SUMMARY:  This morning we did a lot of eating—two breakfasts—one at the motel, the other at a restaurant. Then came the hurry of doing all the rest of our town chores, and loading packs. For lunch, we went to the awesome Lyon’s Soda Fountain and each had a giant banana split. The customers could not believe we could eat so much! Then we tried hitchhiking.

I made a sign, “CDT Hiker to Rabbit Ears Pass” but no luck. So we took the free bus to the end of the line and tried again. In only a few minutes, a girl stopped and offered to drive us 4 miles. Sure! That’s progress. And then, where she had to drop us off, there was a big huge truck parked by the road. The driver said “Sure—I can drive you to the pass.” So God provided us with a way back to the CDT—we are very grateful!

DETAILS:  I am so used to being up at 5:20 that I just could not sleep in any later than 6:20.  So I got up then, sorted through all our food and made a shopping list.  I am still worried about trail conditions, so I plan to bring an extra day’s worth of food, more than we’d originally planned for.  Then it was off to the continental breakfast at the motel, where Fixit and I scarfed up some of everything they had, while somewhat cringing at the TV news that was blaring in the background.  Man, are we glad to be out in the wilderness this summer–I would hate having to deal with all the presidential primary wrangling every single day.

After that breakfast, we walked down the street to Winona’s restaurant for a SECOND breakfast.  It was already a warm day, and we were able to sit outside.  Steamboat Springs is a very touristy town, and most of the prices reflect that, but Winona’s was much more reasonable.  The food was good, too!

Then it was time to go grocery shopping.  Besides an extra day of food, I also got a marker pen to make a sign that may help us hitch back to the CDT.  We’ve heard it can be difficult, so a sign might help.  I loaded up the food bags with SIX days worth of eatables.  Heeeeeeavy!  Groan.  But I don’t want to run out again.  By then it was 11:00 am and we had to be out of our room, so we moved to the “breakfast room” at the motel, where I finished writing this journal (so I could mail it home), plus wrote out more little cards for Fixit to hand out (they have our website and info) and made a cardboard sign that said, “CDT HIKERS to RABBIT EARS PASS”.

Then we took our packs and “hiked” back down the main street again to Lyon’s Drug Store, to get their famous banana splits.  When the other customers heard us each ordering a split, they said, “You’d do better if you just get ONE, then divide it.”  Hah!  They don’t know how much thruhikers can eat!   While we waited, we watched the girl who was running the soda fountain.  She was amazing–lightning fast, yet cheerful and friendly.  She has multi-tasking down to a science!  She handed us our banana splits, and they were HUGE!   No problem, though–we ate every last bit, to the amazement of the other customers.

Then it was time to walk out to the “end” of town and try to hitch hike.  Along the way, I stopped at a gas station to get a map of Wyoming (just in case we need to bail off the trail) and also a bunch of candy bars.  The Natural Grocery store where I got our other food does NOT have candy!   We tried and tried to hitch a ride, for some time, but no luck at all, so we decided to take the free shuttle bus out to the very end of town and try again there.  And on the bus–surprise!  We met Eric the Red!  He did not look well, and told us he’d been very sick with giardia, so sick that he could not hike.  He’s been staying in Steamboat Springs trying to recover enough to return to the trail.  We felt so bad for him–he made a lot of sacrifices in order to do the CDT this summer.  He got off before we did, and we sadly watched him walk away.  I thought, “Oh Lord, that could have been us.  Thank you for helping us stay well.  Thank you for Aqua Mira.”

The end of the bus line really was at the very edge of “civilization”, and again we held out our sign and our thumbs.  Many cars went by, but then one finally stopped.  It was a sweet young girl who was actually in the process of moving, so her car was full of boxes and stuff.  She said, “If you can fit yourselves in, I can give you a ride for 4 miles…that’s where I turn off the highway.”  Well, we figured, “Hey, that’s progress!  We’ll go for it!” and squeezed ourselves in with her.  She dropped us off at a wide pullout space down the highway, where two big trucks were already parked.   I immediately decided to beg for a ride.  The driver of truck #1 said, “Well, normally I don’t pick up hitch hikers, but you guys look OK.  Right now, I’m having AC problems with the truck, and it’s getting looked at.  So if you don’t mind waiting a bit…..”   Hey, we did NOT mind!

Less than an hour later we were on our way.  Turned out that the truck was hauling the stuff that comes out of the ground when they are digging an oil well.  It’s sort of a mix of sand/dirt/oil, and it has to go to a special landfill so it doesn’t pollute everything.  The driver said he used to be building houses back in Georgia, but the market dried up and he got this job driving a truck for the oil company.  He told us that a lot of the ranches around here have oil wells (yes, we had noticed that!) and that many ranchers are getting $1,000 a DAY from their oil income.  Wow.  No wonder the ranch houses and equipment look so nice.  Interesting that they are still RANCHING and not just sitting around enjoying their oil income.  He said, “Yeah, they are drilling more oil wells every day.  There’s a lot of oil here.”

He kindly dropped us off at the road to the campground, and soon we were back on the CDT!  Hooray!  It was a lovely, warm late afternoon by then, with big puffy clouds in the sky, green meadows filled with wildflowers, happy little creeks, some lakes and a very nice trail to follow.  (Only a very few blowdowns to negotiate).  Then we met our first CDT SOBO–he told us he had skipped Wyoming, in order to go through Colorado in the summer.  He plans to go back later and finish up.

We ended up camping by Fishook Lake, after doing 5 1/2 miles, which isn’t much, but we didn’t start till way late.  We are really grateful to the Lord for helping us with rides today!  All the CDT hikers dislike the hitch out of Steamboat Springs, but it all worked out fine for us!