October 18th, 2024
Mile Marker: 2643.3
Miles Hiked: 23
I woke up multiple times in the night as the moon was shining bright on our faces. I would pull my beanie down over my eyes and fall back asleep and somehow it would arise over my eyes and I’d repeat. Around 4 AM I woke up to clouds zooming past overhead. I had my fingers crossed it wouldn’t rain on us and fell back into a deep sleep. So deep that when I woke up again, the sky was actually light from the sun. I looked at my watch and it said 6:45. Whoa, I haven’t slept in that late in a while.
We got around lazily and headed out of camp a little after 8. I was okay with a late start, I think we all kind of needed it and I felt a lightness in my being.
We walked along a chunky gravel road for a while. We had 5 ish miles to our first water source of the day.
We also crossed a paved road that always surprises me. I feel like we are in the middle of no where and here is a nice paved road that gets used frequently as I hear cars passing by. Where are we??
Just as we were approaching the water source, that was a solar well, a man in a white truck comes rolling along.
A man with a flat brimmed hat, jeans, and jean shirt comes out with a big goofy grin. We asked him if it was okay to use water from the well and he said “Of course!”
He chatted with us and told us he never once thought about doing the trail and that we must be tired. We all chuckled because yes, yes we were.
He then led us over to the other side of this big round bin and told us to go through the gate and stand on a barrel so we could reach the black piped water.
We also realized that if there was any slight cloud coverage, the solar well wouldn’t work. So we stood nearby and once it started going we climbed up and filled up our water.
The man also told us of a good restaurant to eat authentic Mexican in Silver City. We will definitely take his recommendation! We wished each other well and he drove off.
We then filled up 2ish liters of water and continued on down the road.
The CDT actually got us off the gravel road for a while and we turned onto a trail. This was nice for a change as we headed up the mountain. Today had a bit more elevation change than we previously have had.
I found myself listening to Comfort Crisis by Michael Easton for most of the day. This book is all about doing hard things and challenging ourselves and why this is beneficial. I found myself enjoying listening to this as I, myself, was on a hard, long adventure. I can only hope I am better off because of it like he claims happens after doing hard things.
He also talks about the benefits of being in nature and I smiled along as I knew all about what he was talking about. While I was a graduate research assistant, I got placed on research that involved the importance of nature for helping a variety of things like stress reduction and attention.
Plus it was pretty cool to hear about his adventure in Alaska as I hike through the woods.
Once on top of the climb we could see far into the distance with one side being desert and another showing more mountains. We could also see the rain that was coming.
Today was cool for majority of the day and extremely windy. We wore our mid layers for most of the day and rain gear when getting rained on.
We took a short alternate that led us through Govina Canyon. It wasn’t anything too special but involved a lot of walking over rocks. We took this however for the water source. We knew it wasn’t going to be best, but didn’t want to carry water for 20 miles.
So we stopped at a cow pond and yes, filtered the water and drank from this.
While sitting and filtering I watched these cows in the distance watch us and as soon as we walked away from the pond, I watched them hop a barbed wire fence!
I was shocked. Never have I ever seen a cow jump like that. They then drank water and wanted to pass up to go a different direction but were too scared so they jumped back over. One got sort of caught and it hurt my heart to see it stumble. The baby calf also got left behind as they hesitated where to jump but eventually got through and back with family.
Fascinating to watch animals.
We continued on and decided to cut the day short as Whatever’s knee was hurting him pretty good, especially after all the rocky terrain we had.
We found a spot under the trees before the rain came. Thank goodness.
The rain has come off and on while cooking dinner and laying down. I’m hopeful it just stops eventually or stays the light sprinkle.
Goodnight.
Iz and Oz
Izzy + Ozzy 