“Night came and we waited for the midnight train. The dismal train station filled up and we stayed close to our friend. Crazy people would talk to us who we tried to mostly ignore. The train came thundering through the station breaking up the still city air. We stood on the platform, the night was warm. The lights from Klamath Falls twinkled on the hillsides. With our lives and luggage as always on our backs, we boarded to take a seat on the second floor of the double decker. The seat was comfortable, we reclined a bit and Maggie put her head on me. We rested our bare feet on the cool carpet next to our backpacks. The lights went dim. The train left without a sound. I watched as the lighted hills of the city serenely slipped away, replaced by a black night. The Coast Starlight sailed off, smooth and silent. It only took minutes before we were lulled to sleep.

I woke up many times throughout the night but then it was sunrise. Orange and pink over the flat Sacramento Valley of California. Where were we? There were palm trees outside. Then we were twenty miles from the city, capitol of the empire. We saw disheveled trailer park neighborhoods, half abandoned. Garbage was piled in the ditches by the streets and under the underpasses. We saw dogs and people sleeping among the garbage in the predawn glow…”

South of Crater Lake the trail was closed, forcing us to skip ahead. It was late August, and our plan had remained to hike as far as Tuolumne Meadows, get there by late October and possibly end the hike. We were running on schedule still, but the more we mentioned this plan to people, the more we wanted to hike the Sierras. We had lived there, we missed them, and so many people told us they were the best part of the trail. Eventually we decided we didn’t want to skip them.

Instead, we decided impulsively, we’d skip northern California and head right to the Sierras for the month of September!