SUMMARY:  We spent about 2/3 of today wandering in the woods on the CDT, meeting hikers out for the day with their dogs, plus horseback riders, and even some WILD horses that were busy eating all the green grass from recent rains.  Wildflowers are out–including iris and lots of dandelions!  We got wonderful water from the Ojo Piedra Spring.  By afternoon we were back to walking across the prairie and had great views of Mt. Taylor (with a bit of snow on the north side) as well as other distant hills and valleys.  The wind was blowing fiercely–we had to hunker behind bushes when we wanted to stop.  We’re back in the woods tonight, cowboy camping!

DETAILS:  There was a beautiful sunset last night and a beautiful sky this morning.  We were very grateful to have plenty of water, and began our pre-breakfast hike in the chilly forest.  It looks like the “go AROUND Mt. Taylor” route is actually longer and harder than going OVER the top. It’s often very steep and so rocky that we could not figure out where the trail was sometimes, and spent a fair amount of time  being “lost.”   To add to the fun, the trail seems to wander all over the place.  On the bright side, I really enjoyed looking at the aspen trees.  Because of the variety in elevation and exposure, some of them were just budding, while in other places, the first brilliantly green leaves were out.  And I do mean “brilliant”–it’s so intense that you almost need sunglasses to look at them!

Because of recent rains, the grass was really green, too, and when we stopped for breakfast in a sunpatch, we were at the edge of a very green meadow, complete with some flowers.  It kind of made up for it being Sunday and we couldn’t be in church.  🙂

A couple of hours later, we met some folks out for a Sunday hike with their dogs.  These were real trail dogs, very polite and very experienced.  One was a large, dark colored, very serious German Shepherd, and the other was a very small black and white mongrel wearing a “SuperHero” doggie T-shirt.  The two dogs were buddies–it was so cute!

We finally reached our next water source–Ojo Piedra Spring, and cheered!  The water was wonderful–cold and tasty.  We filled up all our water containers to capacity.  No need to treat this water–we love piped springs!  The only thing about these woods we’re in is that we’ve spent hours of walking with no views.  We can’t even see Mt. Taylor.  But besides the dog people, we also met some horse people, and the horses seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as the riders.  It was good to see so many people out using the trails.

Just before lunch, we missed a turn and soon found ourselves in trailless forest.  We fired up Guthook and were able to locate the CDT again, but it was frustrating because the cell phone battery will only let us do this a few times, and we didn’t know what might lie ahead when we’d need Guthook again…and again.  Oh well.  We were sitting by the trail eating a late lunch, when some horse people came by.  They  said they were headed out to a viewpoint.  Really?  That sounded wonderful.  We’d had no views for some time!  But as it turned out, the CDT does NOT go to the viewpoint, but continues in the forest.  Sigh.

Nuff grumping–there were some wonderful things in the forest.  Wildflowers for one–the iris are in full bloom, and are gorgeous.  So are the dandelions!  There were whole swathes of their  bright yellow blossoms.  Green grass was everywhere. And, there were wild horses!  They were very curious about us and were sort of following us along, but carefully keeping a certain distance.  When I tried to get just a bit closer to them to get a picture, they would quickly move away.  Another thing that impressed Fixit and I was that this part of the forest was obviously well cared for.  It had been thinned, for starters.  So instead of spindly trees crowding on each other, there were well spaced, strong, healthy trees.  Hooray for whoever manages the forest here!

In the afternoon, we reached the edge of the woods and stepped off of trail tread back into prairie and back onto a dirt road.  And we were back into the wind, too–it was blowing so hard that sometimes hiking was a challenge.  When we stopped for a snack, we had to hunker down behind some bushes.  Looking back, we could see Mt. Taylor’s north side–and it had SNOW on it.  We speculated as to whether the way we went (with all its difficulties) was easier (or not) compared to dealing with that snow.

Cows were everywhere on the prairie lands, and once again we found ourselves unintentionally starting a “cattle drive”.  One cow saw us and snorted and started running away down the road–the others joined her, and soon there was a whole herd trotting along just ahead of us.  Finally they veered off and we were able to pass them.   Routefinding was a challenge–there were various dirt roads and no real landmarks to give us some idea which dirt road was CDT and which was not.  It’s pretty country–little low hills and scattered trees–but a couple of times we were very puzzled as to which way to go.  Fortunately, in each case it turned out we made the right choice.  Wish they had more CDT signposts to help us hikers!

Tonight we are cowboy camped back in forest again, sheltered from the wind.  We’re awfully low on water, though.  Tomorrow it will be a top priority to find  more!