{"id":537,"date":"2016-07-19T06:25:50","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T06:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=537"},"modified":"2017-05-10T14:00:34","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T14:00:34","slug":"a-walk-on-the-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/07\/19\/a-walk-on-the-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday, July 19 A Walk On the Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>It is hard to write this without falling asleep! We are very tired\u2014hiking all day only produced 23 1\/2 miles because we had to do so much on soft sand. We met our first real SoBo this morning\u2014a Brit named Phantom. He warned us about the sand, and he wasn’t kidding! It was slow, hard going.<\/p>\n

We also made two stops to collect and treat water\u2014one early morning and one almost at the end of the day. One spring we passed operates with a valve in a barrel\u2014and in the barrel was a set of bocce balls. Fun! We did not linger\u2014we had miles to do. We met a rancher out in his truck with his 4 kids, bringing salt blocks to the cows.<\/p>\n

The day finished with a climb up to 8,000 feet. We are camped up here in a lovely mountain dell with wind in the trees. Yes\u2014trees again!<\/p>\n

DETAILS:<\/strong>\u00a0 This morning was cloudy and fairly cold, with a very cold wind blowing.\u00a0 Brrrr!\u00a0 I wore my down jacket and fleece headband.\u00a0 Our first goal was the A & M (an oil company) Reservoir, where we took on enough water to last us for the rest of the day.\u00a0 While we were there, a herd of cows arrived.\u00a0 First they circled around the reservoir fence (obviously looking for a way through!), then finally gave up and RAN to the little creek that overflows from the reservoir.\u00a0 Wow, they were thirsty!\u00a0\u00a0 They stood there and drank and drank and drank.<\/p>\n

At this point, the CDT is following a natural gas pipeline road.\u00a0 In the morning, two guys in a car came along, got out, and went to work on one of the places where the pipe is above ground.\u00a0\u00a0 We also met the rancher who owns the cows–he was out in his pickup truck, accompanied by his 4 cute kids, to bring salt\/mineral blocks to the cows.<\/p>\n

We also met our first REAL SOBO–a Brit guy named Phantom.\u00a0 He was moving fast, but stopped to warn us that we were about to head into some tough going–very soft sand, for miles.\u00a0 No kidding!\u00a0\u00a0 It was like walking on the dry sand part of the beach back home, with no option to walk on the firm wet sand near the water.\u00a0 Sometimes we were able to leave the road\/trail and walk nearby on sand that was a bit firmer.\u00a0 But it was such slow going, and so wearing, argh!\u00a0 To add to the fun, the sun finally came out, and it was pretty hot–only the little bit of breeze kept it bearable.\u00a0\u00a0 We passed a water source which involves a valve located inside a barrel.\u00a0 I’d heard about this place–it has a set of bocce balls inside the barrel.\u00a0 Sure ‘nough, there they were!\u00a0\u00a0 But we didn’t stop for a game, because we wanted to get in more miles…today has been so much slow, hard going.<\/p>\n

We finally reached a spring which is the last FOR SURE good water for the next 30 miles.\u00a0 It was uphill from the trail and inside a very extensive fenced area.\u00a0 We followed a use path up to it and found Stop ‘n Go was already there, filtering water by using a Sawyer filter plus gravity.\u00a0 We mixed up our AquaMira and treated the water that way.\u00a0\u00a0 Usually we don’t worry about spring water, but there were so many cows around that we decided it was better to be safe than sorry.\u00a0 Stop ‘n Go says he’s headed for Lander, where he will stop and EAT!\u00a0 We aren’t planning to go there, but push on to South Pass City.<\/p>\n

When we put our packs back on, grooooan, they were heavy!\u00a0 We both are carrying “max loads” of water.\u00a0 And we also were faced with a big climb up into the mountains.\u00a0 Oh well–gotta do what we’ve gotta do–keep walking!\u00a0\u00a0 On the way up, we met our second SOBO, which was great!\u00a0 Tonight we are camped in a very pretty little dell, on green grass, with a gnarly pine tree next to us and dramatic rock formations nearby.\u00a0 I was disappointed when I figured out our mileage for today–only 23 1\/2 miles, even though we tried so hard.\u00a0 We are both exhausted by the miles of soft sand.\u00a0 Hopefully it will be easier going tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 It is hard to write this without falling asleep! We are very tired\u2014hiking all day only produced 23 1\/2 miles because we had to do so much on soft sand. We met our first real SoBo this morning\u2014a Brit named Phantom. He warned us about the sand, and he wasn’t kidding! It was slow, […]<\/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-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537","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=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":921,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions\/921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}