Start: 779.3
Stop: Red Bear Welcome Center
Today’s Miles: 14
Total CDT miles: 652.5
To do 14 miles on a “hero” day is absolutely impressive, if I do say so myself. A hero day is when you go in and out of a town in the same day and don’t stay the night.. it’s a hard thing to do, especially when you’re like me and love a bed.. and a shower.. and yet-we did it AND managed to still hike 14 miles! Success.
We were up early, packed and at the road by 6:30am. We hitched for about an hour, and the second car that came by ended up stopping for us! There just wasn’t a lot of traffic that early in the morning. We did our food resupply at a grocery store, ate a pizza there, hitched to the post office, got my shoes from an outfitter I had mailed them to (the shoes are solid white-lord help me), and then were about to walk to the end of town to hitch back, when we decided we were still hungry and wanted a meal.
So, we turned around and found a diner. When we walked in, Ellie of all people was sitting there! We met her in Cuba, New Mexico and absolutely loved her. We sat at her table with her and ate way more than we intended. The food was good, nothing special but everything is technically special when you’ve been eating ramen noodles everyday.
We caught up with Ellie and yapped a while about the snow and which way to go on trail. We could either take the redline and deal with chest deep post holing, or take the blue line alternate and have hopefully little to no snow at all. We decided to not risk it and take the blue line, Ellie was still undecided on which way she wanted to go. Eventually, we decided we had to get a move on or we’d never leave.. which I would have been totally fine with!
We said our goodbyes as Ellie walked to her motel room and then stood on the corner and popped out our thumbs. It was so hot already, the idea of walking sounded awful.. but at least we knew we wouldn’t encounter any snow today. Minutes later, a guy stopped for us and took us back to the pass we got off trail at. We filtered some water and then started our road walk down the blue line.
The only thing motivating me to make this road walk happen in a somewhat timely manner, was the promise of a place to camp for free that sells burgers and has live music. It was like having town legs AFTER the town trip! I was full and my pack was heavy thanks to all the food I just bought at the grocery store, and even still I was hauling ass to get to the Red Bear Welcome Center to get my dang burger! God, hiking is so weird.
It was quite hot and miserable on the road, and I was in new shoes I was breaking in.. but.. we got to the Red Bear place before 6pm, just in time to order our burgers and fries and watch the staff set up for live music! We charged our power banks inside and set up our sleeping pads outside in the grass, far enough away from the patio the band was set to play on. While charging our stuff, the man that drove us into Chama this morning saw us and bought us a beer! So stinking sweet!
Today ended pretty dang cool. After we ate our burgers, we laid in the grass on our sleeping pads and listened to the band playing to the 50 or 60 people that came to hear them. The atmosphere was fun yet relaxing. I’m pretty happy we didn’t stay in Chama, that we got some miles done, and got to experience this small town Friday night right here. Oh! And we’re camping with some bike packers! There’s 3 or 4 of them, and we’ve chatted randomly to almost all of them!
It’s a little chilly, I guess we are in the mountains for real now. Time to get some shut eye, and it’s definitely an ear plugs required kind of night, since we’re so close to the road. I may even put my headband over my eyes like an eye mask, because it’s bright out here too!
Cheers to a successful day in every way! Sweet dreams yall!
love this!!!