SUMMARY:  OK, today was “Embrace the Brutality Day.”  We spent the morning playing “Where’s the Trail?” as we searched for elusive marker posts in the chaparral, while walking on very rocky ground, laced with gullies.  Some of the gullies were pretty deep.  Things are better now–we are following a 4WD road, and the cactus are starting to bloom–very pretty!

DETAILS:  Well, this was “embrace the brutality” day for sure! We spent the morning playing “where’s the trail?” as we searched for elusive marker posts in the chaparral, while walking on very rocky ground laced with gullies—some pretty deep, to the point where it was hard to scramble/slide down into them with a pack on. To add to the fun, there were plenty of cactus and thorny stuff to deal with while we were scrambling and sliding.   (We found out later that some of the hikers got so frustrated with climbing in and out of gullies, that they left the trail and went farther down where the land was flat, then just “paralleled” the trail)

And it’s a good thing there are TWO of us looking for CDT marker posts.  It was really hard to find them, since many have fallen over.  (Fixit was able to live up to his name and fix some of those fallen posts)  We also sort of ended up taking turns spotting them.  Sometimes it would be me saying, “There it is!” and sometimes it would be Fixit.

We are in cow country now, and the CDT often has special gates for hikers to go through instead of crawling under barbed wire. Nice!  And finally there was an improvement–somebody made BIG rock cairns to hold the marker posts up, so they were a lot easier to spot, and didn’t fall over.

The weather all day was pleasantly warm with a breeze. More and more cactus are blooming—yellow, pink, and apricot. We finally made it to the water cache, and sat on the bear box to eat and drink.  We were tired. Stummy and Masshole were there, too, and that’s when we found out from them about the hiker with the big pack who started the same day as we all did, and how he got lost plus injured on his first CDT day.  They also told us that last night while they were camped near the first water cache, a large vehicle with no lights on went creeping by on the road.  Stummy said, “We were so scared.  And our air mattresses are so noisy, we didn’t dare move. We were holding our breaths.”

We kept on going after the water cache, but the posts disappeared and we had a terrible time finding the trail.   Fixit finally managed to figure out the Guthook app and use it, so we located the trail again.  He had been pretty disgusted with the app up to this point, and figured it was a waste of money, but now has changed his mind!  By 4:00 pm, we reached a 4WD road and were walking along the base of the mountains with awesome desert views, and a huge sky with big puffy clouds.  What a relief after the tough going up till now!

At 7:00pm,  I was so tired and very glad to stop. We got a few drips of rain while setting up camp, so for the first time, we put up the tent.