SUMMARY:  Our day began with a 3 1/2 hour walk to breakfast in Silver City, and we arrived just in time to watch the start of the 4th dayof the Tour de Gila bike races.  Today the riders were doing 20 laps of a 1-mile loop through downtown Silver City.  We got a window seat at the Silver City Cafe and watched the Masters bikers go flashing by. (The “elites” race in the afternoon).  Then it was grocery shopping (food for 3 days), then off to the RV park for showers and laundry, a visit to Pizza Hut, and we were back on the trail through a beautiful forest.  It’s now a quiet night–no wind, just a few coyote songs in the distance.

DETAILS: Last night I tried an experiment–using my fleece headband as an eyeshade at night to block any light so I can sleep better.  We had cars and trucks going by all night with their headlights shining, so I figured I needed to do something.  And it worked great!

We were up and getting dressed by headlamp at 5:15, ready to begin the 11 or so mile roadwalk into Silver City.  We kept hoping for some restaurant or coffee place on the way in, but no luck.  We decided to ignore how hungry we were and just push on for breakfast in town.

Along the way, though, we were entertained by a variety of interesting things.  The first one was when we stopped to take off our “warm layers” at a set of mailboxes/newspaper boxes by the road.  Turned out that one of the newspaper boxes had a bird’s nest in it.  A bold bird!   It didn’t seem to mind the fact that people would come every day to get their mail.  The other standout on the roadwalk was a huge metal sculpture of a chicken!  It reminded us of home in Petaluma, CA, which in earlier days was known as “The Chicken Capital of the World” because of the huge number of chicken raising farms.  (Actually, there still are a lot of chicken farms even now!)

Scenery-wise, the road led us up and down (felt like mostly up!)  through miles of pasture lands with pinyon pines and a variety of dryland plants.

By 9:30 am, we had reached the hilly outskirts of Silver City and were surprised to find ourselves meeting a LOT of bike riders, many wearing bike team uniforms.  They would come chugging uphill, then a short time later, they’d come flying past us again, going downhill.   Then we’d see them again, chugging uphill.  “There must be some kind of bike race on,” we said to each other.  “Looks like the guys are practicing.”  And yes, they were–it was Day 4 of the Tour de Gila professional bike races.  Just before we got to town, there was a very long hill (downhill for us, at last!) and a guy came driving by in a car, rolled down his window as he passed us, and yelled, “Canada!”  We waved and yelled back, “Canada, eh!”

When we finally reached the foot of the hill, we stopped and pulled out our maps to make a plan on what we would do in town, beginning with BREAKFAST, and the same guy drove up, stopped and came over to talk.  Turns out he’s a trail angel/volunteer, and he was happy to answer our questions.  1) Where is the best place in town for breakfast?  Answer: The Silver City Cafe, downtown.   2) Why does the official CDT take hikers way far away from Silver City and then just drop them off in the middle of nowhere?  Answer: Private property owners refuse to allow the trail to be any closer, so they had to keep it way up in the mountains, and yes, it isn’t finished yet.  Someday it will be.  We said, “Then please, SOMEBODY put up a sign on the trail to let the hikers know this!”

Now, very tired and very hungry, we headed for downtown and walked right into…the bike race.  Many of the downtown streets were blocked off in order to form a 1-mile-long loop through town, so that Day 4 of the Tour de Gila was to do lots of laps on that twisting, one mile course.  We found ourselves very close to the Start/Finish line, and just then a round of the race began–CHARGE!  Lots of bicycles went tearing right past us down the street in a huge pack and rounded the first turn.  How they avoid crashing into each other, I have no idea.

We found the Silver City Cafe and got a window seat so we could eat AND watch the bikers go by.  Turned out that what we were seeing were the Masters bikers–older guys.  They do 20 laps.  And it didn’t take too long before some of them were obviously having a hard time keeping up.  The cafe people said that next would be local bikers (all ages, including kids) and finally this afternoon, the professionals.

From the Cafe, we headed to Silver City Hike & Bike to get me a new headlamp–the super lightweight one I brought  from home had turned out to be annoyingly hard to operate.  Then we went to the grocery store to buy 3 days worth of food, and on to the Silver City RV Park for showers and laundry.

The RV park people were super-nice–we recommend the place to all CDT hikers!  While I was sitting around waiting for the laundry to be done, a very friendly, precocious little girl whose family were staying in a big RV right across the driveway, came over to talk to me.  She had a zillion questions about what we were doing and why.  It was really fun talking to her!   She wanted to know all about our gear and who we were.

Now that we were clean again, we went to Pizza Hut and stuffed ourselves with salad and pasta before heading onto the Ley Red Route road that would take us back to the trail.  I wish we could have stayed longer in Silver City–seems like a great little town!   On the way out, Fixit spotted some wire lying on the ground.  “Aha!” he said.  “Now I can fix your trek poles!”  My poor old trek poles were still unhappy about having to be taken apart to go on the Greyhound bus, and were threatening to come apart again at the handles, which were slipping and getting worse every day. Fixit worked on them with the wire and now I think I’ll be OK, but that was seriously dumb of me not to get NEW trek poles before starting this hike.

We’d walked a couple of miles when I realized, “Oh no, I forgot to mail the letter with my journal pages in it!”  So I stopped at a house along the road and asked if they could mail my letter for me.  They very kindly said, “Sure!”  Whew!

Our paved road route eventually became  a dirt road following a creek through a very pretty forest of pine trees and oak trees–with a few nasty little cactus plants here and there, just to remind us, “This is New Mexico, not California!”  Nearby, somebody was busy with target practice–bang, bang, bang.  Our maps warned of a key turn up ahead that was easy to miss, but we were very careful and did find it.  After being lost so much already, we are sort of paranoid about not getting lost again.

Another uphill climb till around 7:00, and here we are camped in a pleasant forest with coyotes “talking” in the distance.