{"id":313,"date":"2016-05-22T22:56:22","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T22:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=313"},"modified":"2017-05-21T21:35:36","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T21:35:36","slug":"wandering-in-the-woods-prairies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/05\/22\/wandering-in-the-woods-prairies\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, May 22 Wandering in the Woods & Prairies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"may-22-7\"SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>We spent about 2\/3 of today wandering in the woods on the CDT, meeting hikers out for the day with their dogs, plus horseback riders, and even some WILD horses that were busy eating all the green grass from recent rains.\u00a0 Wildflowers are out–including iris and lots of dandelions!\u00a0 We got wonderful water from the Ojo Piedra Spring.\u00a0 By afternoon we were back to walking across the prairie and had great views of Mt. Taylor (with a bit of snow on the north side) as well as other distant hills and valleys.\u00a0 The wind was blowing fiercely–we had to hunker behind bushes when we wanted to stop.\u00a0 We’re back in the woods tonight, cowboy camping!<\/p>\n

DETAILS:\u00a0 <\/strong>There was a beautiful sunset last night and a beautiful\u00a0sky this morning.\u00a0 We were very grateful to have plenty of water, and began our pre-breakfast hike in the chilly forest.\u00a0 It looks like the “go AROUND Mt. Taylor” route is actually longer and harder than going OVER the top.\u00a0It’s often very steep and so rocky that we could not figure out where the trail was sometimes, and spent a fair amount of time\u00a0 being “lost.”\u00a0\u00a0 To add to the fun, the trail seems to wander all over the place.\u00a0 On the bright side,\u00a0I really enjoyed looking at the aspen trees.\u00a0 Because of the variety in elevation and exposure, some of them were just budding, while in other places, the first brilliantly green leaves were out.\u00a0 And I do mean “brilliant”–it’s so intense that you almost need sunglasses to look at them!<\/p>\n

Because of recent rains, the grass was really green, too, and when we stopped for breakfast in a sunpatch, we were at the edge of a very green meadow, complete with some flowers.\u00a0 It kind of made up for it being Sunday and we couldn’t be in church.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

A couple of hours later, we met some folks out for a\u00a0Sunday hike\u00a0with their dogs.\u00a0 These were real trail dogs, very polite and very experienced.\u00a0 One was a large, dark colored, very serious German Shepherd, and the other was a very small black and white mongrel wearing a “SuperHero” doggie T-shirt.\u00a0 The two dogs were buddies–it was so cute!<\/p>\n

We finally reached our next water source–Ojo Piedra Spring, and cheered!\u00a0 The water was wonderful–cold and tasty.\u00a0 We filled up all our water containers to capacity.\u00a0 No need to treat this water–we love piped springs!\u00a0 The only thing about these woods we’re in is that we’ve spent hours of walking with no views.\u00a0 We can’t even see Mt. Taylor.\u00a0 But besides the dog people, we also met some horse people, and the horses seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as the riders.\u00a0 It was good to see so many people out using the trails.<\/p>\n

Just before lunch, we missed a turn and soon\u00a0found ourselves in trailless forest.\u00a0 We fired up Guthook and were able to locate the\u00a0CDT again, but it was frustrating because the cell phone battery will only let us do this a few times, and we didn’t know what might lie ahead when we’d need Guthook again…and again.\u00a0 Oh well.\u00a0 We were sitting by the trail eating a late lunch, when some horse people came by.\u00a0 They\u00a0 said they were headed out to a viewpoint.\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 That sounded wonderful.\u00a0 We’d had no views for some time!\u00a0 But as it turned out, the CDT does NOT go to the viewpoint, but continues in the forest.\u00a0 Sigh.<\/p>\n

Nuff grumping–there were some wonderful things in the forest.\u00a0 Wildflowers for one–the iris are in full bloom, and are gorgeous.\u00a0 So are the dandelions!\u00a0 There were whole swathes of their \u00a0bright yellow blossoms.\u00a0 Green grass was everywhere. And, there were wild horses!\u00a0 They were very curious about us and were sort of following us along, but carefully keeping a certain distance.\u00a0 When I tried to get just a bit closer to them to get a picture, they would quickly move away.\u00a0 Another thing that impressed Fixit and I was that this part of the\u00a0forest was obviously well cared for.\u00a0 It had been thinned, for starters.\u00a0 So instead of spindly trees crowding on each other, there were well spaced, strong, healthy trees.\u00a0 Hooray for whoever manages the forest here!<\/p>\n

In the afternoon, we reached the edge of the\u00a0woods and stepped off of trail tread\u00a0back into prairie and back onto a dirt road.\u00a0 And we were back into the wind, too–it was blowing so hard that sometimes hiking was a challenge.\u00a0 When we stopped for a snack, we had to hunker down behind some bushes.\u00a0 Looking back, we could see Mt. Taylor’s north side–and it had SNOW on it.\u00a0 We speculated as to whether the way we went (with all its difficulties) was easier (or not) compared to dealing with that snow.<\/p>\n

Cows were everywhere on the prairie lands, and once again we found ourselves unintentionally starting a “cattle drive”.\u00a0 One cow saw us and snorted and started running away down the road–the others joined her, and soon there was a whole herd trotting along just ahead of us.\u00a0 Finally they veered off and we were able to pass them.\u00a0\u00a0 Routefinding was a challenge–there were various dirt roads and no real landmarks to give us some idea which dirt road was CDT and which was not.\u00a0 It’s pretty country–little low hills and scattered trees–but a couple of times we were very puzzled as to which way to go.\u00a0 Fortunately, in each case it turned out we made the right choice.\u00a0 Wish they had\u00a0more CDT signposts to help us hikers!<\/p>\n

Tonight we are cowboy camped back in forest again, sheltered from the wind.\u00a0 We’re awfully low on water, though.\u00a0 Tomorrow it will be a top priority to find\u00a0 more!<\/p>\n

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