Saturday, May 28 Creek and River Walk GHOST RANCH

Saturday, May 28th, 2016

may-28-15SUMMARY:  The day began with a long switchbacking downhill through spring-green forest to Ojitos Creek.  At that point, for some way, it was a creek walk with multiple crossings, just like the Gila River, but very cute and no wet feet!  Then out through a spectacular mesa-rimmed valley to a long walk by the rushing, roaring Chama River.  Groups of kayakers were riding it, though!  We finally reached Ghost Ranch and immediately felt the peace of this place.  Lots of hikers are here, and we are all being made very welcome.

DETAILS:  The CDT decided to play hide ‘n seek first thing this morning.  Only 20 minutes after we started hiking, down a dirt road, we lost the trail and could not figure out where it went.  We knew it turned off the road, but had seen no sign of the turnoff.  We fired up Guthook,  and it led us to what was obviously a totally abandoned trail that no one had been using.  Frustration!  I had an idea of a place back towards where we started that might, maybe be trail, so I ran back to take a closer look.  Fixit sat down and kept wrassling with Guthook, trying to figure something out.  By the time I got back, he had finally found the trail turnoff, not far from where we’d stopped and gotten frustrated.  We are finding that when the trail disappears, Fixit and I continue to have a totally different approach to the situation.  Fixit sits down and studies.  I like to run around and look.

But hooray, we were back on the CDT after the delay, and the trail took us down, down many switchbacks to Ojitos Creek. There were lots of oak trees just starting to leaf out, and we were walking on a soft carpet of last year’s brown leaves that covered the ground and the trail.  Ojitos Creek canyon turned out to be sort of a mini-Gila River canyon, with multiple crossings, but everything so small and shallow that we never had to get our feet wet  The only problem crossing we encountered was a place where the creek was in a narrow but somewhat deep chute, too wide to jump across, but a hassle to climb down into and up out of.   But the whole canyon was so pretty that we really enjoyed ourselves!  It sort of felt like back home in California, with a springtime oak forest.

Finally the creek left the canyon and we found ourselves in a much wider, sagebrushy valley surrounded by spectacular views of brilliantly colored sandstone mountains.  I kept just having to stop for a second and take it all in, it was so spectacular.  But then I’d hurry on, because now we were headed for the Chama River!  Hopefully we would easily make it to Ghost Ranch by tonight!

When we reached the River, wow!  It was a roaring, raging, muddy brown torrent, just tearing along.  Good thing there was a bridge–it would have been totally unfordable.  On the other side of the river, we began a 12 mile roadwalk  to Ghost Ranch.  What immediately amazed us what the amount of traffic on the road, in both directions.  The problem was the road at this point was a narrow dirt road– so narrow that it was very hard for cars to pass each other, and they had to sort of take turns.  On multiple occasions, we had to stop and stand well off the road, patiently waiting while a bunch of cars squiggled by each other.  Looking at the people in the cars, our best guess was that most of them were tourists.  The spectacular scenery might be a tourist draw, but we soon discovered there was more to it:  kayaking!

Groups of very colorful kayaks were bobbing down the rushing Chama.  As the road went up and down near the river, at times we got a pretty good view of them, and for lunch, we stopped and ate overlooking a kayak pull-out called “Big Eddy.”  The parking lot was full of cars & trailers and kayakers were everywhere.  We had a lot of fun watching them.  After that, the road moved away from the river and we couldn’t do any more kayak-watching, but a few miles later, along came a guy with a kayak on his car roof.  He stopped alongside us and said, “I just came from Big Eddy, and I’m done for the day–wish I had a beer to give you guys, but here, take these!” and gave us two granola bars!  We scarfed them up as we walked along, headed for Hwy. 84.  Trail magic!

The plan was that we’d take Hwy 84, then turn off onto a nature trail that made a nice shortcut to Ghost Ranch.  But when we got to the visitor center where the trail was supposed to start, we discovered to our dismay that the center had obviously been closed for a long time.  Big weeds were growing everywhere; the parking lot was chained shut, and there were very emphatic “No Trespassing” signs.  Bummer.  Now we would have to take the longer route of walking all the way along the highway till reached the side road to Ghost Ranch–two legs of the triangle instead of just one.  And we were so tired.  Sigh.  (We found out later that other hikers had ignored the No Trespassing signs, found the nature trail and reached Ghost Ranch that way, anyhow).

But we kept putting one foot in front of the other, and finally made it to the Ranch.  So beautiful!  And so hiker-friendly!  There were several large hiker boxes full of stuff, and there are lots of different options for CDT hikers who want to stay there.  We opted to rent a room and eat at the cafeteria, but started out with an ice cream from the store!  Then a shower, a short rest, and DINNER!   It’s all you can eat and the food was wonderful, and we were with the other hikers, including The Beast, but we found to our amazement that we couldn’t eat anywhere near as much as we thought we could.  Have our stomachs shrunk?  We’ve been so hungry so much of the time that we thought we could eat lots!  But we didn’t waste any food, fortunately, because we’d started with ordinary amounts, thinking we’d go back for more. The hikers said they heard that Newt Gingrich was staying at the Ranch tonight, but we saw no sign of him.  There did seem to be some groups on retreats (this is a Presbyterian retreat center).

After dinner, we did a little bit of wandering to find out where things were, and decided we were so tired that we might as well stay all day tomorrow.  That way we could go to church, and then do “town chores” without feeling rushed.  Back to our room we went, and bed felt so good!  Plus this whole place is so beautiful and so peaceful and welcoming.  It is good to be here.

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