SUMMARY:\u00a0 Yesterday took a lot of determination and patience, as we forded rivers, followed elk trails, and bushwacked through forest. Today, we put that same determination to work by pulling off a 20 mile roadwalk in 8 hours.\u00a0\u00a0It was beautiful Colorado scenery, which actually has rather an “Oregon Look” to it.<\/p>\n
But 20 miles is a long way, and it took lots of being in<\/span> the moment and really looking<\/span> at what we were walking by. A storm was brewing, and just before Pagosa Springs, the wind blew fiercely and it started to rain. But we made it to our motel and immediately went to work on town chores.\u00a0 With the rain and wind, we were glad the motel has its own laundry, so we don’t have to face the weather in order to wash our clothes.\u00a0 We are really tired.<\/p>\n DETAILS:\u00a0 Last night I was trying to go to sleep, and for some reason started thinking about the musical “Little Mary Sunshine”, which is set in the mountains of Colorado.\u00a0 All the songs began to run through my head, and it took awhile before I finally zonked out.\u00a0 That’s a really fun musical, but it is NOT at all “PC”, so is rarely performed anymore.<\/p>\n Knowing that we had 20 miles or so to go before Pagosa Springs, we packed up quickly and headed out.\u00a0 The road rolled uphill and downhill. At the bottom of every “down” it was so cold that you could see your breath, but at the top of every “up” it was warm.\u00a0 Fixit and I were enjoying the scenery, and we commented to each other, “This looks like Oregon, except the trees are wrong–they should be Douglas Fir.”\u00a0 We also noticed a fair amount of litter along the road, and the top two items were #1:\u00a0 Bud Light bottles & cans and #2: Dead deer (most of them were already eaten up by vultures etc.\u00a0 But phew, they still SMELLED!)\u00a0 But to make up for that, the wildflowers were gorgeous, and all the grass was intensely green.\u00a0 We stopped for a\u00a0 break in a valley where there were a lot of cute houses, and each one had at least one horse in the yard.<\/p>\n A bit after 10 am, we reached an RV park with a store, so we went in to get some food!\u00a0\u00a0 Classic thruhiker stuff–ice cream (which we ate immediately, and it was so good; it was locally made), and a pizza (which we did not eat immediately, but had them fold it in half and wrap it in foil so we could carry it until lunchtime).\u00a0\u00a0 We lashed the pizza to the top of Fixit’s pack, on top of his snowshoes.\u00a0 While we were sitting on the porch of the store eating ice cream, we had a chance to talk to some of the RV park folks–they were very interested in what we were doing.\u00a0 The young guy who was manning the store particularly asked about the high lakes.\u00a0 “Are they still frozen over?” he inquired.\u00a0 “Totally frozen” we told him.\u00a0 Turned out that he’s into fishing and he said the BEST time to fish is just\u00a0when the lakes begin to\u00a0thaw and there’s a little bit of open water in the ice.\u00a0 At that point\u00a0the fish are really hungry!<\/p>\n But we still had lots of miles to go before Pagosa Springs, so we couldn’t linger long.\u00a0 So on we went, ticking off the miles by watching the mile marker signs by the road.\u00a0 I said to Fixit, “Roadwalking takes a different kind of determination than bushwhacking.\u00a0 Yesterday we had to deal with ‘Oh great, another mess of logs to climb over…fun, another gully to get down into and up out of’ and today we have to deal with not being bored, and instead finding things to look at and think about.”\u00a0 A lot of the thruhikers deal with boredom by listening to music, but I prefer the challenge of being IN the moment and LOOKING at what’s around me and LISTENING to the sounds that are there.<\/p>\n The scenery at this point was “classic Colorado”–houses and barns with snowy mountains in the background.\u00a0 We looked at all the snow and thought, “Well, we are supposed to be up THERE, but not with hardly any food.\u00a0 We would never have made it.”\u00a0 Dark clouds were building up over the mountains, clouds that were steadily getting bigger and bigger.\u00a0 I wondered if they would affect us, down in the valley.\u00a0 Finally we reached the outer fringes of Pagosa Springs, which included a big English-style place with a sign that said, “Winslow In The Shire”, and another place with a very cute, gangly-looking herd of alpacas.\u00a0 At this point, the wind began to blow so hard that walking was difficult, and the dark clouds began to spread out from the mountains and gather overhead.\u00a0 But we reached the county fairgrounds, (home of the Red Ryder Rodeo!)\u00a0 and just before we got into town, the first drops of rain began to fall.\u00a0 We didn’t bother stopping to put on raingear, and walked\/ran as fast as we could to our destination, The First Inn.\u00a0 Just after we got into the lobby there, the rain began in earnest.\u00a0 Whew!\u00a0 That was close!<\/p>\n But now it was chore time.\u00a0 Bill took our laundry to wash (wow, was I glad we didn’t have to go to a laundromat down the street and deal with pouring rain!)\u00a0 and I tackled the job of sorting out our packs, doing mending, and figuring out what to buy to resupply for the next leg of the trail.\u00a0 We didn’t send a box here because it’s only a short run to the next town of Creede, but I have learned my lesson–carry a LOT of extra food!\u00a0 We also were able to phone a “friend of a friend” who lives here in Colorado, to figure out a way we might be able to see them while we’re in the state.\u00a0 Looks like maybe we could meet them at Monarch Pass in a few days.<\/p>\n We had a great dinner, and then I went and bought a bunch of stuff at a gas station convenience store.\u00a0 Expensive. Ouch.\u00a0 But we are out on the edge of town, and the nearest regular grocery store is far enough away, and I am so tired that we decided not to make the long walk in order to get cheaper food.\u00a0 I really am tired.\u00a0 Colorado is seriously tough.\u00a0\u00a0 Back at First Inn, I was thinking about “Tomorrow we head back into the mountains and the snow,” and I was worried, to the point of wondering if I could\u00a0handle it.\u00a0 I thought about how God had promised He’d see us through–yes, so far He definitely has!–but I really was tired and discouraged, almost to the point of despair.\u00a0 So I pulled the Gideon Bible out of the drawer in the motel room and reread Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.\u00a0 Therefore we will not fear, even though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea…the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”\u00a0\u00a0 And I told God, “OK, I believe You.\u00a0 I know You love me.\u00a0 Please give me the strength I need.”\u00a0 And I had to sort of laugh at myself, because when I was a “selfsufficient” (hah! nobody is–we delude ourselves if we think we are!) atheist\/agnostic, I used to look down on the Christians for being “weak”.\u00a0 Now I realize that to run around depending on myself is certainly do-able, but the end product is a hardness of heart that spills over into other things.\u00a0 Not good.\u00a0 That’s one of the reasons the world is in such a mess.\u00a0 It’s a lot better to live life in a close relationship with God and be part of what He is doing to help the mess in the world, rather than blowing God off.<\/p>\n And just for fun, before we collapsed for the night, I took a look at the yellow pages listings for churches in Pagosa Springs.\u00a0 Whoa!\u00a0 This is not a big town, but it has a zillion churches–all kinds!\u00a0 And a nationally known Christian youth camp, too.\u00a0 Wish we had more time here!\u00a0 But tomorrow it’s time to head back up the hill!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n (more to come–I am still working on this)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SUMMARY:\u00a0 Yesterday took a lot of determination and patience, as we forded rivers, followed elk trails, and bushwacked through forest. Today, we put that same determination to work by pulling off a 20 mile roadwalk in 8 hours.\u00a0\u00a0It was beautiful Colorado scenery, which actually has rather an “Oregon Look” to it. But 20 miles is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":804,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}