After two nights, (that felt like a thousand), it was time to leave the toaster house. These small towns seem to have a strong hiker vortex that prevents people from leaving.
I managed to leave bright and early, but soon after, I got a message saying the other guys were gonna have breakfast at he restaurant first.
I wanted to start as early as possible because this section has very little water. Sometimes it’s as far as 26 miles between sources, which means a heavy backpack.
Luckily this cow trough was flowing nicely so I got water straight from the well. It was so full that the wind was splashing water out onto the ground.
I tried to keep this break short because most of the day was following a road with private property on both sides. That means no camping or at the very least, no good camping. The trail left the road after about 34 miles, so I had some work to do.
The road left the woods and followed some open range. I think I could have camped here pretty easily, but it was super windy and exposed.
At least I got to see some new animals today! I didn’t know they let alpacas range free like that. Maybe they don’t and I found some fugitives.
My eventual goal was the Chain Of Craters. It’s a section of trail in El Malpais National Monument that follows an old lava flow and some cinder cones. This is the real CDT, but it goes way out of the way so lost people take a different way into the next town of Grants.
After 34 miles, I was finally off the road and onto the trail. The wind was still howling and it was nothing to set up behind to block the wind. I ended up hiking another mile along the trail and found a nice place to tuck in behind the lava flow.
Today was my second longest day on trail, but the last one had a brewery at the end. This one just had night in my tent. While I was walking I did have a guy in a van pass a bottle of Jack Daniel’s out the window. I don’t think it helped me at all, but it’s hard to turn something like that down.
I have about a liter and a half of water to get to my next source tomorrow, ten miles away. The cool morning should make that really easy.
This will be my first time on the trail camping alone.