Day Eight: The Long Road Home
Trail logistics are often complicated and time-consuming. If you want to leave a car at the ending trailhead, you have to arrange for someone to pick you up there and bring you back to the starting point. If you live close enough to the trail, you might be able to get family and friends to drop you off at the start and meet you at the end. PCT thruhikers have to do a lot of hitchhiking to get from road crossings to the nearest towns.
But if you end your trip at Manning Park, you can take advantage of bus and train services to get back to the States. First, it is definitely worth spending at least one night at the lodge. The food is great, they are hiker friendly and there is even a hot tub. We met the backpackers from Mississippi in the bar and had a great time trading trail stories. They had rented cars and placed one at each end of their trip--so they faced the hassle of driving all the way back to Harts Pass to pick up their other rental before getting back to Seattle.
We took the 11 a.m. Greyhound that stops right at the lodge to Vancouver B.C. Unfortunately, it was a four-hour bus ride that would have taken about two hours to drive. We stopped in several towns along the way and by the time we reached Vancouver, we were sick of the road.
The bus arrives at 3:20 p.m. at the Vancouver train station, which also has a light rail stop. As we got off the bus, we could see our Amtrak passenger train behind a fence. Technically we had about two and a half hours to kill before the train left at 6 p.m, but they wanted us to start boarding at 5. We got our tickets, checked our backpacks and decide to look for lunch (except Point Man, who took a nap outside the train station on the grass). If you turn right (north) after leaving the main doors of the train station, you are heading toward Vancouver's amazing Chinatown. In just three blocks, it felt like we were in Hong Kong. We found a cheap, greasy-spoon Chinese cafe and had lunch for about $5 CDN.
Back at the station, we had to go through customs and then finally board the train. Once it started moving, we could buy beer, which we did! We had a great time laughing about our trip and vowing to do it again. We watched the sunset out of the train windows (sit on the right side of the train), reflected on the waters of Puget Sound.
So for me, the state of Washington is prety much over (I have a few minor sections to complete as day hikes in the notorious clear-cut section after White Pass). What's next? Maybe Oregon....
