DETAILS:  We were up ‘n at’em early on a cold morning, thinking, “Get to Hwy 60, go to Pie Town!”  We still had no idea where we actually were, but took every dirt road that went north or nor’east.  Hours went by–no sign of the highway.  Our water was running low.  Then a gift from God–“Talus”, a bikerider, came pedalling along and told us, “Only 9 1/2 miles, and you’ll be in Pie Town, and by the way, there’s a water cache in 3 miles.”  Wow!  Tired, sore feet, too bad–we turned on the afterburners and made it in by 2 pm, dumped our packs at the “Toaster House” hostel, and got a good meal, showers, laundry and lots of hang-out time with other hikers, and locals, too, sharing trail tales.

DETAILS:  Last night I was wondering if we’d have any wild critters coming by in the night to get a drink from the cow tank, but the only critters we heard were several owls hooting to each other.  It was a cold night, though!  At 5:20, when we started to pack up, it was only 30 degrees.  Our ZPacks sleeping bags once again did a great job of keeping us warm–it was hard to leave them and head out into the cold.  Brrrrr.

We were in high spirits, thinking it would not be too much longer till we reached Hwy. 60 and started the roadwalk into Pie Town.  The northbound dirt road we were on took us among several cinder-cone-type little volcanoes that were dotted here and there below Mangas Mountain.

At every rise, and at the top of every hill, we looked eagerly for Hwy 60, but by 7:30 (breakfast time) there was still no sign of it.  It was still very cold, even in the sun, so we gobbled down our granola and kept going on a roller coaster route over low hills and shallow valleys.  Still no Hwy 60, and we began to be faintly concerned.  Our water was running low because we’d drunk a lot, assuming it wasn’t far to the highway.  We passed a herd of happy cows at another cow tank.  No way would we drink their water!  Gross stuff!  Up on the hill above the tank was a magnificent log house.  Seems like when we were south of the Gila, the “in” look for houses was “pueblo/adobe” and now we’ve reached “log cabin” country. The big house had a name, it turned out.  When we passed the driveway, there was a sign, “Robber’s Roost.”  Well, the robbers must have done very well for themselves.  What a house!

Now we were actually worried, though.  Where was Hwy 60?  We walked as fast as we could, taking every road that headed north or northeast, and having no idea where we were on our maps.  There was a big “table mountain” off to the side that gave us some idea, but we still weren’t sure.  Then way up ahead in the distance we saw a wonderful sight–a bike rider!  Coming toward us!  (Talk about a gift from God when I really needed it!)  When we met up, he stopped, and I said, “Hi! Hey, we’re trying to get to Pie Town….how much farther to the highway?”   He paused a second, looking at his bike computer, then turned and pointed back toward where he came.  With a big grin, he said, “Well, you guys have exactly 9.5 miles and you’ll be at Toaster House.”  We were shocked and amazed.  “Um, then how much farther is it to the highway?”  He said, “Oh, that’s beyond Toaster House.  Just follow this road and it will take you straight there.  And oh, by the way, there’s a water cache at the animal shelter  3 miles from here.”

It turned out that the biker’s trail name was Talus, and he’d just finished hiking the CDT as far Hwy 12.  Now he was switching to biking instead. He had a big “biker map” that showed the whole area, and he pointed out to us where we were.  Amazing!  Somehow we’d muddled our way along and lost the Bear Route, but ended up back on the Ley Route.  Not sure how that happened, but whatever!  Thank you, God, for Talus!  He came along just when we needed the encouragement.  Only 3 more miles to water, then 6 1/2 miles to Pie Town!

We decided to skip eating lunch and just hike, since we’d heard that the 2 restaurants in Pie Town were closed around 2:00.  (Turned out later that yes, one of them was; the other was open all day)  So even though we were very tired (we’d been pushing it all morning), we turned on the afterburners to reach the water cache.  It turned out to be a big cooler by the animal shelter gate, and the jugs of water inside were COLD!   Awesome!  There was also a note saying, “We’re glad to provide hikers with water, but don’t linger here.  We have a lot of dogs at the shelter, and we let them run loose.  If they see you here at the gate, they’ll follow you, and it will be a lot of work for us to bring them back.”  So we filled our water jugs up quickly and moved on.  Not till we were well out of sight down the road did we stop to mix up some Emergen-C and have a nice cold drink.

After that, we pushed on as hard as we could, hoping to reach Pie Town before 2:00.  And we did it!  Up ahead we saw the “landmark ” from Yogi’s town guide–a sign that said, “Speed Limit 15”.  Pie Town!  It didn’t take long to locate the Toaster House hostel (yes indeed, it really does have lots of toasters!)  Nobody was there, so we claimed a bedroom by putting our packs on the bed.  It was 1:45 pm.  We hurried to the Pie Town Cafe and ate a huge lunch of big sandwich, fries, and of course, PIE.  It wasn’t cheap, though.  We had a bit of sticker shock at the prices of everything.  Ack.  Good food, but ouch!  Not cheap.  The Cafe folks warned us that they are closed tomorrow (Tuesday) so we went across the highway (yes, FINALLY, Hwy 60!) to the Pie-O-Neer to find out what their hours were.  Great!  They are open all day!

We walked the couple of blocks back to Toaster House, enjoying the views.  Pie Town is up on a rise, so you can see for miles around.  The next item of business was to get clean.  But there was no hot water at Toaster House–the hot water heater was not working.  Fixit does not mind cold showers, but I do, so I took a towel from Toaster House and went next door to the RV Park for a nice HOT shower.  Man, it felt so awesome to be CLEAN again!  Laundry chores were next.  Our socks were so filthy that I took a large pot from the hostel kitchen and prewashed them before putting everything in the washing machine.  While the machine did its thing, I lay down on the couch, covered myself up with an afghan to stay warm, and read a fun book on homesteading, starting with how to cut trees down to get logs for your house.

Once things were washed, I took them out on the porch and hung them in every convenient spot I could find to dry, since there was no dryer.  So the porch rails, chairs, etc. were covered with our damp stuff.  Fortunately, though it was 5:00 already, it was warm, sunny and breezy, so no worries about things not getting dry.  By now, various interesting people were starting to arrive.  One was a guy who just likes to hang out with the hikers.  Another was a lady who was trying to catch the wild kittens living in the shed behind Toaster House.  Right now she is feeding them in hopes that they will come to trust her  and will let her pick them up.   Other CDT hikers (including Stummy and Masshole) and another biker drifted in and claimed their spots in the house.  I should say that Toaster House is really fun.  It’s funky and hippy and it’s like time warp back to when Fixit and I were in the “Jesus People” era of the 1960’s and early ’70’s and we lived in a “Christian house” where a bunch of us shared a house and provided hospitality to lots of other people every day.  At Toaster House, the final total was 7 of us spending the night.  The local guy who was visiting said that sometimes there are as many as 50!

I concocted something for supper by rummaging in the “pantry”, and we all hung out talking (everyone is an experienced long distance hiker/biker, so there were many stories to tell) and admiring Stummy’s cartoon drawings of their CDT adventures.  All of us agreed that on the PCT, we would wake up thinking, “All right!  Let’s see what will happen today!”  whereas on the CDT, it’s more like “Oh no…what will happen today?”  It was so good to be around people again and have fun talking.  We all also agreed that scenery-wise, New Mexico is wonderful, but the trail is another story!

By 8:00, people (including us) were heading for bed, and by 9:00 (known as “hiker midnight”) the house was totally quiet. Wow, it feels good to be on a BED again!   What a day!