Lorelai seems to have brought too much stuff. She’s in a motel, looking at her bag and everything scattered on the bed and the floor that needs to go in it. “Huh,” she says, looking utterly confused. She calls Luke, but gets his voicemail, instead, where she leaves a rant about being the ice machine monitor. “I’ve been alone for exactly 12 hours and I’m already nuts,” Lorelai says. It’s not a great start to her solo hiking trip. Clearly, she doesn’t really want to be solo. She does have the hiking lingo down, though.Watching Lorelai packing her giant backpack all by herself makes you realize that this is something we’ve never seen before. Lorelai may have gone out on her own when she was 16, but she’s never really been alone. She had her parents and, after that, Rory. Even when Rory went away, she had Luke or Christopher or Sookie — or an entire town. This is all new to her. She’s out of her comfort zone and it’s showing. But Lorelai may just surprise us. What’s not surprising is that when she hits the Pacific Crest Trail, she’s surrounded by a lot of other women, mostly divorcées, who are going on their own Wild adventures. So many, in fact, that Lorelai is asked by one young woman, “Movie or book?”Rory is still in Stars Hollow, working at the Gazette, where the poem is the highlight of the paper, but something weird is happening with her computer and Kirk’s pig, Petal, is running down the street with a sign that reads “Kick up a rumpus.” I’m as confused as Rory, but I can’t help but feel like this has Logan Huntzberger written all over it.Jess could also be a culprit, since he just so happens to be in town. He’s at the diner looking for Luke, who is covered in flour and out of sorts. He even gave out the real Wi-Fi password. For once, someone is actually asking Luke what’s going on. Luke is chalking it up to lack of sleep, but when he says everything at home is “fine,” his nephew forces him to actually tell him what’s wrong. Luke tells him about Lorelai doing Wild, to which Jess, of course, asks, “Movie or book?” They’re “very different experiences.”Luke is concerned about Lorelai being out in California in “real hiking boots you can hike in,” not just cute ones. He admits that there’ve been communication problems and that the sniping we’ve been seeing is new. He fears this three-week hike is her taking a permanent vacation from him. Jess agrees that it sounds bad. Like “she’s going to leave him” kind of bad. Luke looks sad to hear this, but Jess pulling the router out does seem to boost his spirits a little.Lorelai isn’t having a great trip. After being told by a park ranger (Parenthood’s Jason Ritter) that there’s a storm coming so hike at your own risk, she’s back in the motel eating freeze-dried meatballs. While she’s going to get ice, she discovers that the other women on the trip are sitting outside, books in hand, drinking boxed wine by a fire. This seems more up Lorelai’s alley than the hike itself. When they ask her why she’s there, Lorelai says it’s “not a story, just a punchline.” The other women assume she’s there because of a divorce, a terrible relationship, or a heroin addiction. But the individuals reasons don’t matter: all of these women are there to change their lives. It’s as if this one hike is going to have the Cheryl Strayed effect on all of them. As if it will offer a quick fix for every problem in their life. Lorelai falls into this category: She wants clarity that every decision she’s made wasn’t wrong. “Suddenly, I feel like I’m standing still,” she tells the circle. “Like the whole world is moving and I’m standing completely still.” Lorelai’s definitely going to need some more wine.Rory needs a clue. She’s walking around town on a foggy night trying to figure out what that pig was trying to tell her. She sees a fluorescent red “Flowers” sign change into the word “Tonight.” Then, a man wearing a top hat while riding a unicycle passes by saying, “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” It’s what the witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth say and besides feeling very timely with Halloween coming up, I’ve got nothing. Even more confusing is the raven in the tree that is saying Rory’s name and letting her know she needs to get ready.The door to the Gazette is open, so Rory walks into the darkness only to be greeted by the paper’s resident filer, Esther, saying the words “In Omnia Paratus.” The Life and Death Brigade is back, gorilla masks and all. Finn, Colin, Robert, and Logan are there to take her out. It’s probably the first bit of fun we’ve seen Rory have all year. It doesn’t feel real, but maybe that’s because it’s so surreal. (It’s also a near shot-for-shot of a scene in Across the Universe.) She hits golf balls off of a roof, watches Kirk’s second short film, and ends up doing the tango with Logan in a speakeasy.These guys haven’t changed since college. Finn is flirting with anyone and everyone. Colin is throwing his money around and Logan is trying to charm Rory with grand gestures. He’s in Stars Hollow because he doesn’t like the way they left things, but he hasn’t left Odette. Rory also hasn’t fixed things with her mom and is still crashing at Lane’s. But Logan’s there to give her a key to his family’s house in Maine so she can write her book. Like Jess, Logan thinks she needs to: “It’s time.” It’s also time for Rory to ask the million dollar question, Is Logan going to marry Odette? “It’s the dynastic plan,” he says and that is apparently that.The next morning, Rory wakes up in Logan’s room at a New Hampshire bed and breakfast ready to give back the key. She tells him that she has another place in mind for where she’s going to write. She seems ready to get back to real life. But her Wizard Of Oz goodbye is a nice way to send these ridiculous guys off. Logan gets his own special goodbye. “I think your days of rescuing me are over,” she says. He lets her know she never needed rescuing, to which she responds, “I know now.”Lorelai doesn’t need rescuing on her journey, either. But she does need a permit, which she can’t find and the park ranger (Graham’s Parenthood co-star and real-life boyfriend, Peter Krause ) isn’t having it. There’s always tomorrow, but today, Lorelai is headed to a local café that happens to be closed. She decides to walk. It’s not the PCT, but she does get to see a bit of nature that takes her breath away. After a few seconds of taking it all in, she takes out her phone and calls Emily.She tells her mom the story of her 13th birthday and how the boy she liked broke up with her in front of everyone. She wanted to show him what he was missing, so she stole her mother’s beaded green top, but he called her cheap and told her she wasn’t good enough to be a Gilmore. She ended up ditching school and heading to the mall, where she saw her dad. When he asked her why she was there, she couldn’t come up with a lie, so she just started crying. She assumed he would punish her, but when she looked up to see him there, he was holding a pretzel. He ended up taking her to see Grease and An Unmarried Woman. “It was the best birthday I ever had,” Lorelai says, crying. “I just wanted you to know.” It’s the most vulnerable we’ve seen Lorelai. It’s the memory she should have told back in “Winter,” but couldn’t.Lorelai doesn’t need to do any more hiking, she just needs to go back home, where Luke is talking to Paul Anka about steak. She, on the other hand, wants to talk about coffee, which is what she was going to get when she had her realization. Luke assumes she’s gearing up to leave him, so he cuts into her big speech to let her know he will never leave her. He may not be easy to live with, but he can’t imagine them being apart. He just doesn’t want her to go. If only he had just waited, since Lorelai doesn’t want to leave either. “I think we should get married,” she says. “We’ve waited way too long.” I don’t think any fan would disagree.The date is picked: the Sunday of the Harvest Festival, since Luke’s closes early. Luke even has the ring from the last time they got engaged. “Just gotta tell ya, before this thing goes on,” he says as he slips it on her finger. “You’ve got to realize, the only way out is in a body bag.” Am I the only one who would really love that stitched on a pillow?Off in Nantucket, Emily is being served by Jack, who seems to be making her very happy these days. On a solo trip to the Whaling Museum, Emily has an epiphany that isn’t exactly clear right now. What is, though, is that Rory is using Richard and Emily’s house to write her book. She’s right, that does feel like the right place. Rory is reliving some of her best times in that home. (Remember when she made her grandparents frozen pizza?) She ends up in Richard’s study, where she takes a seat in his chair and starts writing.