Oregon!

The climb out of Seiad Valley is one of the toughest we've seen. From the valley floor, we climbed 4500 feet in 8 miles. The climb also lived up to it's reputation for being hot as hell. Luckily, we were both feeling strong and in good spirits. We stopped 4 miles in when Golden realized he had cell phone reception to make 2 hours worth of overdue phone calls to loved ones. Leaving break, Ex was on Golden Boy's heels--something that never happens when we are hiking uphill! Apparently, a new upbeat playlist works wonders. After hiking another 4 miles, we pushed our feelings of guilt aside and stopped for a long lunch break. Eventually we managed to make it a whopping 15 miles to a campsite with a deliciously cold spring. Explagrance built a campfire, her first time building one solo on trail, while Golden set up the tent as he does every night. Rustic filled the night with laughter by "cubing" us, a game played to gauge someone's ego and relationships. We went to bed eager for the morning to come. Oregon was awaiting our arrival. Sweet, sweet, Oregon. The three of us planned to hike to the border together, so we coordinated a 12:30 meeting time for a lunch break. 12:30 came and went and Ex didn't see Rustic and Golden so continued to hike. By 1:30pm she's annoyed and hungry. By 2:30pm she's livid that they would change the plans, on Oregon day nonetheless, without even having the courtesy to leave a note. She practiced the speech she was seething to spit at them when she finally caught up. Ex stopped to ask a campsite of hunters if and when they had seen the traitors. Surprised by their answer of no, she accepted the Coors Light they pushed in her hands and sat down to eat her late lunch pondering how she could have possibly hiked past Rustic and Golden without realizing it.

Meanwhile, Rustic southbounded two miles to look for Ex and Golden attempts to track her footprints. After being unable to find her, they could only conclude that she had somehow snuck by unnoticed. They essentially ran down the trail in an attempt to catch up. A few miles in, they passed hunters riding four-wheelers on the trail, bows at the ready, something we knew was thoroughly illegal. Images of a wounded Explagrance flashed across their imagination. Six miles in to the search, to their great relief, they found her, beer in hand, with a group of four hunter that could only be described as backwoods rednecks. They were led by the ringleader, a poor man's Ron Jeremy in a tank top that accentuated his naked lady tattoo and his pot belly. With him was Junior, his son, and his former father-in-law, who we were told to speak up to when addressing him "because he's a dumb mother fucker." Also present was a a Canadian who continually referred to his ex-wife as "that bitch." Apparently they had been opening Ex beers before she had finished the ones in her hand trying to keep her there to wait for us as "a cute little woman like herself shouldn't be out in these woods alone." Thank God Golden and Rustic found her!
Instead of Ex getting to verbally abuse them, Golden and Rustic got to lecture her about having so little trust in them. They wouldn't have left her on Oregon day! Relieved to be reunited and excited for the boarder, they raced on to Oregon.
When we finally reached the boarder, we broke out into a dance party and opened the whiskey and lemonade we had packed out. Ex was disappointed in the small wooden boarder marker nailed to a dying tree, expecting there to be a huge billboard that proclaimed, "Welcome to Oregon!" But that didn't mollify our excitement. We had finally hiked one entire state, and what a long state it was! California was so incredible, but after taking over three and a half months to hike through the 1700 mile state, we were ready to enter into the next chapter of our journey, Oregon. To give California a final farewell and receive a proper welcome from Oregon, we slept at the boarder, as near to having half our bodies in each state as possible.