Day 140: (23 miles)
2073-2096

Walked out and up (of course) from Warm Springs Creek early in the morning. It was brisk and we were dressed for the cold chill. We met a SOBO hiker and she told us Coppertone was at the next road crossing serving root beer floats. Paul had told me about his meeting with Coppertone back when I was first off trail with Giardia. I felt so deprived when he said he received the magic of a root beer float. We were only 4 miles from the road so we picked up our pace as if we had never had a float before. Soon we could hear road traffic and see Coppertone’s camper. Coppertone is a generous, kind person, who hiked the trail a few years ago and has been trail angeling for some time. We were greeted by Coppertone and his giant smile. He remembered Paul and my Giardia story and offered us some fresh fruit, cookies and his famous root beer floats. We accepted his offer on all accounts. The root beer float was wonderful and refreshing as Paul had described. After all the refreshments, we thanked Coppertone and were off. We planned to meet our nephew, Ben and his wife Ash, at Frog Lake, but have had problems with his phone number.  Seems we’ve been leaving messages for the wrong number. Not sure how it will work out, as we finally got the correct number and have not heard back from him yet. They live in Portland, a 2 hour drive away. Crossing our fingers we continue up the trail.

We got our first look back at Mt. Jefferson off in the distance.  In the afternoon we reached Timothy Lake, a large lake which had lots of people swimming, boating, and horseback riding. We had lunch along the shore and talked about how we are beginning to miss the summer activities at home, as the activities here were similar. We confident we will be home soon, maybe 5 more weeks to go. About 4pm we were able contact Ben and found out he wasn’t able to meet us at Frog Lake this evening. We made plans to meet tomorrow at Timberline Lodge around noon.

We arrived at the Frog Lake campground and resupplied our water, had dinner at a picnic table, and talked with a few campers. Our plans to camp at the campground was nixed when we found out it would cost $21 to put up our tent. We went back up the trail about a mile and camped for free in an area all to ourselves without cars or any other people. Such a deal! Tomorrow we will head to Timberline Lodge for the most extravagant buffet and luxurious accommodations on the trail. Oh joy!