August 13, 2016 - Woke up early so I could get to Snoqualmie Pass as early as possible. I planned to meet Mindy at 11am but I knew I would be there a little earlier as I went a little farther yesterday than planned.
The hike towards Snoqualmie Pass was a lot harder than I thought, lots of up and downs and very rocky trail.
I did pass a nice lake, Mirror Lake which had a nice reflection of the surrounding mountains.
Right before Snoqualmie Pass I went down a ski slope towards the road. I got to the Chevron Station a little after 10am so I could pick up my important mail drop as it had my passport and Canadian papers so I could get back into the US after I finish my hike.
Mindy arrived just in time and went back to her apartment where I showered and did laundry before going to a pizza lunch.
Then it was off to downtown Seattle to pick up a few things at REI and see some of the sites. This was my first time in Seattle so was excited to see some of those famous sites like the Space Needle.
The REI store was really cool. It is one of their biggest and is the home headquarters so they had everything a hiker could ever need. I wanted to buy so much stuff. There were 2 main reasons for the stop at REI, get my tent poles fixed (or possible replaced) and new shoes.
My tent has worked great to this point even though I use it every night but a while back I bent the poles and wasn’t sure how much longer they were going to last. REI is great about fixing that kind of stuff. After talking with their parts guy he convinced me the poles would hold up just fine and trying to bend them back may do more damage. The guy seemed to know what he was talking about so decided just to go ahead and not have anything done.
Then went upstairs to the shoe department to get a new pair. At first I was going to try and finish my hike on my current shoes as I only had 200 miles to go but my shoes were in pretty bad shape and I knew those last 200 miles would be on rough terrain so I figured I would play it safe and get a new pair. I decided on keeping with the Brooks Cascadia shoes but thought about going down a size but the guy helping me with the shoes convinced me to stay with the larger size, don’t mess with what is working. I thought the smaller size would help with the blisters but I think I made the right call.
After all that just relaxed and recharged the body for the rest of the day at Mindy’s apartment.
Planning on sleeping in then head back to the trail early afternoon.
