So I stopped writing daily notes after I received the news about my fracture but I wanted to make some new posts since a lot happened the week after I left Medford.

I had brainstormed a ton of different things I wanted to do before I had to go home. I was talking to Jenny and since she seems to always come up with the craziest ideas, she offered to drive my car down to Oregon and pick me up. Everything seemed to all fall into place after that. I wanted to go to PCT Days, an annual event that takes place in cascade locks where a bunch of vendors, organizations and hikers come together for a weekend. I have heard it can get a little crazy but there were some people I had been wanting to meet for awhile and it was a great opportunity finally. I decided to make everything happen.

The morning I left Medford, Lori took me to the hertz rental where I rented a car for the weekend. I tried holding back some tears as I said goodbye. The hansons have been a huge blessing to me these last few weeks and I don't know what I would've done without them. My rental was finally ready and I sat behind the wheel for the very first time in four months. I drove three hours to bend with no glasses but I made it safely.

I met up with Lisa and nick at spork, this Asian/Mexican fusion restaurant that had like 500 reviews on Yelp. It was so yummy. It was so great to see them both! It had been so long. We caught up and drove click (nick) to the po to pick up his boxes. Bend is really spread out so doing errands is very hard there. Lisa had said she walked like seven miles just around town the day before. Then we dropped off click at their hotel.

It was evening by the time we were en route to cascade locks, the last town before the border and another three hours away. The drive was really beautiful. We had views of mt hood and Adams the whole way. As we rolled through hood river, we picked up some hikers but was caught in bad traffic due to road construction. It took over 45 min to go four miles. We dropped the dudes off at the gas station when we arrived in town and got to my friend ash's house. She thru hiked last year and ended up getting a job in hood river and moved to cascade locks. Ash let us crash at her place for the night. It was so cool to see her this time around bc I last saw her before I got on trail and now I had semi thru hiked when I saw her again.

In the morning, we walked over to the park where PCT Days was. It was still early but lots of people were out visiting all the booths. I finally got to meet the Zpacks guys! It felt like we all knew each already. They were so great. Lisa and I wandered around all the different booths and got free things. Then we also got to meet Jack Haskel! He works for PCTA and knows gb. We have this ongoing joke about "his buddy jack" so it was so funny and great to finally meet him! The rest of the day we basically just wandered and loitered around. I went back to the Zpacks booth and ended up hanging out with Matt and will for most of the afternoon. I met back up w Lisa and ash for a bit but I called it a day around eight. I was socially exhausted and wanted to go to bed.

Selfie with Jack that we had sent to our group text.

I slept outside on the deck with the cool air and wind.