SUMMARY:  This was a sad day, but a beautiful one.  I was grateful for the beauty, because I felt very heavy-hearted and could not help but cry a bit while I was walking.  We feel so bad for our daughter who has lost her husband.  We tried to call her, but there is no cell phone service out here, not even on the high points. We did get lots of practice today in climbing mesas—those huge flat-topped mountains that are everywhere here in northern New Mexico. Whoever figured out and built the trail was amazing!  For me, there still were some scary parts–like skinny steps chiselled into the rock right next to a big drop-off.  But once you are “up top”, it’s quite a scene–acres of hard sandstone, spectacular views and wildflowers.  We reached Cuba late in the day, with just enough time to eat a bit of dinner and then collapse.

DETAILS:  The wind finally died down last night and it was a beautiful morning.  At first we were hiking in a flat prairie, but the rest of the day we were either climbing up a mesa, walking along the top of a mesa or going down a mesa, or walking along in between mesas.  Up on top, the mesas are flat, HARD rock, and the trail was a route following cairns.  And we had to stay very alert, because often the route veered off suddenly, and if we were not careful, we’d miss the turn.  The views from up top were spectacular.  The only downside was that sometimes (from my point of view) the trail was too near the edge of big dropoffs.  Wildflowers were everywhere–I saw several new kinds today that I’d never seen before.

The water source on this part of the CDT was lovely–you take a short side trail down a canyon off the main CDT, and it leads you to where a spring literally flows out of a large “cave” and is piped into a trough.  Swallows were flying about (they have nests in the cave) and there were lots of green trees and bushes–beautiful!

After the spring came a scramble up onto another mesa.  Looking at it from a distance, you’d never think a trail goes up it, but it does.  What a feat of trail engineering!  Somebody really worked hard on it.  There were stone steps, steps literally chiselled into stone, etc.  But it was very steep and scary for me, and the steps were really skinny.  Fixit went ahead and I watched how he went so I could see what to expect.  When we finally got to the top, we headed on the long walk along the rim, cheering because this was our last mesa before the road to Cuba.  Since we were up high, we also tried to phone our daughter Joy, whose husband had died, but no luck–no service out here.

Finally came a long roadwalk, headed for Cuba.  It was interesting to see the various homes and businesses along the way.  When we finally got to Cuba, it was late, and I wasn’t sure the restaurant was still open–but it was, and inside, I spotted HoB and some other hikers!  We went to the Del Prado motel and had to phone the proprietor to come out and talk to us about getting a room!  But she did have one left, and made a bit of a fuss about “so sorry, the toilet seat is broken”.  We assured her that was no problem, changed into our “town” shirts, and hurried to the restaurant, which was still open, and had a great dinner, hanging out with HoB, Early Bird, Flying Squirrel and The Beast.

Back in the motel room, we collapsed into bed.  We are SO tired!  Tomorrow I’ll try again to phone our daughter Joy.