I thought for sure Pebbles and I would be sliding on our sleeping pads all night, but surprisingly we stayed put pretty well! And I slept good, too.. I’ll take the wins when I can!
We had some pretty trail throughout the morning before getting onto a dirt road that eventually took us to the Pie Town Alternate. Right before getting to it, we got water from a solar tank and hid in the shade for a bit with another hiker planning to hitch into a town we were planning to skip. I know, me skipping a town? Shocking!
The rest of the day was dirt roads and uneventful, until a little after 5pm. It was hot as hell, we were pouring sweat-and we had a climb! We had to go up a dirt road to a fire tower lookout. It was over 800 feet of elevation in just a few short miles.. in the heat, it felt like it was 20 miles away!
Close to half way up the dirt road, winding around a mountain, a black jeep wrangler comes barreling down the road! I screamed and jumped to my left, the mountain side of the road, Pebbles screamed because of me and jumped to the right, thankfully not off the side of the mountain! We laughed for way too long about the screams and jumps, even hours later, cackling and unable to stop.
The man in the jeep was the caretaker and I guess “fire lookout guy.” He told us where some water was but not much else. I petted his cute doggo, and we carried on up the hill-the only thing making me continue walking being the laughter at how we reacted to the jeep.
Close to the top, we realized we had to climb up a slight cliffside and bushwhack through to the fire tower, unless we wanted to add unnecessary miles to the day. We climbed up and made it through, to find a cabin and a picnic table. We had our dinner there, trying to figure out where we’d camp for the night. As we sat eating, looking off into the gorgeous distance, we spotted a puff of smoke. “Hmmm.. you think that’s a fire?” “I don’t know, but maybe.” And right before our eyes we watched it start to slowly billow more smoke.
We wrapped up dinner and started walking back the way we came, to get back to the road that would take us to the trail. The smoke was getting worse. Pebbles looked up on his phone and was guesstimating it being about 15 miles away from us. I called it in to 911, and we were within the first 30 minutes of the initial call to report it! It was a fire! She said they were dispatching the local fire department and basically that was it.. I sort of thought she should ask me follow up questions like, “are you safe from the fire right now?”
Or something? But I guess when it happens all the time out here, people would start with “I need help!” Who knows?
As the sun was setting and we were looking for a flat spot to camp, I could smell the smoke from the fire. I really hate that smell.. it never seems to not make me think of the house fire I was in as a child, the one we lost my brother to. I tried to ignore the rush of emotions flooding me, Pebbles helped lighten the mood-for sure-with his jokes and fits of laughter about the jeep.
We’re cowboying tonight, and we’re still smelling the smoke but it’s gotten better since we’ve set up. I hope I don’t have nightmares tonight, or wake in a panic. Crazy how something from 33 years ago can show up out of the blue and feel like yesterday. Anyway, I guess that’s it, goodnight yall.
I was out like a light, so fast, and probably got my best night of sleep on trail so far. Maybe I should have huge Adrenaline crashes before sleeping every night! We slept in a little bit, after our bear scare last night. I was happy about that.
We got to hiking, passing cows that we just knew had seen us last night, watched me fall in a ditch, thinking the baby was a mountain lion ready to pounce on Pebbles and eat him for dinner.. knowing it could just save my goofy self for later.. ah, good times. What memories we make out here! lol
We got to our first water tank of the day, after seeing a dead cow half decomposed nearby. The water tank had 3 dead bats in it. Welp. That’s a problem. Pebbles fished 2 of the 3 out, one decided to sink into the underworld and be gone forever. He reminded me of the high risk of rabies, so we couldn’t drink this water, even if we could have figured out how to stomach it. Our filters will remove bacteria, but not viruses.
We didn’t have much water left, but knew we had to press on at least 9+ miles to the next water source. And it was already getting hot. Shit. This is not good, not good at all. We pressed on. There wasn’t much choice in the matter.
As we were hiking up the hill of this dirt road we’ve been on for miles, a car comes by and stops next to us. They told us they were parking at the lot coming up and they’d share water with us! TRAIL MAGIC! When hikers say the trail provides, this is what we mean!! What are the chances that the one time we couldn’t get water, someone literally offers some within 20-30 minutes of realizing we’d be going without!? Incredible!
We hiked to the lot at the top of the hill, there were 2 vehicles and 5 people. Two women were getting ready to set off on their section hike and their husbands and their friend were driving the vehicles and planning to wait at the next highway the trail crosses! How fun! The one guy had a cute doodle with him, Arie, and let us love on the pupper and fill up our water bottles. So dang nice!
Speaking of puppies, my Molly girl is doing good still! She’s eating and not in any pain, so I’m so very relieved that all is well back home. Mom sends me pictures and updates all the time, so whenever I get service, it’s usually the first thing to pop up. It really makes my heart so happy that my girl is doing ok!
With fresh water ready to go, and the last of our puppy kisses, we set off again. The trail went to actual trail, which was a relief from the road walking. We hiked up a mountain, switchbacked down the other side, and half way up the next mountain, I plopped down in some shade for lunch. Pebbles wasn’t far behind me. He luckily got service at the top of the last mountain, I didn’t. Sad sad.
We ate our lunch and complained about the flies and the heat. It’s a scorcher today! And I’m slap worn out! My feet were achy but my back was fine, so I knew I couldn’t complain too much. We started walking again, and the trail seemed to be a lot more brief ups and downs. We finally decided to camp as the sun was setting, knowing we couldn’t get to the bottom of the mountain we were on before nightfall. The late start, bat fishing fiasco, and playing with the puppy ate more into our day than I expected.
We decided to cowboy camp again, as there really wasn’t enough space to set up either tent, let alone both. We’re kind of crammed into this one slightly uneven spot, hoping it’ll work well enough. I don’t think we’ll have any issues with animals tonight, but if I hurry up and go to bed, I won’t know about them either way! Ha. Dinner has been eaten, and we’re laying on our pads, slightly sliding a little. Oh well. I’m not packing up til morning, it is what it is!
It was pretty dang cold overnight, and windy! But as long as I was tucked into my quilt, I was cozy. We got up and on the road quick, cowboy camping definitely has its advantages! The trail started down the dirt road that people access the campground from, and then splits off on a trail after a few miles. The roads are nice because they’re wide, but they do make for tender feet.
The trail was hard to follow, we ended up on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence and had to climb over-but apparently most people do the same thing because there was an easy spot already loose to push down the wires. These cows make great trails, and they’re usually not on our trail at all. Whoops. I wish I could say that would be the last time we did that-but alas, that would be a lie.
By 9am, we were at a cow pond with a solar pump-I’m not sure how we were supposed to get the water from this contraption, but we ended up filling our bags/bottles from the huge spraying hole in the pump tubing. The pond was nasty, covered in cow poop all around.. there’s no way I was wading through that to get to the “better” water-so thank God for the hole!
From the pond, the trail went sharply up and out of this deep valley, then winded along a dirt road through prairie grasses with a few trees scattered about. The rolling hills were beautiful, and the wind was blowing so it wasn’t as hot as it could have been. Pebbles and I hiked together along the dirt road, talking and singing songs and being silly-all to pass the time. I’m really grateful to have him as a hiking partner-even though he’s way faster than me.. it gets lonely out here. We haven’t seen another CDT hiker since we hiked with Special K a few days ago-and that girl is long gone!
Eventually, our prairie grasses turned into wooded hills.. all still on a dirt road. Several cars and trucks drove by. But we never saw another hiker. We got more water from a cow trough with a hose into it from a spring, scaring off quite a few cows by accident in the process. As I was walking with my water, a lady in an SUV stops to tell me she just saw a huge wolf. She then goes, “will you be ok?” Ummm. I guess? Like do you know something I don’t? lol
We only walked up the road a little past the trough to camp, no wolf sightings to be had, and my feet were toast. I picked a spot on the opposite side of the road, that had less cow trails-hoping that they’d stay on their side of the road overnight. We decided to cowboy camp again, since it’s so dang easy. As we’re sitting on our sleeping pads, wrapped in our quilts (it’s already chilly), and eating our dinner-A BABY BEAR GOES RUNNING BY on the opposite side of the road!
Now. We all know, where there’s a baby, there’s a mama nearby. Shit! Literally EATING FOOD on our sleep stuff, no tents set up.. but, we waited, ate, and watched, and there was no mama anywhere! We finished eating, stuffed our food deep in our liners inside our packs, and watched a bit longer. After 30 or so minutes, we said to hell with it and started tucking in for bed. The sun had set, it was getting dark, Pebbles had rounded up some throwing rocks in case we had any visitors, plus we had our trekking poles and headlamps nearby.
I was deep in my quilt, rolling around to get comfortable, when I heard Pebbles say, “did you hear that?” And I’m all carefree in my, “it’s just me making noise with my quilt” as I stick my head out to actual listen. I hadn’t heard anything over the racket I was making. Not a few seconds later, I heard the quick crunching and crashing of something big headed our way.
I popped up to my knees immediately, with a loud, “OH SHIT, HEYYYYYYY BEAR!” And clapping my hands loud like a lunatic. Pebbles popped up too and started clacking his trekking poles together. We couldn’t see anything! It was pitch black, and the tree line behind our little spot went up pretty dramatically. We heard the huffing and growling of something large, and could literally tell when she stood on her back legs. The sounds she was making went from low to high and the growling couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a bear.
We kept shouting, making noise, turning on our headlamps-we were in a stand off for what felt like an eternity, which was probably only minutes at the absolute most. But mama bear wasn’t backing down easy. We’d hear a crunch and growling and huffing, and we’d yell more. Then, you could tell she dropped back down to all 4s and the crashing and crunching started to move away from us. It was TERRIFYING! We didn’t know if she was about to charge out of the darkness and into one of us.. I was too anxious to lean down and grab a rock, because what if she waited for that moment to charge?! When I wasn’t looking toward her and seemed smaller?
We were very hyped up and freaked out for a good ten minutes before the ache in my knees from being on them on my pad was noticeable. Then I realized how sore my feet were. I told Pebbles that I’m pretty sure she’s gone, and you could see in his face that he didn’t care if I could guarantee she wouldn’t come back-he was not going to be able to sleep here tonight. I probably wouldn’t have been able to either, I was just not looking forward to packing up and walking on achy feet, after our longest day on trail already.
Oh well. Mama bear won. We packed up, quick too. Nothing was put where it normally goes, everything just got shoved in and my pack was a little lopsided. I couldn’t get my shoes back on, so I hiked out in my crocs. In the pitch black of night, we started walking down a dirt road in our headlamps. It was almost more eerie than the damn bear encounter! Ok, not really, but we were both on edge.
We saw an owl, and then so many green glowing eyes. At one point we thought we saw a big cat-like a mountain lion or something similarly lethal, and as Pebbles backed up into me, I backed up into the ditch-quite the little tumble in the darkness. All we could do was laugh-because when I did it, we both screamed. Well, maybe I should say Pebbles yelled lol-whatever. Come to find out-our big cat was a baby calf-all black-and way more slinky in its walking than any of the cows have been during the day. Hahaha, you know those cows were judging us hard, stupid hikers.
We anxiously walked for a little over 2 miles, knowing good and well that a bear could cover that distance in less time than us. We found a mostly flat spot near the road and open from the surrounding trees, and set up our tents. Cowboy camping went out the window with the bear! Something about expensive dyneema fabric that just makes you feel safe! Not really, but it doesn’t offer some sort of comfort.
So, our already “longest day on trail” turned into even longer.. almost 26 miles. I’m happy to be in my quilt and in my tent-and I’m hoping to fall asleep fast, so I won’t care if mama bear comes back! Or the wolf, or the slinky mountain lions turned baby cows! Oh, and thanks to all of the excitement, my back feels fine today! So, that’s a blessing! Good night, yall!
