{"id":504,"date":"2016-07-03T04:30:22","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T04:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=504"},"modified":"2017-04-20T14:53:47","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T14:53:47","slug":"off-to-a-good-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/07\/03\/off-to-a-good-start\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday July 3 Off to a Good Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY: <\/strong>Despite the very loud nearby party last night, we had no trouble sleeping. Hiking is great for that! This morning, we packed up everything (tent and groundcloth wet, yuck) and made tracks back to The Fat Cat for another round of awesome buffet. Then we went over to the Presbyterian church and it wasn’t long before the pastor and music people showed up. So we got to hang out while they got ready.<\/p>\n

It was beyond wonderful to join in the service and yes! It was communion Sunday. We had fun afterwards talking to people, then a quick early lunch and back to the CDT! Lots of people were out hiking, even though the trail is wet and muddy from all the rain. We made good miles today\u2014we’re off to a fine start on making it to Steamboat Springs.<\/p>\n

DETAILS:<\/strong> There was quite a party going on in one of the houses behind the motel last night, but Fixit and I both fell asleep anyway, and have no idea when they finally finished celebrating!\u00a0 But out of habit, we woke up at 5:00 am, and by 6:00 we were both so hungry that we got up.\u00a0 Because it was raining last night, we’d set up the tent in “rain mode”, meaning all closed up, so when we sat up to get dressed, yuck!\u00a0 The condensation inside was pretty bad.\u00a0 We tried to wipe off the inside of the tent as best we could before we packed it up.\u00a0 The groundcloth was also soaking wet from all the rain…double yuck.\u00a0 Oh well!<\/p>\n

Then we took our very hungry selves back to The Fat Cat and had another go at the buffet.\u00a0 Yum!\u00a0 My final round of food this morning was a plateful of strawberry shortcake with lots of berries and whipped cream!\u00a0 By the time we were done eating, it was 8:30. \u00a0 Fixit and I discussed what to do next.\u00a0 We could just head back onto the trail….but it was Sunday, and there were churches, and we hated to pass up an opportunity like that.\u00a0 So we took our packs and walked over to the Trinity Presbyterian Church and hung around outside for only a few minutes, when the pastor and the “music crew” showed up.\u00a0 They gave us a warm welcome and we went in with them–while they got set up and did a bit of practicing, Fixit read the Bible and I read from their hymnal.\u00a0 I love hymnals–the words are so awesome.<\/p>\n

It was also fun to listen to the music crew.\u00a0 Besides running through the music for church that day (the pastor plays saxophone!), they were having lively discussions about the presidential primary elections. ( All of us CDT hikers are very glad we are able to avoid all that out on the trail!)\u00a0 People began to arrive, and the service started.\u00a0 I really enjoyed it.\u00a0 Sometimes I feel like the CDT does everything it can to beat us up (the other hikers all feel the same!) but that church service made me feel encouraged and strengthened for whatever lies ahead of us on the trail.\u00a0 And best of all, it was a communion Sunday, too!<\/p>\n

After church we had fun talking to some very interesting people.\u00a0 One was a retired forest ranger who knows the CDT very well, and the other was a young couple who want to do the CDT someday.\u00a0 They told us that the CDT coming in to Grand Lake is full of blowdowns and it’s tough going.\u00a0 So we are glad we didn’t try to go that way.\u00a0 After that, we headed out to find some lunch, and wow!\u00a0 The lake was full of sunshine and boats, and there were people everywhere.<\/p>\n

Back to the trail we went, and at first it was really nice.\u00a0 The first leg was a hike up to Big Meadow–very pretty!\u00a0 The next leg was to hike over a hill, then down to a trailhead parking area.\u00a0 We met a LOT of people out hiking, even though the trail was very muddy from all the rain recently.\u00a0 We’d just caught up with a whole group of folks, when along came a ranger on a horse, going the other way.\u00a0 He was very bossy, and stopped the horse to order, “All of you! Get off the trail! ….No, not like that–all of you get off onto the same side!”\u00a0 We scrambled around trying to find places we could get to.\u00a0 He finally rode by with his nose in the air.\u00a0 Not a nice ranger at all.\u00a0 I’m glad not ALL rangers act that way (though unfortunately there are quite a few who do).<\/p>\n

Fixit and I decided to stop and dry out our wet gear, but just as we took off our packs and started to get things out–oh no!\u00a0 It started to RAIN again!\u00a0 So we gave up on that idea, and put our raingear back on.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 Finally we got down to the road and could not figure out where to go.\u00a0 There were various trails, it was still raining, and the whole thing was hard to “read” from our Bear map.\u00a0 We made a best guess as to where we were, and headed left, hoping to pick up the trail a little way down the road.\u00a0 Instead, we found ourselves wandering into a ranger housing area, where a very kind ranger lady intercepted us, got out HER map (much more detailed) and got us on track.\u00a0 Whew!<\/p>\n

So back we went (turned out we should have stayed on the trail longer and not gotten distracted by what looked like the trailhead parking area) just in time to meet four CDT thruhikers, including Allgood!\u00a0 He is the one who left the note just before the river crossing on the Creede cutoff route–the note that directed us to a fallen tree downstream that made a fine, safe place to get to the other side.\u00a0 I thanked him very fervently for taking all the time and trouble to hike back and leave a note for the rest of us.\u00a0 Turned out that he and his friends were planning to hitch back to Grand Lake and spend 4th of July there.\u00a0 They had already lined up to stay at the hostel, so they won’t be camping out by a dumpster somewhere!\u00a0 It was so good to meet them, and best of all, being able to THANK Allgood!<\/p>\n

Fixit and I found the CDT again and headed out.\u00a0 The trail of course went UP–but it was a nice up!\u00a0 No killer climbs.\u00a0 No rocky trail.\u00a0 So despite not even starting till around 1:00, I think we got at least 13 miles in before we stopped early at 6:30.\u00a0 That’s a good start; the only bummer is the rain, or to be more specific, the “rain-sun-rain-sun”.\u00a0 It rains, so we put on raingear.\u00a0 Then the sun comes out, and the raingear makes us hot.\u00a0 So we take it off.\u00a0 Then it rains again….you get the picture.\u00a0 Tedious!\u00a0\u00a0 The rain makes all the plants wet, so we are constantly going through a “hiker carwash” as we push through wet plants along the trail.\u00a0 We did get to see a mama moose and her baby, though!\u00a0 We were careful not to get too close.<\/p>\n

The reason we stopped a bit early was that the rain had stopped, and we wanted to give our stuff a chance to dry a bit.\u00a0 So I stood there “flapping” our groundcloth till it was dry, then we laid it down, and set up the tent.\u00a0 We let that dry a bit too, before we put our stuff in and crept in ourselves.\u00a0 Our campsite is on the only bit of flat ground we could find, and it is right by the creek.\u00a0 We don’t like to camp near water if we can help it–we’d rather stealth camp–but this was our only choice available.\u00a0\u00a0 Hope we get nice weather tomorrow!<\/p>\n

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SUMMARY: Despite the very loud nearby party last night, we had no trouble sleeping. Hiking is great for that! This morning, we packed up everything (tent and groundcloth wet, yuck) and made tracks back to The Fat Cat for another round of awesome buffet. Then we went over to the Presbyterian church and it wasn’t […]<\/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-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","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=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}