[pct-l] Three questions to the list for 2012

[Maxine Weyant]

You won't need  new clothes.  The lodge in Manning is nothing fancy.  The restaurant is nothing fancy either, but a very welcome sight for the average PCT'er.  I pulled in around 6pm, washed my clothes in the tub or sink with a bar of hand soap , had dinner in my rain pants (which you'll probably want once you get to WA) and everything was dry by the time I got up in the am.  I'm sure I smelled fresh as a daisy on the bus to Seattle the next day, ha ha.

I hiked the last part of the Camino de Santiago in Spain last May, which is a pilgrimage hike that started in the Middle Ages.  For centuries, after hiking to Santiago, the weary pilgrims would then hike to the end of the peninsula (Finisterre) and burn their stinky, and often lice-infested, clothes. If it weren't for the fire hazard in Manning Park and the toxic fumes from our synthetic clothes, it'd be tempting to start that tradition at the end of the PCT.  Kind of a cleansing or purification ritual. But then again, so is hiking the PCT.      

Maxine
(Dys-feng shui-nal)