August 11: Initially, I had planned to get back on the trail and keep hiking today, but I still found myself with some work to do. There were still a couple of bugs I needed to work out on Atlas Quest and some updates which needed doing on the Straw Hat Pizza website. (I'm a contractor for Straw Hat, which most people probably don't realize.) So... I still had some work I needed to get done before I disconnected from civilization again.
So I went to the front desk to extend our stay at the hotel for an extra night and now I would have real zero day! I would not do any official trail hiking at all! Well, kinda....
I still needed to get out and stretch my legs. I go crazy if I can't walk at least a little each day, and I had the idea that I'd just keep walking down the Cascade Trail. It was fast, flat and easy. And, at this point, is was pretty close to Burlington. It wasn't a long drive to get back to the trail, and it would be an even shorter drive to get back to the hotel at the end.
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Amanda dropped me off back in Lyman to continue walking the Cascade Trail. |
But the route is also an alternate for the PNT where some people follow it all the way into Sedro-Woolley, then walk up Highway 9 back to the primary PNT. I didn't plan to to do that, however, wanting to return to the primary PNT as quickly as possible.
So I followed the PNT alternate... but not as part of my route to the end of the trail. So it turned out to be a zero day that had me walking on the trail! As confusing as that sounds.... That's the PNT for you! =)
I didn't take any photos for the day because I didn't need anything for Walking 4 Fun and there was nothing particularly exciting to take photos of. I just enjoyed the walk. (The two photos in this blog post I actually took yesterday when I first walked into Lyman and got off the trail.)
Amanda and I had planned to meet at a parking area just off of Highway 20 a couple of hours later, and I walked right past it without stopping. I didn't see Amanda in the parking lot so I thought maybe it was a different parking lot we had agreed to stop at and I just didn't recognize it from the direction I came. So I kept walking, further and further into Sedro-Woolley, at which point I eventually realized that I must have passed the parking lot. I had just beat Amanda to the meeting point--which almost never happens!
After realizing that I definitely passed the meeting point, I gave her a call and she said she was waiting for me at the parking lot and a bunch of cops were parked there as well. I hadn't seen any cops when I went by either! Exciting things were happening, and I was missing all of it! =)
Anyhow, I told Amanda where I was located, and she drove out several minutes later to pick me up about 1/4-mile from the end of the trail in Sedro-Woolley. We stopped at Carls Jr. for lunch, then I returned to the hotel to get some online work done. Amanda spent the afternoon exploring the area some more.
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