{"id":535,"date":"2016-07-18T06:23:20","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T06:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=535"},"modified":"2017-05-07T22:53:32","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T22:53:32","slug":"very-cool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/07\/18\/very-cool\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, July 18 Very Cool"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>One of the things I was really worried about (besides finding water) in the Great Divide Desert was the heat<\/span>, but there was no problem today!\u00a0 Most of the time, it was cloudy and breezy. There was one stretch in the midday and afternoon though, where the wind blew so hard we could hardly walk. So I can honestly say, “It was one\u00a0 cool day today”.<\/p>\n

We are in real desert now, with sand, anklebiter cactus, antelope, cows and views that run forever, wow! We did have a hard time finding the trail at first this morning, and a bit before lunch there was a tricky junction with no signs where we went the wrong way for awhile.<\/p>\n

When we realized our mistake, we bushwhacked over a hill and got back on the trail, but it is almost unreal to look at the country we are walking through\u2014though it is desert, it is very beautiful in its own way. Tonight we are camped by the trail.<\/p>\n

DETAILS:<\/strong>\u00a0 One of the things I was NOT looking forward to in this part of the CDT was desert heat.\u00a0 I’ve read hiker blogs that made it sound pretty bad.\u00a0 Well, yesterday we had clouds all day, and today, more of the same…in fact it actually dripped maybe two rain DRIPS on us!\u00a0 There is evidence everywhere of real gullywasher rains, though–we are very glad we didn’t have to deal with something like that!<\/p>\n

This morning started right off with “Where is the trail?”\u00a0 We were at Fish Pond Spring, and from there, despite the BLM sign bragging about how much nice stuff they had done for us hikers, there was no indication of where to go.\u00a0 So we just sighed and did our best to follow an approximate route.\u00a0 After awhile we hit a dirt road and followed that, which made for easier going.\u00a0 But then came the point where supposedly the CDT went down to the paved road and followed it for a bit.\u00a0 There were no signs, no nothing to show us where that was, so we sighed again and squiggled under a barbed wire fence (got lots of practice doing that back in New Mexico!) and then walked along the highway.<\/p>\n

According to the maps, we were supposed to walk the highway till we got to a road off to the left called “Mineral X”.\u00a0 Fixit got very worried, though, when what we were seeing didn’t exactly perfectly match the maps, but it turned out that all was OK, and we found the turnoff.\u00a0 From that point we were walking through real desert, with sand, very dwarf sagebrush, and anklebiter cactus.\u00a0 Every now and then we would pass an animal skeleton, bleached white and lying in the sand.\u00a0 There were some low hills, but basically the terrain was flat, and we could see for miles and miles.<\/p>\n

Not long before lunch, we came to a very confusing junction, with no indication of which trail was the CDT.\u00a0 We looked at maps, we looked at landmarks, we looked at the compass…and as it turned out, chose the wrong way.\u00a0\u00a0 We walked along it for a bit, growing increasingly uneasy, then stopped to eat lunch down in a gully out of the wind.\u00a0 While we were down there, Fixit decided we’d better “fire up” the Guthook app and see where we were.\u00a0 Yup, we were NOT on the CDT.\u00a0 (We hate to look at Guthook–we can only do it about 7 or 8 times before the battery runs out, so we try to save it for when we are truly desperate).<\/p>\n

So “into the teeth” of a fierce wind, we turned off the trail we were on, climbed over a tall hill (the wind was totally crazy up there!), spotted where we SHOULD be, and went for it.\u00a0 We’d basically been walking along the wrong side of a ridge.\u00a0 What a HUGE relief when we got down to the other trail and spotted a CDT post!\u00a0\u00a0 Much cheering!\u00a0 Then we did our best to walk in wind gusts that made us stagger like drunken sailors and reached Bull Spring, which was a very nice solar pump setup.\u00a0 We got some water there, but didn’t take on full loads, thinking we’d get more at the next water source up ahead.<\/p>\n

Not a good idea, as it turned out–the next water source, which we’d counted on, was nada–dry, nothing.\u00a0 All we could do was go on, but start rationing.\u00a0\u00a0 The trail here is basically a dirt road that goes straight ahead, undulating up and down on the hills.\u00a0 Cows were here and there (we told ourselves, “Where there’s cows, there’s water–hang in there!”) but we did not yet see the wild horses that we’d heard so much about.\u00a0 We finally camped at just beyond a place called Rocky Draw.\u00a0\u00a0 Tomorrow we should reach a reservoir, where we are counting on getting more water.<\/p>\n

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SUMMARY:\u00a0 One of the things I was really worried about (besides finding water) in the Great Divide Desert was the heat, but there was no problem today!\u00a0 Most of the time, it was cloudy and breezy. There was one stretch in the midday and afternoon though, where the wind blew so hard we could hardly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","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=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":915,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions\/915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}