This 104-mile section of the trail took me through the Rogue River National Forest, Sky Lakes Wilderness, and first part of Crater Lake National Park. There was a little bit of everything in this section and I'm now seeing quite a few SOBOs coming through.

I seem to be walking a lot more in the shade, which is mostly good, but I have noticed that that is when the annoying gnats show up. Apparently they don't like being in direct sunlight because they disappear whenever I step out in the sun. Seems like I can't win sometimes: get relief from the sun in the shade but then the gnats show up; get relief from the gnats in the sun but then have to deal with heat... 😅

Also in this section I had to navigate around alot more fallen trees, some of them nearly as tall as me, which were impossible to climb over, and took a long time to walk around.

There were a couple of small streams that as I approached it looked like the ground was moving. When I looked closer, it was hundreds and hundreds of tiny frogs or toads. There was no way to avoid them and still get through there, so I'm sorry to say I stepped on more than a few. Frog apocalypse.

Also got into some nice patches of huckleberries. I'm a firm believer that life is better if you have a mouth full of huckleberries, so with my hiker hunger fully kickied in, it took quite a lot of self-discipline to not spend an hour or two just picking and eating huckleberries.

I did the math: through the first four weeks after getting back on trail from our Alaskan cruise I averaged 162.5 miles per week.