On trail you never can predict which days are going to be stand out. So much depends on weather, terrain, the people you run into plus everything else.
With my birthday coming up, I was considering slowly down to let my longer term friends catch up. But I ended up deciding it’s just another day and trying to plan anything would be pointless.
On the 8th August (the day before my birthday), we got some of the best trail magic of the trip. Pints of Ben and Jerry’s each and fresh grilled cheese sandwiches! There were so many hikers gathered it was a proper little party. I told the trail angel I was going to pretend this was a surprise birthday party, which no one knew they were at.
The rest of the 8th was also filled with socialising. I walked with 3 new people, all at different parts of the day and generally just was high on life by bedtime.
On the 9th my only plan was I wanted to walk 25 miles (last year I did 24km over two days, this was with friends and certainly wasn’t a challenge, but it’s crazy to see the differences in acceptable distances). When I first thought about doing 25 miles on my birthday I thought it would be a fun challenge. By the time it got to the day I actually had to do a smaller day than normal. This meant I may not see any of the group I’d been hiking around the past week or so. I pretty much expected the day to be a tad isolated and even lonely.
I started the day with a swim in the lake where I camped, then quickly ran into a hiker I have had passing chats with the past few weeks but hadn’t fully got to know. We ended up walking together for the whole day.
We swam in more lakes. An awesome father daughter hiker duo sang me happy birthday as I came hiking along! Then unexpectedly, there was a side trail leading to a resort – Elk Lake (this is pretty rare, we tend to know about all the resorts). Silver (my hiking buddy for the day) convinced me to go in. We got home-made mac and cheese, too many beers and even a Malibu cocktail I’d been dreaming about packing out, if I’d been with Benalie. It was Malibu, pineapple juice and coconut water – we named it “the girl drink”. Blokely bloke Silver still seemed to enjoy his cocktail!

We finished the day with a final dip in another lake, joined by another hiker and I ran off to complete my 25 miles.
On my way up the hill I saw Highlander and Tigger – I have never hiked with these guys and rarely even seen them on trail, but they have been there for my 1000 mile mark, the Oregon/California border crossing and now my birthday. The three big moments for me of trail. Strange, but cool, my personal cheering team.

I did finish my miles – 25.4, even if I was a little intoxicated for those last 6!
I couldn’t have been happier with a day which could have gone any direction, ending up so fun. One of my favorite things about the trail is the unlimited supply of unexpected.
Ooo I also got signal for a brief moment at Elk, so I even got all the lovely birthday wishes from home on the actual day, which was a bonus.