Day 121: Stomach Flu Part 4
August 9, 2017
Mile 1740.20 Hyatt Lake, OR
Well, as soon as I thought I was getting better, Glowworm has now come down with whatever I’ve had. Last night as we were going to bed, Glowworm started complaining of an upset stomach and soon afterwards began feeling worse. So I knew that we really just needed to get off the trail and fully recover before pressing on. I got on to the Pacific Crest Trail Angels Facebook group and posted a request to book us up for a day or two while we recovered from our stomach illness.
This morning things didn’t seem to improve much for Glowworm. While I finally felt like I could hike on, she began throwing up and just looked all around miserable. Fortunately, someone had responded to our post and offered us a place to stay.
The trail angel only lived about 15 minutes away and after giving her a call came to pick us up from our campsite. Once again, I cannot begin to describe the kindness of complete strangers. If you want to be humbled with this form of generosity, then go hike the PCT, or the AT, or the CDT, or something of the like and you will be completely amazed at how much people want to help hikers (people who have willfully removed themselves from productive society, are filthy, lack apt table manners, and have raging appetites).
Jen (the trail angel) drove us to her house which is absolutely beautiful. It’s a gorgeous cedar sided farm house with painted light blue window frames seated in a yellow grassy meadow surrounded by pine trees. At the beginning of the gravel drive as you enter is a large garden with all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Just past the garden is a horse barn with its occupants casually walking around the property without being confined to a specific pasture. It’s an idealistic setting.
After showing us around and more or less giving us full reign to the fridge and pantry (which neither of us really felt like delving into) she went back to her job and we proceeded to pass out on the queen bed she offered to us. Oh, and I forgot to mention, she has dogs. Two dogs, in fact. Willy, a Lab-Border Collie mix and Dusty, an Anatolian Shepherd mix. As soon as we crawled in bed these two adorable fluff balls figured they were entitled for a share of the bed (I may have encouraged this) and as such, I was quickly forced off.
We soon were able to renegotiate our sleeping arrangement after some careful Tetris moves to enable all four of us to nap together. It was heavenly. Yesterday you may have recalled me saying how all I wanted was to lay around with my dogs and watch TV. Well, I was able to come as close to that as possible today. After napping, Glowworm, Willy, Dusty, and I all retreated to the den to eat a bit of lunch and watch a movie. After months of quoting it, I finally convinced Glowworm to watch Hot Rod and I think she saw the humor in it. Maybe…
Anyway, the rest of the afternoon was spent reading some National Geographic articles (basically looking at the pictures and read their captions) and calling home. When Jen came back from work she brought along another hiker, Patrick from Montreal who has a nasty spider bite on his right leg which has grown to swell up his entire foot and ankle. I guess today Jen is running more of a PCT hospital than just a place to stay for hikers. For dinner she made us red beans and rice with sausage and grilled vegetables (by then we were feeling a lot better) and we spent the evening chatting and swapping stories. This is the most like home I have felt on the trail over the last four months. I wouldn’t even mind staying here another day if we have to. But I think we should be able to get back on the trail tomorrow.
