SUMMARY: Despite the very loud nearby party last night, we had no trouble sleeping. Hiking is great for that! This morning, we packed up everything (tent and groundcloth wet, yuck) and made tracks back to The Fat Cat for another round of awesome buffet. Then we went over to the Presbyterian church and it wasn’t long before the pastor and music people showed up. So we got to hang out while they got ready.

It was beyond wonderful to join in the service and yes! It was communion Sunday. We had fun afterwards talking to people, then a quick early lunch and back to the CDT! Lots of people were out hiking, even though the trail is wet and muddy from all the rain. We made good miles today—we’re off to a fine start on making it to Steamboat Springs.

DETAILS: There was quite a party going on in one of the houses behind the motel last night, but Fixit and I both fell asleep anyway, and have no idea when they finally finished celebrating!  But out of habit, we woke up at 5:00 am, and by 6:00 we were both so hungry that we got up.  Because it was raining last night, we’d set up the tent in “rain mode”, meaning all closed up, so when we sat up to get dressed, yuck!  The condensation inside was pretty bad.  We tried to wipe off the inside of the tent as best we could before we packed it up.  The groundcloth was also soaking wet from all the rain…double yuck.  Oh well!

Then we took our very hungry selves back to The Fat Cat and had another go at the buffet.  Yum!  My final round of food this morning was a plateful of strawberry shortcake with lots of berries and whipped cream!  By the time we were done eating, it was 8:30.   Fixit and I discussed what to do next.  We could just head back onto the trail….but it was Sunday, and there were churches, and we hated to pass up an opportunity like that.  So we took our packs and walked over to the Trinity Presbyterian Church and hung around outside for only a few minutes, when the pastor and the “music crew” showed up.  They gave us a warm welcome and we went in with them–while they got set up and did a bit of practicing, Fixit read the Bible and I read from their hymnal.  I love hymnals–the words are so awesome.

It was also fun to listen to the music crew.  Besides running through the music for church that day (the pastor plays saxophone!), they were having lively discussions about the presidential primary elections. ( All of us CDT hikers are very glad we are able to avoid all that out on the trail!)  People began to arrive, and the service started.  I really enjoyed it.  Sometimes I feel like the CDT does everything it can to beat us up (the other hikers all feel the same!) but that church service made me feel encouraged and strengthened for whatever lies ahead of us on the trail.  And best of all, it was a communion Sunday, too!

After church we had fun talking to some very interesting people.  One was a retired forest ranger who knows the CDT very well, and the other was a young couple who want to do the CDT someday.  They told us that the CDT coming in to Grand Lake is full of blowdowns and it’s tough going.  So we are glad we didn’t try to go that way.  After that, we headed out to find some lunch, and wow!  The lake was full of sunshine and boats, and there were people everywhere.

Back to the trail we went, and at first it was really nice.  The first leg was a hike up to Big Meadow–very pretty!  The next leg was to hike over a hill, then down to a trailhead parking area.  We met a LOT of people out hiking, even though the trail was very muddy from all the rain recently.  We’d just caught up with a whole group of folks, when along came a ranger on a horse, going the other way.  He was very bossy, and stopped the horse to order, “All of you! Get off the trail! ….No, not like that–all of you get off onto the same side!”  We scrambled around trying to find places we could get to.  He finally rode by with his nose in the air.  Not a nice ranger at all.  I’m glad not ALL rangers act that way (though unfortunately there are quite a few who do).

Fixit and I decided to stop and dry out our wet gear, but just as we took off our packs and started to get things out–oh no!  It started to RAIN again!  So we gave up on that idea, and put our raingear back on.  Sigh.  Finally we got down to the road and could not figure out where to go.  There were various trails, it was still raining, and the whole thing was hard to “read” from our Bear map.  We made a best guess as to where we were, and headed left, hoping to pick up the trail a little way down the road.  Instead, we found ourselves wandering into a ranger housing area, where a very kind ranger lady intercepted us, got out HER map (much more detailed) and got us on track.  Whew!

So back we went (turned out we should have stayed on the trail longer and not gotten distracted by what looked like the trailhead parking area) just in time to meet four CDT thruhikers, including Allgood!  He is the one who left the note just before the river crossing on the Creede cutoff route–the note that directed us to a fallen tree downstream that made a fine, safe place to get to the other side.  I thanked him very fervently for taking all the time and trouble to hike back and leave a note for the rest of us.  Turned out that he and his friends were planning to hitch back to Grand Lake and spend 4th of July there.  They had already lined up to stay at the hostel, so they won’t be camping out by a dumpster somewhere!  It was so good to meet them, and best of all, being able to THANK Allgood!

Fixit and I found the CDT again and headed out.  The trail of course went UP–but it was a nice up!  No killer climbs.  No rocky trail.  So despite not even starting till around 1:00, I think we got at least 13 miles in before we stopped early at 6:30.  That’s a good start; the only bummer is the rain, or to be more specific, the “rain-sun-rain-sun”.  It rains, so we put on raingear.  Then the sun comes out, and the raingear makes us hot.  So we take it off.  Then it rains again….you get the picture.  Tedious!   The rain makes all the plants wet, so we are constantly going through a “hiker carwash” as we push through wet plants along the trail.  We did get to see a mama moose and her baby, though!  We were careful not to get too close.

The reason we stopped a bit early was that the rain had stopped, and we wanted to give our stuff a chance to dry a bit.  So I stood there “flapping” our groundcloth till it was dry, then we laid it down, and set up the tent.  We let that dry a bit too, before we put our stuff in and crept in ourselves.  Our campsite is on the only bit of flat ground we could find, and it is right by the creek.  We don’t like to camp near water if we can help it–we’d rather stealth camp–but this was our only choice available.   Hope we get nice weather tomorrow!