pack—since it would make it a lot easier for her to start the fire. She poured a bit on her panties, stuck it in the rock, and lit it with her lighter where it went up in flames with a POOF!

We watched her panties burn for a while, and I took of a video of her burning them. That worked well enough, and then it was time to burn her shirt. She took off her jacket then her shirt—a little to my surprise. I thought she had the shirt she wanted to burn in her pack and thought she was actually undressing in the cold, windy weather—for a brief moment, at least. Turns out, she had another shirt on underneath the one she wanted to burn. Drats! =)

But it did leave her in a short-sleeved shirt on a very cold and windy day. She must have been freezing! But then again, maybe not. She’s from Poland. Maybe she considered this warm weather? =) She quickly put on her other shirt and her jacket and added the shirt she took off to the fire. Burn, baby! Burn! Her shirt burned a lot bigger than her panties did.

After the fire went out, we returned towards the lighthouse and entered the bar there to get out of the wind and cold, ordering a couple of drinks and once again toasted to the end of the world as we waited for sunset.

The clouds were too thick, though, and there never was a sunset. “Figures,” I told Karolina, “that the sun doesn’t set at the end of the world.”

We walked back to Fisterra in the dark and as I entered town, I walked on the street and saw a dog running loose near a church. I pointed to it, warning Karolina to watch out for the dog (we were still joking about the “cow hit man” that was out to get her)—and, not watching my footing, I had put a foot on the edge of a storm drain. The storm drain wasn’t level with the street, though. It dropped about an inch under the street level, and not expecting it, twisted my ankle and fell flat. “Arwwfh!”

A pain shot through my ankle and up my leg. ARGH! That hurt! Karolina looked concerned, asking if I was okay.

Dang, my ankle hurt. I managed to get back up on my feet and hobbled along a bit, judging the injury. It hurt, but I’d done worse to myself than that in the past. “I’ll be fine,” I told her, limping heavily. “It’ll definitely be hurting for a few days, but I’ll survive.”

Then we both started laughing. How can you not? I’ve now walked over a thousand miles from Le Puy, across two countries, and now that my hike is OVER—quite literally, it ended at the end of the world!—and on my way back home, I sprain my ankle severely. There was once in France when I sprained my ankle badly, but I had been completely free of sprains in all of Spain. And now, after I reached the end of my hike, I suffer my worst injury in Spain. Ha!

Karolina challenged me, “Is this going to go in your blog?” She knew I kept a blog of my trail adventures, although I don’t think she’d read any of it while she was on the trail since she didn’t get online very much.

“Absolutely!” I replied. “The irony is too great not to include!” Although truth be told, I wish my stumble hadn’t happened in the first place. My ankle was throbbing!

“I never did see the dog you were pointing at,” Karolina told me. Yeah, I suppose my spectacular crash could have been a little distracting. =) And apparently, the dog had left before I managed to pull myself back up on my feet.

Karolina helped me pick up my water bottle and umbrella—both of which had gone flying out of my pack in my crash to the ground—and we continued into town.

We passed Kathy and Erin, walking in the opposite direction—two of the Australian girls I had camped with. The other three had already left back to Australia from Santiago, but Kathy and Erin had time to keep walking to Finisterre and Muxia. They were in search of a place to stay, though, since the municipal alburgue was already full. Someone had told them there was another alburgue up the way they were walking. “There’s something up there,” Karolina and I agreed, “but we weren’t really paying attention to that since we both already had a place to stay. But we’ve definitely seen signage for an alburgue up that way.” We didn’t talk for more than a couple of minutes, but it was nice to see them again one last time. They were the only people I recognized since leaving Santiago—except for Karolina, of course.

We stopped at Karolina’s alburgue where she dropped off some of her gear and picked up warmer clothes. While she was doing that, I waited out in the lobby, the line now gone, and asked the guy to stamp my credential. Why not? I had nothing better to do while waiting for Karolina. She stamped my credential, asked about where I was from and made idle chit chat, then handed over a certificate for reaching Fisterra. This certificate was a lot nicer than the one I got in Santiago, but once again, I found myself not really caring much about it. The credential, I felt, was a far better souvenir of my hike. Not only did I carry it the entire distance from Le Puy, but it had all sorts of interesting stamps I’d picked up nearly every day of my hike. That credential told a story—a story of the places I stayed, restaurants where I ate, people I met. The certificate… just didn’t seem so interesting.

I noticed a second stamp resting by the first one and asked the man about it. The second stamp, he told me, was given to him by a Korean, and he’d stamp that into the credentials of anyone from Korea. “I’ll be happy to take it too!” I told him. I’d only replaced my credential barely a week earlier, so it still had a lot of empty space. He stamped that in my credential as well—the last stamp I’d get of my hike.

Karolina and I went out to eat at a nearby restaurant, eating hamburgers that actually were pretty decent. Not great, but decent, which in Europe is pretty good. =)

Outside the restaurant, we hugged and parted ways, never to meet again. This time, it really would be a final goodbye. Well, perhaps someday we’ll meet again, but it’ll likely be a long, long time. I don’t exactly get out to Poland very often, and she doesn’t get out to the United States all that often. I’d be going home. Karolina enjoyed her Camino hike so much, she decided to continue it. She’d continue on to Muxia and walk back to Santiago, at which point she’d take a bus or trail to Lisbon and walk the Portugal route back to Santiago again. I was a little jealous of this—I had originally intended to do the same thing when I started off from Le Puy but eventually decided to chop off that section so I could slow down and smell the flowers.

Walking back to my hotel, I realized I had left my trekking pole back at the restaurant. And I decided not to go back and retrieve it. I didn’t need it anymore. I had plenty of them at home already, and it’s hard to travel with. It can stay at the end of the world.

My room was quite nice! =) The views out the windows were awesome too!

This is the view out the window in the previous photo. =)

Karolina runs into the ocean. At least the shallow
area, after the waves have already crashed.

I pose with MM 0.0. The trekking pole, alas,
would be left behind by accident where we’d later
eat dinner.

Karolina burns her shirt and panties.

The lighthouse at the end of the world!

My certificate for reaching Fisterra.

Karolina burns her panties.

Karolina has a lot to say as her shirt burns,
but you can't really hear any of it over the wind in this video.

Day 64: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

2013-01-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 14: It rained hard overnight, pounding my tarp with a terrific noise waking me up several times during the night, but I stayed high and dry curled up under it and the rain stopped by morning. The ugly clouds continued to linger, however.

I packed up camp and headed out. Next stop: Muxia, one of two locations that pilgrims often walk to beyond Santiago. By all accounts, it’s the less popular of the two (the other being Finisterre). Most pilgrims I knew planned to stop walking in Santiago, but a large number of them intended to bus on to Finisterre. Even if they didn’t plan to walk it, they still felt compelled to push onward. But nobody—absolutely nobody I talked to seemed interested in visiting Muxia except Karolina and myself. If you’ve watched The Way, they filmed the ending in Muxia which I would have thought might give it some added pull for some people, but it hasn’t as far as I can tell.

Regardless, I wasn’t expecting much myself—just another milestone along my journey to Finisterre. A big one, though. =)

I pulled on my pack, popped on my iPod and marched to the sea.

I had long since hiked off the edge of my map shortly past the fork in the trail leading to Finisterre and Muxia and was hiking blind at this point, dependent on the waymarks to guide my way, so I was a little surprised when I crested over a small hill and saw the ocean just a couple of kilometers away. Although I had no maps, I did know the distances between landmarks and towns on the trail, and Muxia was further away than that. I had assumed the trail would hit the coast at Muxia, but it didn’t. It hit the coast north of Muxia, then followed a series of roads southward towards Muxia with wonderful views the entire way. The trail itself didn’t actually touch the ocean here—it just wound through the coastal towns, and I had no desire to get off the trail to get to the ocean. I’d get to it when the trail was ready to take me to it. In the meantime, I enjoyed the wonderful views the trail did provide of the ocean.

Another hour later, the trail ducked through some eucalyptus trees to a boardwalk through the sand, a beach just outside of Muxia, and I stopped. The view took my breath away. I could see the town, set on a peninsula jutting out into the ocean, with a cute little harbor filled with boats in front and a nice little hill rising up behind it. Wow. I really had no expectations when I arrived in Muxia, never having really seen any photos about it or even heard much about it, and the stunning beauty of the area took my breath away.

I stood there, just looking, tearing up, for a minute or so. I was here! At the Atlantic Ocean! I had made it! I didn’t expect to get so sentimental—I still planned to hike all the way out to Finisterre. My hike wasn’t over yet, after all! But this felt like the end of the trail for me. Santiago was a major milestone to be sure, but this was the end. The real end. Maybe if I walked to Finisterre first, I’d have felt like Finisterre was the real end, but standing there within stone’s throw of the Atlantic Ocean, that feeling of having reached the end of the trail overwhelmed me.

I set my pack down on the boardwalk to keep it out of the sand, threw my trekking pole into the air in celebration and walked out on the beach, running my fingers through the sand and the surf. When was the last time I had touched the Atlantic Ocean? I couldn’t remember. Hiking through the Florida Keys, perhaps? In 2008? I picked up some rocks to throw and skip into the Atlantic.

I went back to the boardwalk, sitting on its edge and took more photos. I spent about a half hour there, just admiring the view, feeling a little reluctant to keep going and actually finish my hike. I really didn’t want my hike to end just yet.

When I got up to continue, my iPod started playing a Kelly Clarkson song I had downloaded (for free—legally!) just before I started my hike which had a catchy, upbeat tune and a refrain about “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger… Stand a little taller! Doesn’t mean I’m lonely when I’m alone…” It somehow seemed immensely appropriate for the end of a 1000-mile walk, and I set my iPod to keep playing it over and over.

I walked into Muxia, swinging my trekking pole around wildly in tune with the music, feeling on top of the world. I didn’t stop in town, except long enough to take the occasional photo, pushing through towards the harbor and walking out to the end of the jetty protecting the harbor. The view of town from the tip wasn’t as nice as I had hoped for, but that was because it put the sun directly behind the town and really muted all of the color of the town.

But I was still on top of the world and that wasn’t going to get me down. No, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It must be true—it’s right in the song! =)

I still wanted to climb up to the top of that hill behind the town, though. I saw a map of the town while walking into it which looked like it had a trail leading to the top of the hill from the end of the peninsula, so I started following a road in that direction.

I passed a nice little church, which was just getting out and edged around the side and out of the way of all the people exiting it. I passed a couple of small houses—wondering how they ended up out there all by themselves.

Then I turned a corner and stumbled into a jaw dropping view of a magnificent church overlooking enormous waves crashing against equally giant boulders that made up the shore line. I gasped audibly in surprise, having no idea that that was there. Above and to the side of it was a rock monument that looked like an enormous slab of rock with a jagged crack through the center. Clearly a man-made construction, and I had no idea what it represented, but the sheer size of it fascinated me. The whole view was overwhelming, but in a good way, that that feeling that I really reached the end of the trail hit me again. I might keep hiking for another day to Finisterre, but Muxia was really the end of the trail.

I took more photos, then found the trail leading up to the top of the hill overlooking town—fantastic views. I threw my arms in the air, punching my fists in the air, doing a little jig of happiness with Kelly Clarkson. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger….

Eventually I came back down from my high, both figuratively and literally, and walked back into Muxia where I stopped at a restaurant for lunch. The restaurant had wi-fi available, which I used to check my email and booked a hotel room in Finisterre for the next night.

Leaving town, I was a little sad. As much as I wanted to stay the night, I was still drawn to Finisterre. What if it was even better than Muxia? After all, that’s where nearly everyone who continues past Santiago winds up going—not Muxia! Nope, I wanted to keep going. Finisterre or bust!

Leaving town, I let my iPod start playing other music now. Looking back at Muxia, I was a little disappointed with the views. On the way out of town, the harbor and “downtown” area were out of view on the other side of the peninsula. This side was kind of plain and boring by comparison—rather anti-climatic compared to the view I had going into town. I passed a few people straggling in, having walked all the way from Finisterre that afternoon, and felt a little sorry that their first view of Muxia was from the “wrong” direction. But they’d see the nice views soon enough. =) And really, it was a nice view from this direction—just a little boring compared to the phenomenal views from the other direction!

I walked for a couple of hours out of town, eventually setting up camp between Guisamonde and Frixe in a field that didn’t seem to be used for anything at the moment. I set up my tarp again—rain was still in the forecast, and condensation would likely be an issue regardless.

Somewhere near Muxia, I passed the 1,000-mile mark of my hike. Not that anyone paid attention to miles in Europe—at the end of the day, I had calculated, I had walked 1627.4 kilometers. Knowing that something like 1.61 kilometers was 1 mile, it was easy to figure out I needed to pass 1610 (or so) kilometers to equal 1000 miles, and I was now 17.4 kilometers passed that.

I wrote in my journal and read my book until it was too dark to see, then I laid back and listened to my iPod until I fell asleep for the night.

I’m not really sure what this is. It looks like a machine built to
pump trash into a trash can, but what?

I’ve reached the Atlantic Ocean! That’s Muxia in the background.
And the hill behind the town that I wanted to climb up.

Running my fingers through the surf. =)

A small church where services were just ending as I passed by.

This slab of cracked rock is obviously a monument of some sort,
but I don’t know what for or why. I found it strangely
hypnotic, though. =)

Stumbling onto this really took my breath away! The photo
doesn’t really do it justice, though. They never do. *sigh*

The harbor from the top of the hill behind Muxia. I first walked out to the point
on the left jetty when I got into town. =)

Muxia from above, and you can see the Atlantic Ocean surrounding it on both sides.
From the top, you can turn around and see yourself surrounded by the ocean
on three sides, but that’s much too wide of an angle for my camera to get!

I have no idea who this is. I just liked her silhouette against the rocks. =)

Walking back into Muxia after my trip to the tip of the peninsula.

Make up your minds—left or right?! =)
Actually, this section of trail has people walking in both directions.
For those waking from Finisterre to Muxia, they’ll to right.
For people like me walking from Muxia to Finisterre, we go left.

You see a lot of these raised stone structures used to keep corn or other
foodstuffs away from animals in Galicia. I’d wondered at first how
they got into them since there was no obvious way into them,
but this one had a ladder leading up to it. Ah-ha! =)
The very first photo of this blog entry has one of these raised
structure on the right side of the photo. Obviously, in this
photo, I was more interested in the ladder than I was the structure
itself. I like how it’s framed from under the structure! =)

Home, sweet, home. For tonight, at least. Late in the afternoon, the
weather actually started to get nice! But it wasn’t expected to last very long….

Just because I know you wanted it. ;o)

Day 63: Camping With Chestnuts

2013-01-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 13: The night was bitterly cold, and Karolina got up at dawn and started hiking immediately in an attempt to warm up saying that she didn’t sleep well at all. I was a tad chilly in my sleeping bag, but not so cold that it made me want to get out of it quite yet, so Karolina went on ahead without me. The alternative path we were camped on wasn’t well marked, so she took a look at my map to create a mental picture of where to go. “Basically,” I said, “it looks like you stay more-or-less straight on this dirt road until you hit a paved road, then follow to the right until you hit another paved road. At that point, you should be back on the main path and have a well-marked path to follow.” The actual trail on the map had some places where you could cut off corners that would take you off the paved road in places and marginally shorten the walk, but those options could be hard to find if they weren’t marked well.

On this section of trail, I did have a primitive map of the route—a map that Karolina didn’t have. In fact, very few hikers had maps of anything passed Santiago—they were very hard to come by! Most people merely carried a list of towns, alburgues, and other important waypoints along the route to Finisterre or Muxia picked up from the tourist office in Santiago. No map, though—just a list of waypoints with their distances. I actually did have a map—at least for the section between Santiago and Finisterre. My map, however, did not extend all the way to Muxia. Karolina had no map at all, though, which is why she had to study mine to make sure she made it back to the main path okay.

I was a little concerned about how cold Karolina was, though. She survived the night, obviously, but if she was too cold, she might not want to camp out anymore and although she didn’t say it yet, I worried that she wouldn’t camp outside tonight, and it’s not like we’d be passing through any large towns where she could get warmer gear even if she were so inclined. I feared I’d be losing my camping buddy again.

I followed Karolina, leaving camp about 40 minutes later. I didn’t expect it to take more than a couple of hours to catch up with her since she was walking relatively slow due to a painful toe, and indeed, I did catch up with her walking out of Ponte Olveira. She had a wild story about turning the wrong way and ending up in A Picota where she stopped at a grocery store. I was jealous—I wanted to stop at a grocery store too, but there were none along our path today. A Picota was off trail and while we knew about the grocery store there, we hadn’t intended to go out of our way for it. Karolina did, though—even if it was purely by accident after getting lost.

“And,” she continued, “I was chased by two angry dogs!”

Yeah, I know how that feels. “I bet they were talking with those cows from yesterday,” I told her.

It’s fortunate Karolina made it to Ponte Olveira when she did, because that was the town where she reconnected with the trail. Not knowing she had gotten lost, if she had gotten into town even ten minutes later, I’d have already passed through and kept assuming she was still ahead, not realizing that she would have then been behind me and probably getting further and further behind since I was walking faster. I came literally within a few minutes of missing her completely!

Karolina and I stopped at a bar in Logoso for a Coke, and I wrote in my journal, “Karolina is walking slow due to a pain in a toe. There’s not really any reason for me to slow down with her if she’s not going to camp again, except just to be with a friend. Tomorrow will probably be our last day together.”

I read that now and laugh, because as it turned out, Karolina and I split ways at the very point I wrote that. The weather had cleared and was bright and sunny, and I threw out my tarp to dry out on a concrete slab by us. The bar also hosted an alburgue, and while we were there, Karolina decided that she wanted to stay the night right there. Her toe was giving her problems and she hoped taking it slow might help, and figured to get into Finisterre two days later. I wanted to keep going, though—it was far too early in the day for me to want to stop, and the weather was absolutely wonderful. I wanted to take advantage of it while it lasted. I also didn’t want to take two days to get into Finisterre.

I was a little sad to leave Karolina behind, though, but the wheels in my head started turning. “Two days to Finisterre, eh?” I said, thinking. “What if I meet you there?”

So I hatched onto a plan where I’d hike to Muxia first, arriving there tomorrow, then on to Finisterre the next day—two days later and the same day Karolina expected to arrive. The trail forked just a few kilometers ahead, one direction leading to Finisterre and the other to Muxia, and another trail connected the two. I wanted to visit both towns, and originally Karolina and I planned to go clockwise around the loop to hit both towns. My idea was to take the path counter-clockwise instead, hitting Muxia first then Finisterre. Karolina would cover about 1/3 of the loop and I’d cover the other 2/3 of the loop, meeting up again in Finisterre and the “End of the World.”

Once my tarp had dried from the overnight condensation, I packed up and gave Karolina a hug goodbye. “Just in case—for whatever reason—we don’t meet up or can’t find each other in Finisterre,” I told her, “I want a proper goodbye!” Last time we split up, I didn’t find her again for over three weeks. I didn’t have three weeks to find her again—I’d be going home in three days.

So I continued on without her. It was a beautiful day for walking, though, and my spirits were high. A few kilometers later, I reached the fork in the trail. The left fork heading to Finisterre, and the right fork headed to Muxia. I took the right fork, and barely a kilometer later, I crested over the top of a ridge and, way out on the horizon, I saw it. A giant body of water, sparkling blue. The Atlantic Ocean. I gasped in surprise and delight. The end of the trail. The end of the world, even. The end of the Old World, at least. I knew I was approaching the ocean, but I hadn’t expected to actually see it until I arrived in Muxia—or at least somewhere close to it. I was still nearly 30 kilometers away!

I felt a ping of sadness, though. I didn’t really want to stop walking, and seeing the Atlantic Ocean really hit me hard. I reflected on my other long-distance walks, and with every one of them, I was glad to be finishing my hikes. Oh, I had a good time with them, but when I finished those hikes, I wanted to be done. I was tired of the hiking, and the rain, and the exhaustion. I’d been on the trail for about two months now, and I wasn’t tired of it this time. I didn’t want to be done.

The trail descended again, and hills hid the Atlantic Ocean again—a feature I would not see again for the rest of the day.

The one benefit I got from changing to a counter-clockwise direction around the loop was that I now passed through Dumbria in the afternoon, a town that had a grocery store in which I could resupply. It wasn’t much of a grocery store, but it would get the job done. While wandering up and down the aisles, however, the clerk asked me if I had eaten lunch yet.
“No,” I answered, a little suspiciously. What kind of question was that?

Then he invited me to a BBQ just outside in the parking lot that was going on. I had seen them when I walked into the store but hadn’t thought much of it. “It’s free!” the clerk told me. “You’ll be our guest!”

How could I say no? He took my basket of goods and set them aside and led me outside to the BBQ. I skipped the fish and wine—not being big on either of those—but ate sausages and ribs which tasted fantastic and drank water. No one of the group spoke any English so I conversed a bit in Spanish telling them where I was from. Eventually, though, I had to get going, so I thanked the group and finished my grocery shopping.

I continued my hike, and late in the afternoon, set up camp in a field of chestnuts a little past the small town of A Grixa. I had to clear my campsite of the chestnuts on the ground—sharp little buggers, those were! I kicked them out of the grass with my shoes and set up my tarp between two chestnut trees. By sunset, the clouds were rolling in, and rain was a distinct possibility. Yep, I definitely need to set up my tarp for the night. Better safe than sorry!

Once it got dark, I laid in my sleeping bag and listened to my iPod for lack of anything else to do. My headlamp was still on the fritz and not working, so once it got dark, I couldn’t read or write in my journal. I suppose I could have pulled out my laptap and type something up, but I didn’t want to run down the battery. I might need it in town to get online later.

So I just laid in the dark, listening to my iPod until I got tired enough to fall asleep.

I saw these two cats curled up with each other on the trail.
I called them Yin and Yang. =)

The trail splits. To the left, Finisterre (and Fisterra).
To the right, Muxia. I’d go to Muxia first.

It took my breath away when I reached this viewpoint and…
what’s that I see? Is that the Atlantic Ocean? By golly, I think it is!

A cemetery in Dumbia where I refilled my water. (Even now,
I still wanted to prove Maria from Budapest wrong about all
cemeteries having potable water, but I had to concede
at this point… she was probably right.) The above-ground crypts
were certainly a lot different than the cemeteries I saw
in France, though!

This man was in charge of cooking the meat for the BBQ in Dumbria. =)

The eucalyptus trees reminded me a lot of where I grew up
in California. =)

I don’t really know what inspired me to take this photo,
but I rather like it. =)

Set up camp under some chestnut trees. =)

Day 62: Angry Cows

2013-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

October 12: It never did rain during the night, surprisingly enough. Had I made a bet, it would have been a bet I lost and lost badly. By morning, we woke up to a bit of fog but an otherwise clear day! It didn’t last long, however, as ugly and angry clouds rolled in later in the morning. Just a matter of time before the rain would start. We’d already beat the odds, but our luck wouldn’t hold forever.

According to some pilgrims, today was a holiday and many markets and shops were closed in celebration, but Karolina and I had no idea what holiday it was. Columbus Day? I told Karolina about Columbus Day in the United States—a holiday she had no reason to be familiar with—and I knew it was “about” this time of year, although I had to admit I didn’t know the exact date of it since it changed from year to year. Second Monday of October or something like that. Not really much of a holiday as far as holidays are concerned either. One of those ‘non-eventful’ holidays. Some people even felt it’s wrong to celebrate given how many indigenous people in the New World ended up dying from diseases and war. But considering that Columbus sailed from Spain, maybe Spain celebrated a version of it too?

I didn’t find out until much later when I got online, but I was essentially correct. =) They actually call it Hispanic Day (or National Day), and it commemorates the day Columbus first set foot on the New World.

At a bar, Karolina went to use the restroom, and she was gone for an unusually long period of time. When she did finally came out, I joked that I was starting to worry that the toilet monster had gotten her.

“He tried,” she answered straight-face, “but I won the battle!”

In my head, I imagined her doing battle with a plunger in hand against a giant, human-sized poop, conquering it as it crashed to the ground in defeat. It made me laugh enough to write about the exchange in my journal entry for day. =)

The rain stayed away, but Karolina walked a bit slow due to a pain on her foot that was giving her trouble. It wasn’t really a blister as such. It looked more like chaffing, actually, but at the tip of her one toe, and I didn’t really have any suggestions for what she could do to make it feel better.

Later in the afternoon, we passed a field of cows, who all seemed to be minding their own business. For whatever reason, though, Karolina had to try to “talk” to them and said, quite loudly, “Moooo!” Most of them ignored her, but one of them suddenly became very interested in her, running up to the edge of the field and even starting to climb up an embankment and threw its front hooves up a stone wall, popping its head over trying to get to Karolina. It was rather startling! Karolina panicked and all but ran down the trail away from the cow, despite the pain on her toe. It was the fastest I’d seen Karolina move all day!

Despite the cows best efforts, however, it wasn’t able to get over the rock wall and we safely got by. Karolina slowed down back to her regular pace and wondered allowed if she had somehow “insulted” the cow with her moo. “Maybe it was cow talk for ‘Your mom was salted at McDonalds’ or something,’” she told me. I laughed. Dang, that was funny. Is that how cows insult each other? =)

Karolina and I decided to take a scenic, alternative path rather than follow the main trail. Not the least of which was because since it had not yet started raining, we wanted to camp out again and the alternative path looked like it went through a forest away from civilization and roads while the main path would have provided a lot fewer camping options. Our alternative path climbed up a hill towards some wind turbines, and passed a couple more fields of cows who started mooing at us earnestly.

Karolina said that maybe her angry cow passed on the insult message to her cow friends, so now all of the cows in Galicia are after her. I encouraged this thought, agreeing, “Yes! They’re watching you! And they’ll probably have a hit squad to take you out at Finisterre! Oh, Karolina, you messed with the wrong cow!”

We set up camp near a stand of eucalyptus trees, and I set up my tarp again in case of rain. I was still more than a little surprised we’d managed to avoid it completely since leaving Santiago. We ate our dinners, and wrote in our journals. As it started to get dark, though, I was getting a little bored. My headlamp was no longer working—the battery had corroded the terminals in it—and after it got dark, I really didn’t have anything to do except listen to my iPod, talk, or fall asleep. And I had run out of things to talk about with Karolina, and I wasn’t very tired. I could listen to my iPod, but that’s kind of boring when that’s all one is doing.

If only we had 50 Shades of Grey to finish reading, I thought. But wait a minute…. I did have my Kindle, and it was filled with books! I probably had 50 books at my disposal! Except that they were all way too long to finish reading before we reached Finisterre. Well, all of them except for one….

In a fit of inspiration, I turned to Karolina. “Want to read my book?” I asked her. =)

I had told her weeks earlier about the book I wrote, A Tale of Two Trails. And she even looked through it on my Kindle wanting to see all of the pictures I drew in it, but she never had time to read it. So she was well aware of the book already, but I knew she hadn’t read it and figured she might have fun doing so. And, most importantly, it was short enough that I felt certain we could finish reading it aloud in just a couple of nights, which was all the time we had before we reached the end.

Karolina perked up at the idea, and I started reading it to her. It was a riveting tale of my hike along the West Coast Trail and Juan de Fuca Marine Trail in western Canada. They weren’t long trails—combined, they were only about 80 miles long—but for such a short trail, it packed in a heck of a lot of excitement and adventure! (If you’re interested in reading it, there is a 99 cent Kindle version available too—which you can read online if you don’t actually have a Kindle.)

After a half hour or so, I handed the Kindle over for her to continue reading. Not only was my voice getting tired, but it was getting too dark for me to read the text anymore. Karolina read with her headlamp for awhile, then when she got tired, handed it back to me—along with her headlamp so I could see what I was reading. She didn’t really need it while I was reading anyhow.

Karolina would stumble over some of the bigger words in the book, not surprising since English wasn’t her first language. I’d occasionally stumble over a word as well, but for entirely different reasons. “Do’h! That word is spelled wrong! How did I miss that after so many edits? How did all my editors miss it too?!” Or, “What the heck was I thinking when I wrote such a twisted sentence? Argh!” Karolina seemed to find these sorts of interjections amusing.

About halfway through the book, I was starting to get tired and fall asleep, and I was sure we’d set it aside and read the rest the next night when I had reached the end of the West Coast Trail but before I started the Juan de Fuca Trail. It was a natural place to stop, but Karolina was clearly enjoying the story and didn’t want to stop. Eventually, I asked to take the Kindle back so I could read it—listening to her reading it was putting me to sleep. I was just too tired. When I was doing the actual reading, though, it tended to wake me up again. So I read the last part just to keep me awake, and by golly, we finished the entire book that night.

Karolina seemed a little disappointed when the book came to an end, clearly having enjoyed it and even saying how much fun it was to read the book aloud and that she might try to talk some friends into reading books aloud when she got home. It’s really a shame Karolina wasn’t with me when I was camping with the Australian girls reading 50 Shades of Grey. “We were reading aloud every night!” I told her.

Then I set the Kindle aside and fell promptly asleep.

I’m not sure why all these snails are clustered in this telephone pole,
but when I pointed it out to Karolina, she told me,
”It’s an alburgue for snails!” Ha! =)

Karolina prepares her dinner. On a related note, that white bottle
in front of my tarp is milk. I had long since run out of
powered milk and now had to carry real milk. I deliberately
threw that bottle out in the open so it would get cold overnight, though. =)

Day 61: So now what, Kemosobe?

2013-01-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 11: Karolina and I left Santiago with a slight drizzle to dampen our parade, but the drizzle quickly stopped before it had a chance to really get us wet. However, we expected rain, despite the temporary relief. The weather forecast, which I last checked that morning, showed an 80% chance of rain all day long. The clouds certainly looked menacing.

Near lunchtime, we stopped at a bar in Augapesada—which, without confirming in my Spanish-English dictionary—I believe translates into “Heavy Water.” Seems like an appropriate day for that, although we still had managed to miss the rain. The tables and chairs outside were wet from rain earlier, and the guy running the place went around with a rag to wipe off the water and dry them all. We took a couple of seats and ordered some Cokes.

Before our Cokes even arrived, however, the rain poured lose in buckets. A drenching downpour that had Karolina and myself scrambling to pick up our bags and go inside. The sudden change was remarkable.

We finished our Cokes and stamped our credentials, looking outside occasionally to see if the rain might let up, and about 15 minutes later, it did. It still dripped from the trees and other overhanging objects, but it no longer fell out of the sky at all, so we paid our bill and headed out again. Although it wasn’t raining at the moment, we still knew that we had gotten lucky so far and it would still likely pour rain before the day was out. In the meantime, however, we enjoyed the lack of rain.

We arrived in Negeira, booking ourselves into the municipal alburgue in town—but, we were informed—they were out of beds. No more room. “So now what, Kemosabe?”

“Kemosabe?” Karolina asked. “What’s that?”

Hmm…. I thought about it and had to admit, I wasn’t really sure. Tonte said that on the Lone Ranger, right? But what did it actually mean? Was it an old Native American word with subtle meanings I didn’t know about? I just told her it meant something like “partner” or “friend.” But admittedly, I wasn’t entirely sure how to define the term. I know how to use it, but I can’t define it…. “It’s not really a word you have to be familiar with,” I told her.

Then I thought about it some more and changed my mind. “Actually, no, you should learn that word! I think it would be really funny to hear a Polish girl walking around calling people “kemosabe.” It’s not something you’d expect from someone who’s learned English as a second language! It would probably surprise a lot of native English-speaking people! =) So I had Karolina say it a few times and nail the pronunciation.

“But that still doesn’t answer my original question,” I continued. “So now what, kemosobe?”

We had a couple of options. The most obvious would be to find some other alburgue that might have still had beds available. But it hadn’t rained since our lunch stop at the bar—incredibly enough—so the ground wasn’t entirely wet. “I’m kind of partial to the idea of camping,” I told her. It would almost certainly rain overnight, but my tarp was easily big enough to fit two people under it with plenty of room to spare. “I’m not so much opposed to camping in the rain so much as I dislike setting up camp in the rain and when the ground is freshly wet.” I hadn’t really given camping much consideration today because I expected it to rain all day long. The fact that it hadn’t…. I was willing to make a go of it.

Karolina had to do some grocery shopping, so she said she’d think about and walked into town to resupply. I waited behind to watch our packs. She got back nearly an hour later. The rain had still held off in the meantime, and Karolina wanted to camp. “Let’s go, then!” I said, “Before the rain starts up!”

We hiked out of town, and I encouraged Karolina to hike faster than she probably would have preferred in an attempt to find a place to camp and set up the tarp before any rain started. Ultimately, we settled on a location a couple of kilometers out of town, on an obviously abandoned dirt road that hadn’t seen traffic in years based on its overgrown status.

Remarkably, despite the absolutely dreadful weather forecast, the only real rain the entire day was during those 15 minutes we were indoors at the bar. We got really lucky in that regard. We were completely prepared for a very wet, very miserable day, but miraculously, we missed it all!

I was stunned—holy cow! 88,022 kilometers to Finisterre?!!
I had a lot more to walk than I thought I did….
Of course, any of you familiar with how they write numbers
in Spain know that they switch around the commas and periods,
so it’s actually 88.022 kilometers to Finisterre. But
that’s almost as funny to me because it seems like an
unusually precise number. Not just 88.0 kilometers.
Not even 88.02 kilometers. But 88.022 kilometers?
Given the fact that 1 kilometer is 1000 meters, it’s like
stating 88,022 meters to Finisterre. Who the heck measure
such distance down to the meter level? Not 88,023 meters.
Not 88,021 meters. But exactly 88,022 meters. *shrug*

Drinking a Coke in Augapesada as it pours buckets of rain outside.
Interestingly, they always gave me a lemon slice whenever
I ordered a Coke.

While walking past this mirror, it occurred to me that I didn’t
have a picture of Karolina and myself together. So we
took a “group shot.” =) In unrelated news, at one point
we were walking together and I saw one of these mirrors
ahead, and I saw a gigantic full-sized bus coming around
the corner of a building in it. We were waking on a narrow road and
I told Karolina, “Big bus coming!” urging her to the side of the road.
Seconds later, the big bus turned the corner and Karolina was
amazed. “How did you KNOW that bus was coming?!”
Magic…. =) Or at least tricks and mirrors. =)

We did stop in Negeira long enough for a few silly photos. =)
I love how that woman statue looks like its looking at Karolina,
almost as if in shock at Karolina grabbing the other
statue’s butt. =)

I get a little friendly with a statue as well….

Camped in the middle of an old dirt road.

Day 60: Whittling Your Carrot

2013-01-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

The video of today's swinging incense burner at mass,
but this time, from the back of the church. =)

October 10: When I woke up in the morning, I still hadn’t decided if I was going to spend another day in Santiago or not. When I first arrived, I figured absolutely not. One zero day was plenty! But I had such a good time the day before, catching up with several pilgrims I hadn’t seen in for weeks, and I found myself more and more inclined to spend another day in town and see who else I could find.

Regardless, I definitely planned to head to the cathedral around mass to see what new pilgrims arrived in town. I expected Karolina to be there now that I knew she was in town, but there could be others I knew who I didn’t know arrived in town as well. So if I did any hiking today, it probably wouldn’t be until 2:00 in the afternoon at the earliest. Most pilgrims usually stop hiking by 2:00 in the afternoon. The idea of another zero day was very appealing.

I went downstairs where I ate breakfast (included with the cost of the room)—cereal, toast, orange juice, muffin, and an apple. I got online and checked the weather forecast—a chance of rain today, and all but guaranteed the couple of days after that. It wasn’t a forecast I liked, and I refreshed my browser page hoping it would return something different, but it didn’t. It continued to stick with its miserable forecast.

And finally, after hemming and hawing, I finally decided to take another zero day.

Late in the morning, I headed out to the cathedral before mass to find out who showed up. I didn’t see anyone I knew in the main square, and with nothing better to do, I first wandered into a door to the left of the main entrance where I inquired about the “tower tour.” I first learned that they give guided tours of the cathedral—to areas where most peons can’t go—from Nancy, Jeannie, and MaryK the day before, but we wound up drinking at a restaurant and chatting with passing pilgrims (occasionally providing applause to newly arriving pilgrims) and missed the tour. Since I was going to be in town another day, though, I was inclined to do it. The woman there told me that an English-language “roof tour” was scheduled for 5:00 that afternoon. Ten euros for non-pilgrims, and eight euros for pilgrims. (Our credentials were our proof of pilgrim-ess.)

“I’ll be back at 5:00, then!” I told the lady. =)

Then I took a loop around the cathedral where I spotted Karolina sitting with her journal near a side entrance. Karolina!!!

It felt so good finally catch up with her again. According to my journal, it had been 23 days since I last saw her in Burgos—more than three weeks earlier. Out of everyone I’d met since I left Le Puy, it was Karolina I had bonded with the most. She hadn’t told me much about her adventures since then in her emails—she didn’t carry a laptop, after all!—and wanted to save the stories to tell me in person anyhow, so it wasn’t until now I figured out how I had gotten so far ahead of her. When I left Burgos, I was absolutely convinced that Karolina had to be ahead of me because I left so much later than the time when hostels started kicking people out, but that assumption turned out to be wrong. She stuck around Burgos later in the morning to visit the cathedral with Maria. So when I spent the whole day thinking I’d catch up to her, she was already behind me. Then she had blister problems that slowed her down even further until I had worked myself two full hiking days ahead.

And speaking of blisters, I inquired about any new ones she had gotten and their names, and she said she’d gotten a bunch of smaller blisters, but that they weren’t big enough to individually keep track of. So she called the group on her one foot the Spice Girls and the group on the other foot Monsters, Inc. after the characters in the movie.

It started to sprinkle outside, so we moved into the cathedral to continue our conversation. The pews were already filling up quite a bit when we entered, and although there was still space on the floor where I sat the day before, the entrance we came in from had a set of stairs leading down that would make perfectly comfortable seats and allow us to stay out of the way where people couldn’t trip over us. And it should provide a great view of the swinging incense burner. “Let’s sit here on the steps!” I told her. So we did. =)

Karolina found a guy she had met on the trail, Brian, I believe it was, and introduced us, and quizzed him about a place to stay. Karolina had stayed in a hostel the night before, but didn’t much like it there and had heard about another place with a private room for a few euros more there in town where Brian was staying, so she quizzed him for directions.

Brian also told us that he was going to celebrate his completion of the trail by going to McDonalds for lunch. I kind of rolled my eyes at this. I didn’t really have a problem with this per se, but I why make such an effort for McDonalds? He went on about not having McDonalds since starting the trail, and by golly, he was craving it in a big way. Filling out every stereotype of Americans. I said something to that effect in a jokingly sort of way, at which point he told me he was actually Canadian, not American at all. Lived in Vancouver. Which perplexed me even more. I hadn’t realized that Canadians were so fond of McDonalds! Maybe he’d have gone for a Tim Hortons (or something) instead had one been available in town.

A bit later, Vivian found us and joined us as well. Mass went on like it did the day before, although this time Charles wasn’t around to say a few words. During that part, however, Karolina turned to me and said, “That guy is speaking Polish!” I listened to the speech, listening for anything that sounded distinctly Polish—whatever that might be—but it just sounded like a European language I’d never heard before.

The swinging of the incense burner was just as impressive from my new perch in the back of the church as it was from the front of it, but this time I had a view of hundreds of cameras, the back screens lit up, taking photos and videos of the spectacle. It was strangely hypnotic, and not something you’d see from the front.

After mass was over, Karolina and I went in search of a place for her to stay the night, following the directions Brian had provided, but after about 15 minutes, we couldn’t find the place and gave up the search. Brian had expressed an interest in the roof tour, so she hoped she’d see him then and he could take her to the place. But it meant she’d have to lug around her full pack for the rest of the day.

I told her she could leave it in my hotel room if she wanted to, an idea that appealed to her, so we walked back to my hotel for her to dump her pack. Then we headed off to visit a particularly colorful statue of two short, but more-or-less life-sized women. I’d first seen the statue the day before and knew Karolina would be game for some silly photos with it. =)

The one woman of the statue had a hand extended, and I thought it would be funny if I got down on my knee and pretended like I was proposing to it. Karolina thought it would be funny if it looked like the statue was grabbing her ass. So we did both versions. I’ll let you readers decide which worked out the best. =) Then I had Karolina climb up on the shoulders of the statue where I took a couple of more pictures before she got back down again.

At which point a Spanish woman—a real one, not the statue!—said something to us in Spanish that was clearly not in a pleasant “How are you?” kind of voice. So I said I didn’t know Spanish. Oh, I certainly knew enough to know she was angry about something, but I really didn’t want to hear it either, and for once, pleading ignorance of Spanish seemed like it would be in my best interest.

As it turned out, however, the woman knew English as well, then proceeded to chew out Karolina and me for our little photo shoot—that it was disrespectful and could have damaged the statue. Disrespectful? It’s a friggin’ statue! There weren’t any little signs on it that said no touching. And we clearly had not damaged the statue. And we were already done. Sheesh. Sorry, little old, cranky lady. Life must be good for her if the worst thing happening in her life was a couple of tourists taking some silly photos with their statue.

On our way back into the old town, we saw Vivian having lunch at a restaurant and joined her. I have absolutely idea how the discussion veered into eye colors, but I remember it ended with Karolina taking off her glasses so we could see her eyes clearly—and we were stunned to find that her eyes were both different colors. Her one eye seemed to change color from one side to the other. It was freakishly weird. Kind of cool, but oh so weird.

“And you aren’t wearing any contacts or anything that are doing that?” we asked, unsure if this was some sort of trick.

But no, that was her natural eye colors. I had to get a photo of it.

What does she put for her eye color on a drivers license? I can’t imagine that they allow people to put two different colors, one for each eye? And what about that one eye that actually changes color within the eye? Karolina is a MUTANT!!! It’s the only logical explanation! =)

Karolina intended to continue hiking on to Finisterre and Muxia, just like I was, but after that, she was thinking about continuing her hike along the Portuguese route—perhaps all the way out to Lisbon. I originally wanted to do this, but had to chop off that section when I decided that I didn’t want to walk, on average, 30+ kilometers per day. So I was a little envious of her being able to do the Portuguese section. However, to do it, she needed a guidebook for the route, so we headed off in search of one.

And in the crowded conditions of the alleys of the old town area, I was following behind Karolina when I accidentally stepped on the back of her foot. “Oops! Sorry about that!”

Which is when Karolina asked me about what it’s called, in English, when you take a stick and shave parts of it off with a knife. “Whittling?” I suggested, not really sure what she was getting at.

“There’s a Polish saying,” she told me, “when you step on the back of someone’s foot like that, we say you’re ‘whittling your carrot.’”

“I like it,” I told her. It somehow sounds dirty and funny at the same time. “I’m sorry about whittling your carrot, though.”

Karolina and I went into a couple of bookstores in search of an English-language guidebook for the Portuguese camino—or even a Polish version would have been fine for her, but that seemed even more unlikely than finding an English-language guidebook, but nobody had it.

I took her to one other bookstore that I had visited the day before, but warned her that I didn’t think they had the book since I hadn’t seen it on my earlier visit. I wasn’t actually looking for a Portugal camino guidebook at the time, though, so maybe I had just overlooked it. They did have a lot of books about the camino, though.

Except when we arrived, the bookstore was closed. We looked at their window display, however, and saw the exact guidebook we were looking for. “There it is!” We just had to come back when the store was actually open a half hour later.

We did come back a half hour later, and looked inside the store for the book, but couldn’t find it. I finally asked the desk clerk, in Spanish, where they had their Portuguese camino guidebooks.

“We don’t have any,” he told us.

“Umm….” I hadn’t expected this as an answer. “But yes, you do!” I insisted. “We saw the book in the window!”

He insisted that they didn’t have any guidebooks for the Portuguese section, so I had him follow me to the window and I pointed at it. “That book. That’s the book we want.”

He seemed surprised that it was there, but went into the window display and pulled out the book from there and handed it to me. Apparently, it was the only copy of the book in the store.

Karolina looked through it for a couple of minutes before purchasing it.

How time flies when you’re having fun…. At this point, the roof tour was going to start soon, so we headed back to the Cathedral in time for that. The roof tour was absolutely awesome, and it is indeed an actual roof tour. The tour guide took us out onto the uneven roof. The rain had mostly stopped, but drops still sputtered and a terrific wind blew through shredding my umbrella to pieces. Literally. There’s not really much to report about the roof tour. We walked around it, and the guide told us about the cathedral and carvings and such. The views were wonderful, though, and we could see stuff from angles that most people will never see. Looking down from a bird’s eye view into the cathedral was pretty awesome. =)

Brian didn’t do the roof tour, however, so Karolina started growing more concerned about figuring out where she’d stay the night, but about a half hour after the roof tour ended, we crossed paths with Brian again.

“Did you find the McDonalds?” I asked.

Oh, yes, he did. And supposedly, make quite a spectacle of himself ordering all sorts of food. =)

Then he led Karolina and me to the place he was staying at. The woman took Karolina upstairs to show her the room, and I waited with Brian down below. A few minutes later, Karolina returned and we left. The room wasn’t quite made up completely when it was shown to Karolina and she told the woman that “she’d think about it,” although I didn’t learn that until after we had stepped outside. At the very least, I knew Karolina couldn’t ditch me quite yet because I still had her pack in my hotel room.

Brian was talking about eating dinner at Burger King—which I knew was a couple of blocks away from my hotel since I had passed by it several times—but I had absolutely no interest in that. I never really liked Burger King in the United States. I really didn’t want it in Spain! I hadn’t had any sort of American chain food since I arrived in Europe more than two months earlier, and it felt wrong to even consider the idea. Without voicing any of these thoughts, though, I suggested that Karolina needed to get her pack from my hotel and we split off.

“There is absolutely no way I want to eat at Burger King,” I told her. “I’d pretty much be willing to eat anywhere other than Burger King. I’d even try one of those ugly-looking octopuses before I’d want to eat at Burger King.”

She was in agreement about not wanting to eat there, however, and needed no convincing from me.

“So where do you want to eat?” she asked.

I shrugged. I didn’t really care. “Just not Burger King.” I’d only been in Santiago for two days. I hadn’t yet found a “favorite place to eat” yet.

“Truth be told,” I told her, “if you weren’t here, I’d just go to the supermarket, buy some food, and eat in my room.”

“I’m okay with that!”

So that’s what we did. We did our food shopping. I finished first and told her just to meet me at my room. I’d go on ahead and try to clean it up a bit. I had my gear all spread out on the floor and the place was a general wreck.

I didn’t really “clean up” so much as I did throw all my gear onto one side of the bed, between the bed and the wall, clearing up the rest of the floor for walking. Karolina arrived several minutes later, and I impressed her with the English language television stations I had managed to pull up. Two and a Half Men were on, apparently a show Karolina really enjoyed. At least until Charlie Sheen had been replaced with Ashton Kutcher. This was an old Charlie Sheen episode, though.

We watched TV for an hour or so and ate dinner, but by around 9:00, I thought it was starting to get late and asked Karolina if she was going to take that room at the other hotel or not. “I don’t have a problem if you want to crash on the floor here tonight, but if you do want that room, you probably should get going. That woman isn’t going to want you knocking on her door at midnight looking for a room!”

Karolina seemed shocked it was already 9:00 at night. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. =) And she seemed a little concerned that her sleeping on the floor might bother me, but I assured her I had absolutely no problem with that. In fact, I preferred it that way. I wanted my camping buddy back on the trail, and the last time we parted ways with the expectation of camping again later, we didn’t see each other for over three weeks! At least if she crashed on my floor overnight, I’d know where to find her the next day. =) So that’s what we ended up doing.

At about 9:30, she asked me if I was still going to go. “Go where?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Your three friends at the train station.”

Oh! I had totally forgotten about that! I had mentioned earlier in the afternoon to Karolina, that I wanted to wander down to the trail station to see off Nancy, Jeannie, and MaryK, but had completely spaced it. Karolina didn’t know them, so, so I left her behind to catch up on her email with my laptop. I bought a container of grapes at the supermarket—which held more than I could eat, so I took that with me to give to the girls.

At this hotel, when you leave, they expect you to give them the key for the room while you’re gone. The key is also is used to power the electricity in the room. You slide it in a little slot by the door, and electricity for the room goes on. I guess it’s to make sure that you can’t leave on the air-conditioner, heater, TV, etc. when you aren’t actually in the room to enjoy it. But I was supposed to be alone in this room. Depending on the alertness of the desk clerk, it might look a little suspicious if I left without giving them the key for the room. But if I did that, it would leave Karolina in the dark. Literally.

“Don’t worry, though,” I told her. “I have a trick.” I pulled out my wallet and took out an old phone card I carried that I couldn’t even use in Europe. It was about the size and shape of the keycard, and I took out the key from the slot plunging the room into darkness, then shoved in the calling card and the lights and TV came back on. “As long as it’s roughly the size and shape of a credit card, anything will work in that little slot.”

I walked downstairs, gave the key to the desk clerk, then walked outside and down to the train station where I caught up with the three who seemed absolutely shocked to see me there. “What are you doing here?” they asked.

“Well, it’s like this,” I told him, pulling out my grapes. “I bought these grapes, but I couldn’t eat them all myself. And I knew you guys were leaving on the 10:30 train, so I knew I’d find you here and maybe you’d help me finish them off.” =)

They didn’t believe that story, though. “No, really, why are you here?”

“Just to say hi! Or bye, as the case may be!” They did believe that, but were still incredulous that I’d do such a thing.

They told me about their day—the long bus ride to Finisterre, and that the rain and wind were so bad, that they hadn’t even made it out to the lighthouse before turning around and taking the bus back to Santiago. I told them about the roof tour and how they missed out. I hung out with them for a half hour or so, until their train arrived at the station and they hugged me goodbye and boarded the train.

I headed back to the hotel. Karolina made herself a nest of sorts on the floor, and I gave her the five-foot long pillow from my bed that she could use as padding. (I don’t know why, but all of the pillows in Europe seem to be five feet long. It’s so long, I don’t even know what to do with them and wind up not using any pillow at all.)

Weirdest freakin’ eye color I’ve ever seen! Especially that left one! Kind of cool,
but so weird…. I’m a little disappointed that my camera didn’t really
seem to pick up the colors as well as it appeared in real life.

Looking down into the south side of the cathedral from the roof.

Day 59: Giant Incense Burners, Paramedics, and Webcam Adventures!

2013-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 9: Santiago! The promised land! Without a doubt, I intended to take a zero day and explore this bustling town. You read my webcam misadventures at the wine fountain, but you didn’t read about another aborted webcam cameo in Burgos. The webcam Wassa found was indeed pointed at the cathedral I would be walking past, but it was probably a half mile away and if I was visible at all, I’d have been the size of a mere pixel.

Wassa had been wanting to catch me in real time, live on a webcam somewhere, and I found an online website in front of Santiago Cathedral at http://www.crtvg.es/crtvg/camaras-web/praza-do-obradoiro#.ULPFSoZXlLY — look for me there I told him, somewhat jokingly. “I was there yesterday, and I’ll be there again today.” Not sure when I’d be there, but Wassamatta u, I knew, had nothing better to do than watch a webcam in Spain all day, right? =)

Before leaving my hotel room in the morning, I checked my email and he was online, so I told him that I’d be leaving the hotel and probably be in front of the cathedral in as little as 15 minutes. I told him I’d be carrying an umbrella—it was raining outside, after all, and I headed out.

I arrived at the cathedral, where I spotted Vivian, the Australian women I met the first day I hiked out of Saint Jean. It wasn’t a coincidence—I’d gone there specifically to meet her. I hadn’t seen her since the day I left Burgos. She skipped a large section to Leon and had forever since been two days ahead of me. We kept in touch through email, though, and knew she was still in Santiago meeting up with all of her friends she had left behind. Which included me. =)

I told Vivian we had to stand around in front of the cathedral for at least a few minutes so Wassa would have a chance to spot us. We saw a camera on one of the buildings, and I pointed to it saying that I thought that was the webcam. The angle was right. We waved to the camera, and Vivian wanted to see us on it herself so she pulled out her smart phone, loaded up the website with the webcam, and there we were! It wasn’t a very good image of us, though. We were tiny little dots, and had we not known where we were standing, we’d have had a tough time picking ourselves out of the image. With her smart phone, though, we could also see that we were close to the edge of the photo, near the back, and we moved into a more prominent location to make it easier for Wassa to find us.

We were out there, on display in front of the webcam for probably 15 minutes or so, and later, when I got back to the hotel and got online, checked if he had seen me. He probably did, but said he couldn’t tell which of the dots were me because everyone had umbrellas. There wasn’t enough detail to pick me up. Drats. Foiled again….

Vivian and I went out for breakfast catching up on each others adventures, then she directed me to a fairly large bookstore where I went in search of a guidebook for Finisterre and Muxia, but we came up empty. It wasn’t that critical since I had maps for most of the distance, but it would have been nice.

Eventually, we headed back to the cathedral for mass. I hadn’t been to mass since… well, the very first day I started my hike in Le Puy. =) Somehow, it seemed appropriate to bookend each end of my pilgrimage with a mass.

Vivian took us to the very front for a seat on the ground in front of the very front pew. Shortly before mass started, they roped off the area where we sat, not allowing anyone else where we were. But then Hilary found us, and when the coast was clear, she ducked under the rope and joined us. =)

This mass had a few differences from the one I was at in Le Puy. For instance, this time, they all spoke Spanish rather than French. Which meant I could actually pick out some of the words they said, although they still spoke too fast for me to understand the entire sentences.

Then, I was a little surprised to see Charles, the priest from New Zealand, up there dressed in priestly robes. It looked like they took several pilgrims from various countries to speak a few words, and Charles came up and said his few words—in English since he couldn’t even pronounce the word ‘alburgue’ correctly in Spanish if you threatened him with his life. =) There were half a dozen of these pilgrim talkers, but Charles was the only one I actually knew. I assumed the others must have been priests in their respective countries as well, and they clearly spoke all sorts of languages that I couldn’t recognize. Undoubtedly, some of them were French, German, Korean, and who knows what all else. I rather liked the international spectacle.

And then, there was one other little difference: the incense burner. This was no ordinary incense burner. It’s called the Botafumeiro, a famous thurible (yeah, I didn’t know the word either) is enormous, weighing in at 80 kilograms (about 176 pounds), and burns an enormous hunk of incense as its swung dramatically through the cathedral on a pulley system. Truth be told, probably 95% of the people who go to this mass are here specifically to see the incense burner swinging through the structure.

They lowered the Botafumeiro, started the incense burning, then a priest swung it by hand as far as he could to get the thing started at which point six guys in robes pulled at the rope attached to it to swing it higher and higher and higher! Cameras flashed everywhere, an endless parade of flashing lights that gave the whole event even more appeal. From our perch in front of the front pew, the incense burner seemed to pass almost immediately over us. We could practically reach out and touch it—if we wanted our hand ripped off as it swung by.

So very awesome. *nodding*

Then it slowed down to a stop and mass was over.

I wanted to stop and see crypt at allegedly held Saint James’s mortal remains, but I decided to come back later and see it. Now that everyone was leaving the mass, the line for it was absolutely enormous. I'd come back later when things were less crowded!

Vivian was the first to peal off. Hilary and I wandered around a bit before we eventually parted ways as well.

An hour after mass had ended, I headed back to the cathedral to check out the lines. There were actually two lines. One that went down to the crypt with Saint James’s remains, but the other went up to a large statue of the apostle, which I thought looked kind of like a large Buddha, which people can hug or whatever. I walked around to check out the lines where I saw Nancy and MaryK.

“Hey!” I said, “How are you guys! Did you catch mass?” =)

Nancy seemed positively freaked out, though, and told me that Jeannie was in there helping someone who had hurt themselves. Huh? I was completely oblivious to anything unusual going on.

Eventually, I pieced together the story that they had gone up to see the “Buddah,” but on the way down, a woman had fallen and hurt herself. Since nobody else seemed to know what they were doing, Nancy pushed Jeannie into going in to help. Jeannie was a doctor of some sort, so probably knew what to do better than the rest of us did. But Nancy was really quite agitated and worried about Jeannie. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told her to go in there?”

Eventually, some cathedral personnel happened along and closed off the doors leading into and out of the Buddha exhibit, and we were told that help was on its way. In the meantime, we waited around the exit for Jeannie to come out. About ten minutes later, she popped her head out asking if paramedics were on their way—this woman needs help ASAP. We told her that that’s what we were told, help was on its way. We had no idea why it was taking so long, though. We were in the middle of a major city in Spain. It seemed like help should have been practically right around the corner. Jeannie went back to the hurt woman and we continued waiting outside just chatting. I tried to cheer Nancy up and assured her that sending Jeannie in was the right thing to do and that she’d be fine. And I tried to distract her from the emergency by talking about other stuff.

MaryK was funny, though—“Oh, it’s YOU!” At which point she admitted that she didn’t recognize me at first. “Who’s this strange guy who acts like he knows us?” I’d always seen them while hiking on the trail when I always wore my hat with the handkerchief underneath it. Since I was indoors and in the cathedral, I didn’t have the hat or handkerchief on my head, she completely didn’t recognize me. It wasn’t the first time this had happened—apparently, I look quite different when I’m in town and when I’m hiking. =)
Another ten minutes go by, and even I’m starting to grow a little concerned about the lack of paramedics arriving. What the hell is taking them so long? It’s not like we were out in the boonies in some sort of obscure, hard-to-find location. We were at probably the most well-known building in the entire city, the middle of a big city! Finally, though, paramedics arrived. I still have no idea what took them so long, but Jeannie finally left the woman and rejoined the rest of us where we got more details.

The woman who had hurt herself, she told us, had high heals on, and on the steep, narrow staircase, Jeannie thought she must have slipped or stumbled and fell hard down the steps. The steps were solid rock—not wooden, or carpeted, or anything soft. Just solid rock, and she apparently hit her head pretty hard and was going into shock. She was modest, though, saying she didn’t really do anything for the woman, except monitor her pulse and making sure nobody moved her until the paramedics arrived. “And why did that take so long?” she asked us. We shook our heads. “Don’t know.”

“Well,” I told them, “you girls certainly know how to keep things interesting!”

I walked around with them a bit, and they needed to go down to the train station to buy their tickets back to Madrid. Looking at a map, I could see that the route to the train station went right past my hotel and I volunteered to lead the way. I didn’t really have anything else to do now that mass was over. They planned to get tickets for the afternoon a couple of days later, but were told that that trail was full. The 10:30 PM train tomorrow night, however, still had space, and that’s what they booked for themselves. Then I walked back towards the cathedral with them again.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with them, a pleasant time. They seemed surprised that I would want to hang around with them all day. Not at all disappointed that I did, but just surprised, as if I wouldn’t want anything to do with three women that might have been old enough to have been my mother. (I don’t know how old they are—but they’ve definitely got at least a decade or two on me!)

During dinner, I got online. I had told the girls about my webcam misadventures and said that I still didn’t know if Wassa had seen me or not that morning since I hadn’t been online. So I got online to find out, and I learned two things:

First, I got an email from Vivian saying that she had bumped into Karolina in town and was currently in front of the cathedral if I wanted to catch up with her. Unfortunately, the email was sent an hour earlier so presumably, Karolina wouldn’t have been there anymore. But at least I knew she was in town and I should keep my eyes open. At the very least, I could probably find her at mass the next day.

And secondly, Wassa did see a lot of people in the webcam, but he couldn’t identify me specifically because everyone was carrying umbrellas. I reported the findings to the girls. I replied to Wassa saying that that was disappointing or something, and he replied almost immediately since he was still online. Not surprisingly, really, since it was probably close to noon Pacific time where he lived. Maybe we could give it another shot?

I told him it wasn’t raining anymore—not at the moment, at least—so nobody had their umbrellas open. I’d go back to the cathedral and twirl around my open umbrella. Look for the figure with an open umbrella. I’ll be the only one this time! I told him to give me a half hour or so. I wasn’t that far away, but I was still at dinner and needed to finish up before walking down there.
The girls were headed to the cathedral again as well, so we all started off. They bumped into some other pilgrims they knew that I did not, however, and stopped to talk to them. I knew Wassa would be waiting and looking for me on the webcam, so I didn’t want to linger and continued on. “Catch up with me in front of the cathedral when you’re done!” =)

The cathedral still had quite a few people milling around, but none of them had any open umbrellas. Perfect! I opened up mine, and started twirling it around in the air to get the attention of the webcam. =) I did this for about ten minutes when I spotted two of the Australian girls I had been camping with earlier—Kathy and Emily—so we chatted for a few minutes.

“Did you finish 50 Shades of Grey?” I asked, curious.

Yes, they did.

“Let me guess—it ends with Anna signing the contract and that’s what the next book is about, right?”

“No, she didn’t! They break up at the end!”

Really? Wow—well, I guess that why there’s a sequel. =)

One of the character names in the book is “Grey,” and I joked that the sequel—called 50 Shades Darker, must be about a different man Anna sleeps around with named Darker.

In other news, Erin had apparently fallen ill and was getting better in a hostel somewhere. All the while we’re talking, I’m still swinging around the open umbrella as if I were Mary Poppins, and explained that I was trying to get the attention of someone who was watching a webcam. =)

They continued on, and eventually Nancy, MaryK, and Jeannie arrived they all waved to the webcam. They came to see the cathedral lit up at night, but it wasn’t really lit up at all and they were a bit disappointed about that.

At that point, I had spent about an hour swinging around my umbrella, and I figured that was good enough. If Wassa hadn’t spotted me then, he never would. I walked back to my hotel for the night and waved goodbye to the girls, already thinking about seeing them off from the train station the next day. I hadn’t decided if I’d take another day (or not) in Santiago, but if I did, I knew when their train was departing. I rather liked the idea of going down there to surprise them and wish them good luck. =) But that would only happen if I stayed in town for an extra day….

I set with Hilary (center) and Vivian (right) waiting for mass to start. =)
Vivian took this photo with her phone which, I suppose, might be
why this one is so grainy compared to the others.

Charles, the priest from New Zealand, says a few words at mass. It was
kind of neat to see him here, not just at the podium, but because I first
met him my first night in Saint Jean. I thought I’d never see him
again after that, but not only did I see him quite often along the
trail, but we wound up in Santiago at the same time. =)

This pillar, near the bottom, is where millions of pilgrims
have worn their fingertips into the bottom of it. (If you’ve
watched The Way, this is that column.) It’s
blocked off so people can’t touch it anymore, though.

I stand triumphant in front of the cathedral.

Because, you know, you just can’t take too many photos
of yourself in front of the cathedral. =)

From left to right, Jeannie, MaryK, and Nancy.

Galicia, apparently, is famous for their octopus. Yum!

I rather liked the look of this dish with the food being
served on scallop shells. How appropriate!

Wassa finally catches me on a webcam in front of the cathedral
in Santiago! =) The commentary is his own....

Swinging the incense burner higher and higher and higher!
Here the incense burner goes so high, it seemed like it was about to hit the ceiling! Here's a video from YouTube with some nice shots of the Santiago Cathedral which is pretty cool. I did NOT make this video, however. =) The only thing I really feel is missing from it is that they never actually show the swinging incense burner. An oversight, I'm sure.

Day 58: Santiago!

2013-01-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 8: It rained overnight—a lot!—but my tarp did me proud and kept me dry. By morning, the rain had stopped, but an extremely thick fog with fat drops seemed to seep into everything and tree snot from the eucalyptus trees kept hitting my tarp, so I wasn’t always sure if it was actually raining or not without looking into the clear cut of trees.

Most of the day’s hiking was an unpleasant road walk. I’ve seen photos of the Santiago Cathedral from a distance that seem to dominate the skyline, and I kept my eyes open for that, but I never saw it through the thick fog. I didn’t stop for any but the briefest of rest breaks and a drink at a trailside restaurant. I was anxious to see Santiago in person, and anxious to arrive before the rain started—a probability that seemed to increase throughout the day.

I followed the yellow arrows through the streets of Santiago until I arrived at the square in front of the cathedral, a towering masterpiece of architecture. It was the end of the Camino. Oh, sure, I still planned to hike on towards Finisterre, but //this// was the “real” end of the trail. This is where 95% of the people who walk the Camino call it quits. Looking around, I was surrounded by dozens of other people, many of which were clearly pilgrims, but nobody I recognized. I felt a little sad about that. It somehow seemed wrong to have arrived by myself like I did.

I didn’t go inside the cathedral—not yet, anyhow. Mass is held each day at noon, and I had missed it by a couple of hours. I would return tomorrow for mass, and I didn’t want to see the inside of the cathedral until then.

In the meantime, I had a reservation at a hotel to check into. I didn’t know the name of the hotel, nor did I know it’s location. I had gotten online briefly the day before at a computer station in a restaurant when I made the reservation, leaving my pack with the Australian girls at the time, so I had nothing to write with or write on after I made the reservation. The information was online, though, if I could find somewhere to get online.

But I was pretty sure I remembered that the word “nest” was in the name of the hotel, so I wandered over to the tourist office where I had my credential stamped, picked up a map of the city, and asked if they had a list of the available lodging in town I could look through. They did, and I scrolled through the list looking for a place with the word “nest” in the name. I didn’t find it, though, and scrolled through the ten pages of the list a second time to make sure I hadn’t overlooked it, but I still didn’t find it. Shoot.

I asked about Internet access, and the woman at the tourist office said that a restaurant just around the corner from there had wi-fi. Perfect! I thanked her and headed out to the restaurant.

I pulled out my laptop, but the wi-fi connection required a password. Drats. I suppose I could actually BUY something and ask for the code, but I just wanted to log in for the ten seconds it was necessary to look up my reservation details. The guy at the table next to me was typing on his laptop, and I asked him if he was online and new the password to get on. No, he didn’t. Drats!

But a woman passing by had heard me and said she had eaten there the day before and had the password. She went to look it up on her cell phone, but the password was obscured as passwords often are and she couldn’t read it to me.

“Would you mind if I just logged in with your cell phone?” I asked. “Just be second! I only want to look up my reservation so I know where my hotel is!”

She didn’t have a problem with this and gave me her phone. I don’t have a cell phone, smart or otherwise, and I’m not particularly experienced figuring out how to navigate the web on them. Trying to go back a page after clicking a wrong link, or finding the “login” button when I did get to the right website—these were all challenges for me. It probably took me close to five minutes—far longer than I would have imagined—but I finally managed to look up my reservation for the “Nest Style Hotel Santiago” and the address.

I found the street on my map from the tourist office and now knew where I was going. =) I used booking.com for my reservation (if you ever need a hotel reservation in Europe, I think this is THE website to use for it), and the woman started asking me all sorts of questions about it. She hadn’t used it before but had heard a lot about it. Since she was kind enough to lend me her cell phone to look up my reservation, I helped explain to her how that website worked and helped her make a reservation for herself in Barcelona a couple of days later. She had a reservation to fly back to the United States from Barcelona. It’s an usual option back to the states, and I asked why she didn’t get a flight back from Madrid like most people do. It’s closer and cheaper to go to.

“I’m flying US Airways,” she told me.

Now, I know a thing or two about US Airways, and I know for a fact that they have flights out of Madrid, so that didn’t really answer my question. In fact, I was planning to fly out on US Airways myself, but I planned to fly out from Madrid. So I said that US Airways had flights out of Madrid too—so why Barcelona? Just curious—no wrong answer here (except implying that US Airways didn’t have flights to Madrid—that WOULD be a wrong answer!), and she went on about having never been to Barcelona before. That’s as good as reason as any. =)

While we were talking, a waiter came along asking if he could get anything for us. I felt a little guilty taking up their table and using their wi-fi without actually buying anything, so I said I’d have a Coke. And it’s not like I wouldn’t enjoy it either. The Coke arrived, and much to my surprise, included a silver tray with potato chips on it. The bill for the Coke was 2.50 euros—kind of steep for a small bottle of Coke. The cost, I assumed, was because it included the cost of the “free” potato chips that I didn’t really want in the first place. The woman said she “accidentally” bought a 20 euro lunch the day before. “This place isn’t cheap!”

I finished my drink and potato chips, then headed off in search of my hotel. I found it about ten minutes later, right where my map said it would be, and checked in for the night. The room was small but serviceable, and I had my own private bathroom that wasn’t crowded into the size of a small closet. I hate those showers that are so small you can’t even bend over to pick up that dropped bar of soap or you have to step out of the bathroom just to dry off with your towel, so I was pretty happy to have the full-sized bathroom at my disposal. =) And all for just 35 euros. Almost all of the other hotels in town were going for nearly twice that amount.

After showering and cleaning up, I headed back to the hotel lobby and returned my key to the desk clerk. (They want you to turn in your key whenever you leave the hotel.) I asked where the nearest grocery store was, and the desk clerk told me outside, right across the street. I walked outside, and sure enough, there was a large grocery store. I felt a little sheepish that I hadn’t noticed it on my way in. =) I did my grocery shopping, then headed back into the historical town center where I checked in at the pilgrim’s office to register my successful walk. I arrived there at close to 7:00 and avoided the crowds earlier in the day.

An English-speaking man greeted me when I entered the room, and asked where I had started from. “Le Puy-en-Velay,” I answered.

He said, “So you started, what? Last week?” Obviously a joke.

“No,” I told him, “the trail was a lot more difficult than I had thought. It took me closer to two weeks!”

He congratulated me on my hike—certainly not the longest one anyone has done, but definitely one of the longer ones they see arriving into town and told me to walk up to the counter in the next room and they’ll take care of me.

I did so, and had my choice between three different clerks twiddling their thumbs. I picked the guy closest to me, and he took my two credentials, looking through them and asking me about the purpose of my journey since they give people a different compostela depending on the reason. I said something about it being a “cultural journey” for me, and they stamped both of the credentials I had used, had me fill out a form with my name, citizenship and where I started from, handed me a compostela, return my credentials and congratulated me.

The compostela, my certificate for having completed the trail. According to the church, half of all my sins have been washed away upon completion of my journey. Had I hiked in a Holy Year (the next one is 2021), all of my sins would have been washed away. I didn’t feel any different, though. The only difference was that now I had a sheet of paper that said something in Latin that I couldn’t read. And truth be told, it wasn’t even a very pretty piece of paper. No artful design. No colorful images of the cathedral. Just a flat, off-white sheet of paper.

And that was my first problem: What do to with that sheet of paper. It seemed like it would be wrong to fold it up or bend it, but I didn’t have anywhere in my pack that I could safely store a sheet of paper without damaging it. Many pilgrims, I was told, buy little tubes to store it in, rolled up safely, until they get back home. I didn’t really want to carry a tube, though, and they didn’t have anymore available at the pilgrim’s office anyhow. I rolled it up and carried it for the time being, but I’d have to do something with it eventually.

Then I headed back to the hotel for the night. The laminated welcome page they had in my room said you could switch the TV to English, but the directions for that weren’t particularly clear. So I bungled around with the TV remote control for about ten minutes before I figured out how to change many of the stations into English. English! Not off the stations were in English—their local news, for instance, didn’t have an English-language counterpart. But now I could watch exciting shows like Two and a Half Men, American Dad, or CSI in English. =) Oddly, The Simpsons was still in Spanish. I knew there was an English-language counterpart for that show, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t available.

But for most of the night, I caught up on email, blog posts, and watched way too many episodes of “How It’s Made” on their version of the Science Channel. =)

Although it didn’t actually rain during my walk into Santiago,
the weather certainly wasn’t good either!

After I had checked into my hotel, though, it did
start to rain. Officially, though, I consider this a
non-rain day since I didn’t actually have to hike in the rain! =)

A courtyard outside of the cathedral.

The Santiago Cathedral! I had made it!

A woman getting her picture taken with a pilgrim statue, you think?
No, that’s not a statue! That’s a guy who makes his
living dressing up as an old pilgrim and has people pay him
to have your photo taken with him. I didn’t want to pay,
though, and took this photo of a complete stranger
getting her picture with him. =)

My compostela. Truth be told, it was a little anti-climatic as far as
certificates go. My credential I thought was more interesting
and had more sentimental value than this certificate, so I decided
to fold it in thirds until it got home. =)

Day 57: A Day With the Aussie Girls

2013-01-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 7: The overnight rain didn’t amount to much, but having the tarp up was definitely a good idea! By morning, the rain had stopped and the day was considerably nicer. Partly cloudy for the most part, but those lingering rain clouds were still in the forecast for tomorrow. It seemed like “chance of rain” was becoming a regular part of the weather forecast nowadays, probably due both to the change in geography and season. So far, though, I’ve managed to avoid hiking in the actual downpours except for two days of my entire hike. =) But I had no illusions—I’ve been lucky. So far.

I walked a few kilometers with Indi in the morning, just chatting about ourselves and what we were doing on the trail. For someone I’ve camped with for the last three nights, I didn’t really know much about her. We generally walked at our own pace during the day, then when she was around, there were always four other people there as well, so it’s not like I really got to talk to any one of them beyond a superficial level. So I wound up chatting with Indi for the better part of an hour, talking about the kinds of things I’d usually talk about with people I met for the first time.

Later in the afternoon, I caught up with Emily and did the same thing. =) I kind of wish it happened earlier, though. We only had one more night before we reached Santiago, and we all intended to find lodging in town the next day. Three of the five girls would be leaving back to Australia after reaching Santiago. Two of them planned to continue on to Finisterre—Kathy and Erin—so perhaps I’d catch up with them out of Santiago. But in any case, I felt like I should know these people better considering that I’ve camped with them for the last three days. It seemed a little belated to only do that now, though.

I caught up with Kathy and Jen in Pedrouzo, who were sitting at a table outside of a bar/restaurant in the late afternoon and they were quite happy to hear that the other three girls were literally just a minute or two behind me. About five minutes went by, however, and I found myself scratching my head wondering what the heck happened to them.

“I swear!” I told Kathy and Jen, “I saw them not more than five minutes before I arrived here! I walked faster than them, but not that much faster! They should have arrived seconds after I did!”

The other girls finally arrived. Apparently, they had a stray dog run up to them and they paused for several minutes to pet it and give him attention. I knew there had to be an explanation for their delay.

We killed a couple of hours at the bar/restaurant, waiting until later in the afternoon to find a place to camp. There was still a lot to cover in 50 Shades of Grey, so Erin pulled out the book and continued the reading. They were determined to finish it before we reached Santiago and three of the five girls would be jetting off. I kind of wanted to know how it ended myself, and this was the last night I’d camp with all five of them. I wanted to get the book finished tonight!

After our two-hour break, we headed out in search of a place to camp. The trail now passed through a forest of eucalyptus trees, very much like those I’m familiar with from the Central Coast. I did not, however, want to camp among them. They’re very dirty trees, shedding bark and dropping branches and sharp little acorns. It’s very difficult to find ground by them that’s good to camp on, and these trees did not prove to be the exception to the rule. With six of us in the group, that also limited our camping options to only larger campsites. We passed a couple of places that we could have fit one or two of us, but had to pass them by.

Eventually, we reached an area that had been clear-cut. There was, technically speaking, space available, but it was an ugly little space. The ground was torn up, lumpy and in disarray, more dirt than grass. Kathy wanted to stop there, but I felt certain we could find something better up ahead, so I asked them to wait a bit before setting up camp and I’d run ahead on the trail to scout it out for better options.

I left my pack with them, then started jogging up the trail. I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that I could find something better than that miserable wreck of a campsite. I jogged and I jogged, up a hill towards the Santiago airport. The airport was hidden below the trees out of view and when a plane took off, it darned near scared the crap of me! Woah! I found a few natural-looking clearings out of the eucalyptus trees, but they were covered in thick vegetation with thorns on the brush. I probably jogged for a half hour, certain I’d find a good site to camp just around the next bend in the road.

But I didn’t. I finally gave up the search and started the long job back to the other girls.

Huffing and puffing, I reported my findings. “Yep,” I told them sadly, “This really is the best place to camp for at least the next couple of kilometers.”

We set up camp, and the girls wanted to hear me read 50 Shades of Grey again, so I read a chapter and a half before they got too tired and went to sleep. I was a little disappointed not to reach the end of it. I wouldn’t know how it ended! Oh, well. I guess it didn’t really matter all that much….

A little happy graffiti on the trail. =)

It looked like they were building a new highway across the
trail at this point. The torn up line extended as far as
the eye could see in both directions. Muddy mess is what I’d call it!

A trailside memorial for a hikers that never made it to Santiago.

The only thing worse than walking next to a road is
walking ON a road. So I’m at least grateful that they have
this path next to it, separated from the traffic. =)

Erin reads aloud from 50 Shades of Grey as Jen looks on. =)
(The other girls are here, but they’re around the table off the left
side of the photo.)

In search of a place to camp. But first, we needed to get out of town….

The tunnel here was kind of amusing to me since it seemed
so unnecessary for a road with such little traffic! =)

Day 56: Photo Shoots and Ukuleles

2013-01-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 6: It did sprinkle a bit overnight, despite the weather reports predicting otherwise, so I was more than a little happy I had set up my tarp to keep condensation off of me. It would have been a particularly miserable night had I not done that! =)

Kathy and Jen packed up early and hit the trail before sunrise once again. The rest of the girls took a bit longer. I deliberately hung back a bit to attend to some bodily functions after they cleared the area. It would be a lot easier for some privacy where we camped, well off the busy pilgrim path, than it would be on the trail.

Late in the morning, I saw a young woman with a clipboard walking in the opposite direction on the trail. Taking a survey of some sorts? I waved politely, intending to walk past her, but she shoved the clipboard at me. At the top was a paragraph in Spanish, and just below it another one in English which said that she was deaf and mute and raising money for the cause. Now, I don’t mind giving money occasionally for good causes, but frankly, I didn’t know this woman from a hole in the wall. For all I knew, she’d go home and pocket it herself and call herself a good cause. So I shook my head and tried to tell her no, but she kept pushing that clipboard in front of me pointing at the part saying that she was deaf and mute.

Annoyed, I took the clipboard, added my name to it, and for the amount donated, I put a big fat zero. I shoved the clipboard back at her and pointed to it. Comprende now, little lady? Then I walked off.

I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pleasure smacking her around like that for being such an annoying little twit, but a little part of my brain was asking myself, “Was that rude?” Well, of course it was rude! But was it really deserved? Essentially telling a supposed deaf mute to “shove it”? I hoped anyone else she shoved that stupid clipboard at would see my big fat zero and inspire them to do the same. =)

I stopped in Melide for a nice long lunch break. I ordered pizza, which may not have been the worst pizza I ever ate, but it would definitely be there near the bottom of the list. I read a bit from my Kindle to kill some time, when Hilary and Brent came in—neither of which I’d seen for weeks! Hilary seemed as surprised to see me there as I was to see her, so I walked with them for the next couple of hours. Actually, I mostly walked with Hilary—Brent went on ahead as Hilary and I caught up on each other’s adventures. Hilary also told me about seeing my note for Karolina to check her email at one of the alburgues and was the one who actually gave Karolina the message when their paths had crossed.

While walking with Hilary, I caught up with Nancy and her friends, Jeanne and MaryK, who’d been hoping to see me all day in order to take pictures of themselves walking down the trail. The day before, I’d been talking to them about “action shots” of people walking down the trail, and I guess the idea percolated with them since then since now they wanted me to take photos of them walking down the trail with their camera.

“You realize,” I pointed out, “that anyone can take your photos, right? You didn’t actually need me for that!” But I found the whole thing amusing anyhow. =)

Nancy gave me her iPhone for the photos, and the three of the started walking down the trail.

“Cut!” I yelled. “That’s not going to work. The sun is behind you guys and you just look like silhouettes. Let’s have you walking in the other direction.”

So they turned around and started walking along the trail in the wrong direction. “Looks good!” I said, and I clicked a button and the iPhone turned off.

“I think I did something wrong,” I told them.

Hilary grabbed the phone from me. “Let me do it,” she said. She seemed to know how to work those infernal devices, and I let her have the phone. The girls started walking again and Hilary took a series of shots. Click! Click! Click! Looked like a paparazzi! =)

Nancy must not have heard all the clicking going on, though, because after Hilary finished, Nancy suggested that maybe we should take “another” one. “Don’t worry about that,” I replied, “Hilary probably got a half a dozen of them!” She was very efficient. *nodding* =)

Then I wanted my own action shots of them with me in the photo, so I gave Hilary my camera and took some more photos.

I caught up with Kathy and Jen in Castaneda, who were happy when I reported that the other Australian girls I had seen only an hour earlier. They weren’t far behind, and sure enough, they showed up in short order. A couple of them went into the bar to order drinks and got sucked into a Spanish soap on the TV. Erin stayed outside and pulled out her ukulele—a small instrument, but remarkably large for hiking with. But it wasn’t the size that surprised me—it was that I had no idea at all she had even been carrying it. She hadn’t taken it out before, and you’d have thought I’d have noticed her carrying something so large.

So she played the uke a bit, which sounded quite pleasant, and I watched fascinated. I’ve always wanted to learn how to play that. Or a guitar. And when I told her that, she kept insisting how easy it was and told me she was giving me a lesson whether I liked it or not. =) Okay, she wasn’t that forceful about it, but she did push me into lesson showing me a few chords—at least after she had to explain what a chord was because frankly, I didn’t know. I’d heard the term before, but it meant nothing to me. And I took a whack at “Hallelujah.” It wasn’t pretty, without a doubt, but I was more determined than ever to learn how to work these darned contraptions someday.

Eventually, the Australian girls and I headed back out in search of a place to camp. We found some nice pine trees a few kilometers out of town and set up camp among them. In the pine trees were wonderful—a nice, thick layer of pine needles is my favorite ground to sleep on. So soft and cushy. Better than a mattress. =) It also made setting up my tarp a lot easier with plenty of tree to hang it from. Setting up the tarp was definitely a necessity this time—the air was already spitting out an occasional drop of rain and rain was most definitely in the forecast overnight.

One of the girls dared me to read a chapter from 50 Shades of Grey aloud. They didn’t think I’d have the guts to, but oh, yes, I did. No problem! So I took my turn reading, covering two chapters of Anna trying to decide if she would or would not sign the contract and a sexual encounter or two. The girls apparently thought my reading of it was absolutely hilarious, especially as I read one of the sex scenes. The book is told from the point of view from a woman, so the sex scenes are from the point of view of a women, but they said when I read it aloud, it made the scene sound like two gay men having an encounter. “That’s funny,” I reminded them, “I always thought they sounded kind of Australian myself! Straight Australians, though…” =)

After two chapters, though, my mouth was getting dry and tired so I handed the book off for one of the other girls to continue reading before we finally all went to sleep for the night.

We follow yellow arrows a lot, and we follow scallop shells a lot,
but scallop shells formed into a yellow arrow? Brilliant! =)

I don’t really know what this is. An oversized bird house?

Pilgrims on their way into Melide.

On our way out of Melide, we heard really loud music which was coming
from here. The trail continues on the back side of this makeshift stage.
It was, according to signage, an “orquestra feminina” and
a “Chicas Show.” I’m all in favor of chica shows! =)

Pilgrims at a fruit stand along the trail. Emily, one of the Australian girls,
is the one with both her knees wrapped. That always made it easy
to identify her from a distance. =) Erin is the person half chopped off
on the right. I don’t know who the guy in the photo is.

I stage an “action shot” with Nancy, Jeanne and MaryK (from right to left).

The Australian girls stop on the trail to pick figs.

I set up my tarp close enough to the tent
so I could hear them reading 50 Shades at night, but
as it turned out, I’d be reading a couple of chapters myself! =)

Day 55: A Leisurely Walk

2013-01-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 5: It was a beautiful day for hiking! I woke up to fog and a heck of a lot of condensation, though. Two of the Australian girls got early starts and were hiking before sunrise. The other three left after sunrise, at their own pace. I was, not surprisingly, the last to leave camp. =)

The trail out of camp climbed a small hill and no more than 100 feet up, we that pushed through the fog to blue skies.

In the middle of the afternoon, I stopped to dry out my ground sheet, tarp and sleeping, throwing them out in the sun in an empty field of grass. I read my Kindle for a half hour as other pilgrims walked past, then repacked my gear and continued on.

In Ligonde, I stopped for a break thinking I had another hour or so to hike into Palas de Rei where the Australian girls were planning to meet up before finding a place to camp. So far as I knew, the two girls who left before sunrise were still ahead of me. The other three, I was pretty certain, were still behind me, but they might have passed me when I had my nose in the Kindle or was lounging around with my eyes closed. How would I know? So I wanted to make sure to get into Palas de Rei to join the girls again for camping. The nice thing about camping with five other people was that I really only had to find //one// of them to get together with the entire group again. =) When I camped with Karolina, I was somewhat paranoid I’d lose track of her and never find her again. (A paranoia that, as it turned out, had some merit!) With five Australians all walking at their own pace, I was always bound to find at least one or two of them throughout the day.

Nancy and friends—who I met the day before—were there and about to leave as I arrived, and someone had asked how far it was to Palas de Rei. The answer: 10 kilometers.

I turned around. “What?!” Seriously? We couldn’t be that far away! That would make it a solid two hours of walking away! I’d been walking a lot slower than I thought I was! I cut my rest short and continued hiking. Just in case there weren’t any Australians still behind me, I didn’t want to show up in Palas de Rei late!

I arrived in Palas de Rei two hours later, and took a quick detour to a supermarket for supplies. As I walked through town, I kept my eyes open for the Australians knowing they’d be hanging around somewhere. Then I heard, behind me and faintly, someone yelling, “Ryan!” I looked back and there was Kathy. Ah, good! My Australians! =) Although I was a little surprised I had walked past and didn’t see her earlier. Glad she saw me, though!

When I saw where Kathy was sitting, I wasn’t surprised I missed her. A bit off trail, at a bar, that was hard to see between the cars. Jen was there as well, but she was inside on the Internet. Kathy took a table outside and acted as lookout to intercept any passing Australian buddies and myself. =)

“So where are the others?” Kathy asked me.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “The last time I saw them was probably 9:30 or so in the morning, maybe two kilometers out from where we camped.”

When I’m actually walking, I walk at a pretty good clip, and I knew Emily had two knees that were causing her problems. Everyone knew that since they were both wrapped up. She wasn’t walking fast, and I knew that I hadn’t passed them since 10 kilometers before. If anything, I stretched my lead over them. “It might be awhile before they arrive,” I told Kathy.

Jen finished up with the computer station inside and joined us outside, and we moved to some steps closer to the trail. The easier to intercept the other girls later. In the meantime, I started to cook dinner because, why not? I didn’t have anything better to do at the time. =)

I cooked dinner. I ate dinner. I cleaned up the dishes afterwards. And still the three Australian girls hadn’t arrived. Sunset was getting close, and our maps looked like we might have to walk a few kilometers out of town before we found any suitable places to camp. I really didn’t want to set up camp in the dark, and I told Kathy and Jen that I’d hike on ahead and find a suitable place to camp while it was still light out. When I found something, if it wasn’t in plain view of the trail, I’d leave a note or sign in the trail pointing the way.

As I picked up my pack, ready to head out, the other girls finally arrived. They still needed to resupply at the grocery store themselves, and I volunteered to watch their packs as they did so. Kathy and Jen went ahead to scout out a place to camp instead.

They did their grocery shopping, then I headed up the trail alone to catch up with Kathy and Jen. The other three stayed behind to eat some snacks and rest their feet for a few minutes more.

I caught up with Kathy and Jen a couple of kilometers out of town as one of them was scrambling through the brush off the side of the trail. “No,” Kathy was saying, “there are homes back there.” Looking for a suitable place to camp, obviously. We walked a bit further down the trail where a dirt road led off to the right. We couldn’t see very far up the dirt road, but it seemed worth while to check out. It led away from the busy road we could hear on our left, and it looked like there weren’t any buildings or other man-made structures around. The girls volunteered to watch my pack as I jogged out on the dirt road to scout it out.

A couple of minutes later, I found a site that would fit all of us in the trees. It was a little dark among the trees, and the ground had a lot of small branches and debris that would need to be kicked out of the way, but the site would work in a pinch. I’ve camped in worse! =) I walked a bit further out onto the road, though, looking for better options, eventually coming to a fork in the road where a field had been cleared and looked absolutely wonderful. It was a little more exposed to anyone who happens to walk or drive past, however.

Regardless, either of those sites would be suitable. I jogged back to the girls waiting at the intersection, who—in my absence—apparently had a disturbing encounter with a local. I guess he thought they looked suspicious hanging out there, and they were quite happy when I returned. I reported my findings and said I’d like one of them to decide which of the two sites they’d prefer to camp at—in the trees but kind of dark, or in the open but where it was light and breezy. =) I picked up my pack and Kathy went with me. Jen stayed back, but tried to hide in some nearby bushes in case the strange man they saw earlier came back. She was to stay there to intercept the other Australian girls and let them know where we were camped when they caught up again.

“Basically,” I told her, “just follow the road. You can’t miss us, regardless of which site Kathy chooses. If, somehow, you miraculously do miss us, just don’t go past the fork in the road.”

Kathy looked at the first site, agreeing that it would work, but I pushed her onward to the cleared field and she definitely liked that one better. She started setting up her tent and I started setting up my tarp. It wasn’t supposed to rain overnight, but I wanted to set up my tarp anyhow because condensation the night before had been so terrible.

It was only about a minute before the rest of the girls joined us.

Once we were all settled, 50 Shades of Grey came back out, which they read aloud deep into the night. =)

Pilgrims rest and drink at the Casa Molar.

A new cigarette pack that I hadn’t seen before! =)

Attack of the GIANT ANTS!!!!

This is SOOO a weeping angel! I tell you,
if you’ve seen Blink, this little statue will
give you nightmares! =) Where is Doctor Who
when you need him?!

Another statue, outside of a church in Palas de Rei.

When I was taking this photo, a local started talking to me, telling
me all about the statue, and that the two people
were dancing. “Really? You don’t say!” =)

Day 54: Do Not Eat the Pancakes!

2012-12-31T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 4: I woke up at 5:30 in the morning. Out the windows, I could see it was still dark, though some of the city lights filtered into my room enough that I could see a bit. And I felt absolutely dreadful.

I stumbled into the bathroom, tripping over some of my gear along the way, where I produced an epic explosion on the toilet which probably helped insure the rest of the hotel knew that something very bad was happening in this room.

I went back to bed, but I didn’t fall asleep. I lay there, feeling absolutely miserable, until another call of nature pulled me into the bathroom a half hour later. And while sitting on the toilet this time, I threw up.

It was bad. Very ugly. I didn’t want to throw up all over the floor, but the toilet was kind of preoccupied with other things, and I managed to keep most of the barf in my mouth until I could turn around and spit it out in the toilet. Most of made it, but there was splatter on the sink and a towel on the floor. I didn’t need a thermometer to know that I was sick.

I cleaned up as best I could, washing my mouth out with water, and eventually headed back into bed again, where I lay there feeling miserable for myself. It was kind of ironic, really. On all my other long-distance hikes, I’d constantly been warned by other hikers that it was only a matter of time before I got giardia for not treating my water, but I never did get sick. And now, when I’m on a hike drinking nothing but tap water, I get sick.

I didn’t blame the water for my sickness. Giardia seemed extremely unlikely since I hadn’t once had any surface water on this hike. Nope, I was just plain sick. Maybe I caught a bug from a pilgrim spreading them in a hostel, or maybe I had food poisoning, or maybe…. who knows. It didn’t really matter at this point. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good! And without a doubt, I’d have to take a zero day. No hiking for me today!

I lay in bed, feeling pretty miserable for myself, for the next few hours, but a strange thing happened at about 9:30: I got hungry. I got online and surfed the web a bit, but when my stomach started growling, I went ahead and ate a big bowl of cereal, which tasted great. And I had absolutely no problem keeping it down. In fact, I was actually feeling pretty good. Maybe I could get in some hiking after all! A short, easy day of walking, though. I definitely didn’t want to overdo things! I probably should have taken the whole day off anyhow, but the idea of laying around in bed bored to tears didn’t appeal to me either. No, I’d rather be walking—but I’d take it slow and easy.

Must have been food poisoning, I thought. Normally, when I get really sick, it knocks me out for an entire day—minimum. This knocked me out for all of about four hours. Must have been something bad I ate the day before, but I had absolutely no idea what it might have been.

I took another shower to get off any lingering sickness or smells from my body and packed up my gear, not leaving town until nearly 10:30 in the morning. A super late start! Given the incredibly late start, I didn’t expect to see many pilgrims on the trail. They’d have all left town hours earlier.

But I was wrong. Immediately out of town, I didn’t see any pilgrims, but less than an hour later, I was passing them left and right. I didn’t recognize any of them either. But I did chat briefly with a few of them, however.

First I met a couple of women, when we went into a store saying that they’d stamp your credential. The two women were from Colorado and Michigan, but we didn’t really talk much. Just ships passing in the night, as it were, and for all I knew, I’d never see them again. But I would see them again. And again, and again. For pretty much every day until the end of the trail. They were also hiking with a third woman, although she wasn’t there to get her credential stamped.

We went in and handed our credentials to the store clerk for stamping. He told us to look around the store while he did the stamping—an obvious ploy to part us with our money before we left. Most of it was jewelry and knickknacks that I wasn’t really interested in in the first place. I might have been inclined to buy a souvenir magnet or two, except that I didn’t want to carry it the rest of the way to Santiago where I knew I could buy them there as well. So I didn’t buy anything, but I looked around for appearance’s sake.

The man stamped all of our credentials, and handed them all back to me. I think he assumed that I was hiking with the women since we were chatting when we walked in together, but the fact was I had only met them less than two minutes earlier. =) I pulled out my credential from the three he handed back to me, then looked inside at the name on the first one. “Which one of you is Nancy?” I asked. Nancy, the one from Michigan, fessed up, and I handed her her credential, and handed the other one to the other woman without checking the name.

I continued along the trail, waving goodbye and leaving the women behind. I was only walking for another five or ten minutes when I saw a younger girl walking ahead of me. She was blonde, and cute, but the thing that really stuck out in my head were her socks. One was black and the other was a bright purple, and I rather liked the lack of color coordination. I’ll often wear mismatched socks if I have two different pairs that are missing a sock. I’d like to think most people never even notice since I wear pants and almost nobody ever sees them. This girl wore shorts, though, so the mismatched socks was plain as the nose on her face.

So I complimented her on the socks, saying if I tried to do that, my girlfriend would probably shake her head and call me a neanderthal. =) Actually, she does that even when I wear two different socks that are the same color!

The girl introduced herself as Indi—short for Indiana, apparently—and she was from Australia and had only started her hike in Astorga, which wasn’t very far back at all. I was a little surprised—to fly all the way from Australia, and then only hike from Astorga to Santiago? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if I had to invest in an expensive plane ticket to go halfway around the world, I’d want something more out of it. *shrug* She said she was hiking with friends, although none of them were present at the time.

I pushed on passed Indi thinking I’d probably never see her again either. But I’d be wrong. As time would prove, I’d be seeing a lot more of Indi before reaching Santiago.

The rest of the day’s walk was rather uneventful. After I ate breakfast, I lost my appetite again and skipped lunch. In the early afternoon, I used the toilet at a bar along the trail. I didn’t need it at the time, but I figured it would be a good precaution. Better to use it and not need it later than to not use it and need it later in the afternoon.

But otherwise, my hiking went well. So well, in fact, that I decided I wanted to camp outdoors tonight. Assuming I didn’t take a turn for the worse before that.

I also passed the 100 kilometer marker to Santiago. Just another symbol that my hike was winding down, and I was a little saddened for the reminder.

Late in the day, I arrived in Portomarin where I saw Indi sitting in a park with a couple of her friends and their gear laid out everywhere.

“Why are you out here?” I asked. “And not in an alburgue like everyone else?” Not that I wasn’t glad to see them. I planned to stop here in town to resupply at a grocery store, cook dinner, then push through town and find a place to camp somewhere out past the other end of the town. I was more than happy to have company around to chat with while cooking dinner. Even more so since they were all cute girls with those sexy Australian accents. =)

The two other girls there didn’t know me, so Indi answered. “We’re planning to camp outside of town,” she told me.

I blinked, stunned. They were camping?! Excited, I asked, “Really?!” I looked at her and her friends. “You mind if I join you?”

They seemed about as surprised at my question as I was at their answer to my question! “You have camping gear?” they asked me.

“Absolutely!”

So they said, sure, I could camp with them. I had new camping buddies! A whole GROUP of them!!! They were still waiting for one of their group to get into town—she was taking her time lingering, and the fifth member of their group was in another part of the town doing I don’t know what. I went ahead and started cooking dinner since they looked like they’d be around for awhile and I didn’t want to do that in the dark after arriving in camp.

Kathy, one of the girls, warned me, “But we should warn you—we’ve been reading 50 Shades of Grey out loud to each other during the night!”

Oh, my… this should be interesting….. I hadn’t read the book nor had I ever intended to, but I had definitely heard of it. Apparently, a friend had given one of them the book just before starting their hike and they decided it would be fun to read it aloud to each other each night. I didn’t care, though—I was just happy to have someone else to camp with. And I was pretty certain that things would not be boring with them around! So while waiting for their other two companions to arrive, they brought me up to date on the plot of the story—what little plot there actually is—for where they left off so I could follow along later.

Almost everything I knew about the book comes from a scene I saw of Ellen Degeneres “reading” the book. I’ve included the clip below which, if you want to know why I titled this post “Don’t Eat the Pancakes!”—you’ll find in this clip. =)

When all five of the Australians finally got together, they started to cook their own dinner. And they pulled out 50 Shades of Grey to start reading. They were determined to finish it before arriving in Santiago. It started off pretty boring, actually—reading the text of a multi-page contract described in the book. An interesting contract, to be sure, but not a lot of plot or action going on. Occasionally, a local would walk past us, and I’d wonder if they knew any English at all to understand what was being read.

The girls finished dinner and we started off in search of a place to camp just after sunset. We didn’t go far—I doubt we went more than a kilometer out of town—and it was starting to get dark when we arrived, but we set up camp. The five girls carried three tents among them, which they set up. I decided to cowboy camp since rain seemed like a remote possibility, but set up camp near the tent where they planned to read 50 Shades and spent the next couple of hours doing just that. I’ll say this for it: There was a lot of giggling and laughing going on that night. =)

The setting for the book was in the Seattle area—which I had not known beforehand—so it was kind of fun for me to hear references to things like Pike Place Market at home. =) But I was absolutely convinced that all of the characters were Australian. In the book, they were allegedly Americans, but since the book was being read by a bunch of Australians with their accents, in my head, all the characters seemed Australian.

It was a remarkably fun way to spend the evening. =) Eventually, though, we all got tired and called it a night.

This badly graffitied waypoint marks the 100 kilometer
point on the way to Santiago.

The cemeteries in this part of the country seemed to mostly
be above-ground crypts. And annoyingly, I’d still find water
faucets at them all. I still wanted to prove Maria, whom I met
back in France, wrong! =)

It’s like a laundry machine exploded on this cross.

I stopped for a drink at this alburgue/bar. Wonderful
views from here!

I’m not sure why this field is lined with these slabs of rocks,
but I kind of liked the look. *shrug*

The trail crosses this incredibly tall bridge across the River Mino into
Portomarin. It’s a five-second bridge. (The time it took when
I spit off from the top for my spit to hit the water below.) That
officially makes it the tallest bridge I’d crossed on the trail!

The entrance into Portomarin.

My new camping buddies. =) Although you can’t really see
most of their faces in this photo, I’ll give you their names anyhow.
From left to right: Jenny, Kathy, Emily, Indi (in front), and Erin (standing).

Day 53: The Beginning of the End

2012-12-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

October 3: By morning, the rain had stopped, but a drizzly kind of mist hung in the air. I pulled out my umbrella, ready at a moment’s notice—I was absolutely certain I would need it so kept it readily available.

Out of Triacastela, I had a choice between two paths. In this case, the alternative, recommended option was quite a few kilometers shorter than the long road route. I can’t imagine why a longer road walk would even be an option. Most pilgrims just took whatever path was the shortest, even if it meant giving up the more scenic and secluded options. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would have selected the longer and less scenic route. Actually, it might have made sense for those on bicycles since it was less hilly and probably better paved. But for anyone on foot, I couldn’t think of one good reason for the longer road walk.

On my way out of town, I met a couple of Spaniards walking the trail who said that they were actually from Santiago, walking home. I’d met a few people along the route who lived in towns along the trail, but these were the first who said that they actually lived in Santiago. The one was severely overweight and clearly struggling, but I was happy to see him on the trail. Inspired to walk to his town. It might not be easy for him, but it was bound to be good for his health—especially if it inspired him to exercise more in the future.

Headed out of town, I saw a couple of pilgrims a few hundred yards away on a dirt road leading in, what I felt, was the wrong direction. But maybe it was ME walking in the wrong direction? I usually have a good sense of direction when tend to realize quite quickly if I’ve taken a wrong turn, and I had absolute confidence I was on the correct path… unless I saw those two other pilgrims in the distance. Then I started second guessing myself. Maybe I had missed a critical turn?

I backtracked about five minutes to the last major intersection of dirt roads. I was still inclined to think I was on the correct path, but better safe than sorry! And the yellow arrows definitely confirmed I was headed in the correct direction. Which means the pilgrims I saw were walking in the wrong direction, or that they weren’t really pilgrims at all. They sure looked like pilgrims, though.

The rest of the day was non-eventful. The expected rain never materialized, so the umbrella stayed closed. But the misty fog definitely made me a little wet as if I had walked through a slight drizzle.

I checked into a hotel in Sarria. The desk clerk tried to wave me into an elevator to take me to my room. I wasn’t going to fall for that trick again, though—I hadn’t used an elevator since that desk clerk in Saint Jean tricked me into one—so I shook my head and told the lady that I couldn’t get in the elevator. I couldn’t really explain why I didn’t want to use the elevator with my Spanish very well, so I just told her that “I didn’t like them.” She probably assumed that I was claustrophic or something. Is there a word for a “fear of elevators”? I’m sure there is, but I don’t know it. Nor do I suffer from such an affliction. I just wanted to stay off all forms of modern transportation on my hike—including elevators. =)

But I wave her on. “Second floor?” I asked. (Which would be the third floor in the United States.) She nodded yes, and I said I’d walk up the stair and meet her there. I actually jogged up the stairs and arrived at the elevator just as the doors opened and she exited. I think she was a little surprised to see me already there. =)

The room was absolutely adorable—I kind of expected a dump for how much I paid for it—but it was actually a pretty nice room.

I took a brief stroll through the city to see all of the major sites along the route. More pilgrims start their hike in Sarria than any other town along the trail—about 21% of all pilgrims reaching Santiago. The reason for this being such a popular starting point is because it’s the last significant town with train and bus service on the trail where you can still get credit for “walking” the trail when you arrive in Santiago, just over 100 kilometers away. It kind of strikes as incredulous that anyone would even want credit for hiking such a short distance. I could do 100 kilometers pretty easily in a three-day weekend, and those who start here have missed so much of what makes the trail worth hiking. They barely even have time to form blisters on their feet before they reach Santiago.

But I didn’t really feel as bitter as I might sound about things. It’s their own loss, not mine. If I were running the church in Santiago, though, I’d definitely require people to walk from at least as far as Leon to get credit. They should be waking for at least a week for their hike to count!

At the same time, it marked another important milestone for me. This really was the beginning of the end. I was just a few days away from Santiago now. So close, that everyone who wanted to hike to Santiago was now on the trail with me. I picked up dinner at a grocery store across the street from my hotel, walked back to my room, and made myself comfortable for the night. =)

The road looked like it was rained on, but if it did rain there,
it was before I arrived. The misty fog kept everything
quite damp, however.

The streets of Sarria.

My hotel room for the night. =)

A door handle in town.

A mural outside of a library. I’m pretty sure this
represents the big, bad wolf chasing after the
three little pigs. =)