August 28th
Segment 18
We said good bye to Crexit and Happy Girl this morning at the Wanderlust Hostel as they returned to the trail. They are a few Segments ahead of us and got caught in a storm. A trail angle out giving fruit and Gatorade to hikers brought them to town a few days ago and they recovered and dried all their gear.I bought some pepper spray in town according to my mom’s recommendation after our previous experience August 24th.
Jodie visited the Urgent Care, the provider was not only impressed and amazed by Jodie’s grit and determination she gave her her full blessing to continue the trail and said she would provide enough medication for her to complete it! We just had to wait for a kidney function blood test to come back. So we waited and wondered and thought about our future.Being in town is like being sucked into a time vortex. Everything takes forever! We had had grand ideas of heading back to the trail before noon and now found ourselves leaving town around 4:30. So much for getting in many miles in. But it’s still not a zero!!!
I sent out my request to God and the universe for another ride! I was really specific and requested a ride with someone who would let us eat in their car and let us leave our dinner garbage with them. Yay Andre! Or is it Ombre? We had such a great time visiting on our way to the trail! He had just finished the Colorado Trail and had a few days left to explore Colorado, so he had rented a car with full intention on acting as a trail angle on his way to the next national park. When I asked if could eat in car he said, yeah no problem! It’s a rental. We are so blessed!
From home (and husband) sickness to twisted happiness! Back on trail!
So many of us come to the trail to find ourselves, find God, unravel stress, relieve anxiety, fine peace, find our inner strength and ground ourselves in nature. It’s so easy to make friends with fellow adventurers. Easily sharing space in hostels with communal bunk rooms, kitchens and shared bathrooms. We’re all here on an adventure of some sort. There’s respect and kindness for each other. We keep meeting so many wonderful people. Like the young man who’s planning on hiking a 23k ft mountain with his brother next year in South America. Doug adventure van man. The gentleman that arrived this morning who we said to good bye to at pub where our hostel hostess was working her second job and they both wished us well as walked out of town.As the burden and stresses of town fell away we found ourselves laughing like school girls until my stomach hurt at our shared nemesis of grocery store shopping. Laughing at each others not so great moments…”where’s the signs for the isles?”, “what are we looking for?”, “are you done yet?”…We hiked to a water source. The sun had just set. We decided to call it a day. Then it started sprinkling as we quickly set up camp and hid in our tents.I discovered tonight while rearranging the food in my bear can…I really am a bag lady. I just couldn’t let any zip locks go. I’m literally carrying a zip lock full of zip locks. You just never know when you’ll need one!It’s cold outside, the sky cleared and the moon rose We’re getting up early to hike! We have 181.7 miles to go!!!
Jodie’s blog: bikehikerepeat.com