Day 133: Turn Out the Lights
August 21, 2017
Mile 2092.00 Campsite to Mile 2111.65 Lolo Pass Road
Last night was a bit of a shit show. I kept hearing squeaking near our packs and wasn’t able to fall asleep so I eventually gathered the energy to poke my head out of the tent to find a mouse scurry about our packs and food bags. We haven’t hung our food bags once on this 131 day trip with no varmints getting into our grub so I wasn’t all too concerned. When Glowworm asked what I was doing I let her know. Big mistake. Should of left that one well enough alone. This made her hear every little squeaking sound and next thing I knew I was waking up to her being pissed off that the damn rodent had chewed through her cuben fiber food bag and ate part of a chocolate bar. So I crawled out of the tent and just moved my pack away from where the mouse was and went back to bed (I was exhausted and just really didn’t feel like dealing with this shit) while Glowworm frantically tried to figure out how to hang her food bag from talk, slender pine trees that don’t lend themselves to bear bag hanging too well. Ugh. So miserable.
The hike in the morning made up for the night due to its crazy awesome views of Mt. Hood which we were skirting around and the lure of the breakfast buffet. Finally we saw the lodge in the distance and it was beautiful. Really, though, it was a really cool place. It was built as a ski lodge back in 1936-37 and has all the charm and architectural intrigue that you would imagine. It’s one of the few buildings that we’ve encountered on this trip that I have been thoroughly impressed with.
After a delicious and colossal breakfast, we went outside to watch the solar eclipse with our eclipse glasses. I can definitely saw that it was one of the coolest experiences I’ve had out here. The sun appears brighter because your eyes stay more open due to the smaller volume of light, but because the sun is still ridiculously bright, its intensity is still the same. So as the eclipse was beginning the world seemed intensely bright, but as the moon covered the sun more and more, the light dimmed to the point where it looked like evening even though the sun was high in the sky. It was very surreal. Even the mountains off in the distance had a strange sunset vibe to them. And when the moon completely eclipsed the sun (we were just north of the totality zone, so it didn’t block the sun completely, but nearly did) you cold see the shadows of the solar flares dance on the concrete. So crazy.
So now it’s almost 10:00 PM and I’m stupid tired so basically what happened the rest of the day was we walked. The end.
