August 17

I have enjoyed this time off the trail, but I am getting urges to hike. I wore my hiking shoes outside this evening and they are itching to get back out and hike. We looked at the "reliable" water sources for the diamond peak route to Crater Lake, and they are scarce at best. It looks like we will be camping twice waterless and carrying up to 8 liters between us for a couple stretches. This is definitely going to slow our progress and may be the cause of a blister or two. 

The story for this post is the last of my zero day stories as tomorrow night I will be on trail once again. This one is the story of "The Berries". 

Ever since making my way to the Canadian border I had been keeping my eyes on the berry bushes. I recognized raspberry bushes as they grabbed my clothes while hiking by and felt a little twinge of jealousy toward the nobos that would be coming through when there were ripe berries ready for picking on the bushes. I had no idea what a huckleberry bush looked like, but was familiar with the taste and color and figured I could squeeze the juice out and recognize huckleberry by the color and flavor. I had also read that salmon berries grew along the trail but also had no clue as to what they looked like. Be aware, dear reader, of the craving for fresh fruit and vegetables a hiker deals with on the trail. There is no super market with exotic fruits and no farmers market for fresh vegetables. The vitamins we lack are contained in such items and the cravings come for cucumber, pineapple, apples etc. I was hiking with Louis at the time, and we were on the Goldmyer Hot Springs alternate to the PCT just north of Snoqualamie Pass when we encountered our first ripe berries. There was a big bush of what looked like orange raspberries and the temptation was too much. Even though we couldn't identify them we had to try them. A no doubt dangerous venture but the risk was probably no worse than puking if it turned out to be poison. We later found out that orange raspberries were actually unripened salmon berries and were introduced to raw huckleberries by the friendly folks at Goldmyer Hot Springs. Louis still eats unripe salmon berries, but I found that once they turn from their salmon color to bright red they taste amazing and have become a salmon berry snob. We both devour huckleberries any chance we get, and I have a saying: "The day I'm too worried about my mileage or too concerned with hiking matters to stop and eat huckleberries is the day I quit the trail."