Start: 707.3
Stop: 730.1
Today’s Miles: 22.8
Total CDT miles: 589.3
The moon was ginormous last night, and bright. A little past dusk, the cows were still mooing loudly, I kept expecting to see them trot by in a line like they seem to do when they run away together. They never did, at least not that I’m aware of.
I slept pretty decent once I fell asleep, and woke around 3:30 pretty cold. Well, my face was cold, my body was warm, and once again-everything was wet. I really hate waking up to soaking wet sleep stuff. At least this time everything else was inside my pack and dry. I just worry about not being able to dry out my quilt and having to go to sleep with wet stuff. It doesn’t have to be below freezing to go hypothermic.
Anyway. Come 6:15 ish, I finally started to grumpily pack. It’s also super cold in the morning when everything is wet. Pebbles had already eaten his breakfast and packed by the time I was ready to go. His internal clock does a much better job than mine. I never want to get up. He seems to just pop awake and is good to go. I’m jealous.
The trail was pretty unremarkable today. We walked through more grassy fields with cows, sloshed through thick mud, weaved around fallen trees. When we stopped for lunch, laid out all of our stuff, storm clouds rolled through. Only one sprinkle fell, but it was enough to make me decide I was putting my tent up tonight. Thankfully, our quilts and sleeping pads did dry out, but it was questionable.
After we started hiking again, it did spittle on us off and on over the next few hours. Never enough to need my rain gear on, although I did put my pack cover on before leaving our lunch spot, just in case. The rain clouds made for easier walking weather, it was chilly and windy, not blaring hot. I was quite ok with that!
We never saw Ellie or Doc Holiday, even though both are undoubtedly very close by. After crossing a river that I had to walk through and Pebbles could rock hop across, we took a decent break. It was almost 5pm, we had already gone over 20 miles, and the next water was 2.3 miles away. We planned to take a break, and then push to that water and find somewhere to camp.
While we were sitting there, Dagmar walked up!! She left Ghost Ranch the day before we did, and somehow today we unknowingly passed her! She said she had set her tent up behind a tree to take an afternoon nap when that storm rolled through. Smart lady. That had to have been when we got ahead of her!
We stayed and talked with her awhile, she’s so funny. She went the same wrong way in the canyon out of Ghost Ranch as I did-but where I turned around-she took off her pack, let it slide down the 20+ feet, and then she carefully made her way down the completely washed out mountainside! I’m glad I had Pebbles there to tell me it would be safer to go back, because I don’t know that I would have come out of that slide unharmed! I’m shocked she did!
We said our goodbyes and walked our last 2.3 miles, one of which was uphill. It wasn’t bad at all. Somewhere in the middle, there was a shrine that we stopped to take pictures of. It was beautifully done out here in the middle of nowhere.
At the creek, we started looking for places to set up. I found a good spot for my tent and asked Pebbles his thoughts. He was still going to cowboy tonight. I thought he found a spot so I dropped my bag. As I started setting up, he kept walking around, and ultimately decided to cowboy under a tree like 50 yards away. I’m a little sad he’s so far, but I can understand wanting to set up where you want to. He could be sick of me by this point, so, I get that, too. I did eat my dinner with him though, so hopefully he wasn’t that sick of me, since I ruined his chance at a solo quiet dinner.
Anyway, I’m all bundled up and waiting for my phone to charge so I can unplug my power bank. I hope the dew settles only on my tent and that all my stuff inside stays dry. I don’t remember the dew soaking anything inside before, but I could definitely be wrong. Fingers crossed. Sweet dreams, yall.