This section of trail included mostly walking on mountains trails and some cross-country through basins. There were few other hikers but amazing scenery.
Day 22 – Mile 366.3 – Elk & Deer!
We had a trail the entire day today!! It was so much easier than the last three days of cross country travel. Last night we camped at the intersection of the official CDT and the Gila Alternate route. We ran into Ginny in the morning and saw shoe prints on the trail all day. Crazy to see thruhikers again after 11 days without seeing any. We also saw nice wolf and bear tracks on the trail. The sandy New Mexico soil is great for tracking animals and people. We saw so many elk and deer today that we couldn’t keep count. The first elk we saw had nice velvet antlers! We saw a few groups of elk without antlers too. We also saw two herds of coues deer with big ears and some mule deer, including one with antlers. We hiked 24 miles and got to a highway at 6:30 pm to hitch into the town of Reserve. Only one car buzzed past in the two hours we stood there. At dark we called it a night and set up camp near the highway behind some trees. Hopefully we’ll be more successful tomorrow… -R
Day 23 – Mile 374.6 – Clean for a day!
We got up early and were back at the roadside just after 6 to try to hitch into town to resupply. Once again, cars were few and far between, but by 7:30 two cars had driven by and the second picked us up! Actually, she passed us up and 3 minutes later turned around to get us. The driver was a very nice lady named Susan who said she never picks up crazies but knew we must just be hikers (we kept it a secret that we are a little crazy too…). We had a nice ride with Susan and after 30 minutes we were in town getting chores done. We showered and did laundry and ate a bunch of food. Those are the main three chores in town. We also accomplished several internet tasks such as ordering shoes. We spent hours at a wonderful Mexican restaurant with wifi doing the internet things. By 4 we were hitching back to the trail. A nice lady, Karen, picked us up who used to live in Oregon near the PCT but just retired in April and moved to New Mexico for the horse riding. We hiked about 8 miles to the first water source and then called it a night shortly before dark. The hiking was pretty easy but the views were expansive and beautiful. At the campsite I performed surgery on my Garmin watch charging cable. It seems to have frayed, but I hopefully spliced the wires well enough to hold until I can order a new one. If not, Renee’s watch will be the only one tracking our hike for a while. For dinner we had instant stuffing… It was store bought because we unexpectedly had to use one of our good homemade dinners yesterday. -T
Day 24 – Mile 396.5 – Bears!!
Today we woke up and had a nice, slow morning watching sunrise, drinking coffee, and eating breakfast in our sleeping bags. While we were filtering water at a spring/pond later in the morning, we saw two big black bears in the valley just below us. We were able to watch them for quite awhile, which was really fun. One kept going up into a pine tree and pulling on the branches. I have been getting more and more blisters over the last few days. Today my right foot hurt a lot while walking and now have blisters on every toe, on the outside of my foot, and on the pad of my foot. Tim convinced me it was a good idea to drain some of the big ones, so he stuck a needle into three of them for me. Hopefully it’ll help. Tomorrow we will hike into Pie Town. -R
I love reading about your adventures. Keep them coming.