SUMMARY:  We woke up to a thick ground fog that made everything (including us and our gear) soaking wet and fringed with ice.  But oh, it was beautiful!  We packed up and walked out into what looked like a misty watercolor painting.  Gradually the fog cleared, and we went through “The Narrows” where menacing black lava reaches the foot of dramatic sandstone cliffs, including the famous “Ventana Arch.”  Many hikers do a trail that goes across the lava, but we skipped that (lava – very sore feet) and roadwalked into Grants, continually amazed at the rock formations.  We had some trail magic, too, from a tourist family and from a ranger, and reached the Grants Motel 6, ate dinner and collapsed.  Zero tomorrow!

DETAILS:  In the dim light of early morning, Fixit woke me up.  “Oh no!  Everything is soaking wet, and we’re in a tule fog!”  Sure enough–a look outside the tent showed ground fog so thick that we could barely even see the road.  Everything was soaking wet, and fringed with ice, both inside and outside.

But being a thruhiker has its benefits, and one of them is previous experiences.  So my response to Fixit was, “Oh boy!  Washington State again.”  We both remembered similar mornings on the PCT in Washington.  So we sighed and got dressed and packed up our wet stuff and headed out into a magical, misty, beautiful world.  It was like walking in an old watercolor painting, with the sunrise light making the fog sort of glow.  It was very cold (32 degrees).  At one point, I stopped in awe–there was a sort of rainbow in the fog clouds!  I’m afraid I started sounding like a broken record after awhile as we continued down the road, saying  “This is so BEAUTIFUL!” over and over again.

Soon we reached The Narrows, where dramatic, colorful sandstone cliffs meet up with menacing black lava.  The road squeezes between the lava and the cliffs, and it’s a good thing we were on a ROAD, not a trail, because we spent most of our time looking up and doing some variant of “oooh, aaaah” because of the awesome, gnarly, color-layered rock formations.  There was even a small natural arch right by the road that we could stand in.   We waited till things had warmed up a bit before stopping for breakfast at the Ventana Arch parking lot.  The Arch was really impressive, but unfortunately it was still in early morning shadow and I could not get a decent picture of it.   We found a great sun patch, sat down and leaned on the wooden fence  to soak up some rays and eat granola.

As we were eating, along came a whole family (mom, dad, kids), who had just walked the Arch access trail.  They were all wrapped up in blankets because it was so cold.  Seeing us, they stopped by to talk and had a lot of questions about our CDT adventures.  We’d noticed their car in the parking lot–a really old one that looked like it was on its last legs (or wheels).  The family went to their car, unwrapped themselves from the blankets, and climbed in, except for the youngest boy.  He came back over to us carrying two little bottles of Gatorade.  “We want you to have this,” he said.  “Good luck on your hike!”  We were awed.  Here was a family who obviously didn’t have much, and yet they were sharing what they had.  So we told him how grateful we were and how this would really help us hike better today, while he looked pleased and scurried back to the car.  After some difficulty, the car started (it sounded kind of rough) and the family drove away, waving to us.  We hardly felt worthy to drink that Gatorade.  But we could pray for the family, that they would make it safely to wherever they were going.

The roadwalk continued, with more spectacular cliffs on our right, and lava flow on the left, which included “islands” of colorful rocks.  We were pushing it a bit, hoping to make it all the way to Grants by tonight, when we met a group of 5 bicyclists all wearing matching shirts that said, “Flatlanders Riding the Divide.”  Turned out they have been RIDING the Divide from Canada to Mexico, doing 300 miles each year, and they were on their last leg of the trip, looking forward to finishing.  Wow!  We wished them all the best and congratulated them!

Many CDT hikers don’t walk the road as we were doing–they take a trail that goes across the lava field.  But we feel like we did our lifetime quota of lava-walking on the PCT in 2005 and 2010.  Lava walking = very sore feet.    So we stayed with the roadwalk instead.  And besides that, one benefit of the road is that we can really look at the awesome scenery instead of having to stare at the ground, constantly calculating where to put our next footstep.

By lunchtime, we had reached El Malpais BLM ranger station, where we planned to get water and eat.  But the driveway up to the station was closed.  No problem–we walked past the gate and went there anyway, because we wanted to do a “garage sale” to dry out all our wet stuff.  Sure enough, there was a picnic table and benches and lots of places to spread out our gear.  The rangers were there, and very friendly, but apologized that there was no water–in fact, they were working to fix a water main break, and that was why they were closed.  Some of the rangers were also working on making a firebreak around the station, anticipating the dry season ahead.  One of the rangers sat down and ate lunch with us.  He said the ground fog (we San Francisco Bay Area people call it a “tule fog”) was normal for this time of year, and made his drive to work every morning a bit of a challenge.  He also insisted on giving us a bunch of his own water, since none was available at the ranger station.  Once our stuff was all nice and dry, we headed out.  It was 1:30 pm, and we had 15 miles to go.  Do-able, but we’d have to walk fast.

We hadn’t gone far when to our surprise, we met Hippy Longstocking, hiking SOUTHbound.  We told her about the water situation at the ranger station, and she looked a bit grim, since she was counting on getting water there.  All we could do was wish her luck.  Soon we could see I-40 in the distance and trains going by over the pass.  Logically, I should have taken it easy more, but the sight of the highway and the trains, and all I could think was “FOOD!   SHOWER!   BED!” and began to go as fast as I could, even though I was very tired.  The last 6 miles were along a very busy highway with a narrow shoulder, so we were constantly having to detour into rough ground and weeds to get out of the way of cars.  At 6:00 pm, Fixit announced that he was hungry and wanted to stop and eat.  At that point, I could actually SEE way up ahead, the Motel 6 where we were planning to stay.  There was no cafe or place to eat along the road, so it would mean sitting down in the weeds and trash to eat something from our packs.

So I told Fixit, “I don’t want to stop.  Look!  There’s our motel, over there!  I’ll keep on hiking–I’m sure you will catch up with me, no problem!”  So that’s what we did.  Fixit stopped and detoured into the weeds, and I kept on going.  I was desperately tired.  In retrospect, I realize it would have been a good idea to at least stop and rest, but I was so determined to make it to Motel 6 ASAP, that I just kept on going, looking at the interesting features of the outskirts of Grants.  One place I passed was a car tire place surrounded by scary-looking razor wire and two even scarier-looking snarling dogs inside.  One of them would make a great “hound of the Baskervilles.”   There were small neighborhoods with little houses, and what I wondered about was why nobody seemed to have a garden, not even a fruit tree.  Most of the yards were just bare dirt, or maybe a bit of grass and a couple of bushes.  There were no flowers and no veges anywhere.  Trains were going by constantly, which was really great–I love trains!  And there were lots of cute wild bunny rabbits, which might explain why nobody has a garden??

Fixit caught up with me just before the turnoff to the Motel 6, which involved getting over the I-40 freeway and the railroad tracks.  The overpass was for cars only–no room for people on foot.  So all we could do was pray and then RUN as fast as we could.  Whew, we made it, and soon we were at the Motel 6 by 7:30 pm.  After a brief cleanup, and putting on our “town shirts”, we headed to Denny’s restaurant and ate till we were totally stuffed.  Showers followed, then we completely collapsed.  I felt like I never wanted to move again.  But before we went to sleep, Fixit read Psalm 107, which includes “They (Israel) wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way…hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.  Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses…and led them forth in the right way.”  Then verse 8 says, “Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, for His wonderful works to the children of men.”  Yeah.  We know about that, for sure!  And we ARE grateful!  Like Joe Anderson at Casa de Luna on the PCT says, “It’s not just trail magic.  Give God the credit He deserves.”