21.9 miles
297.5 AZT mile marker
Nothing came of the glowing eyes at the pond overnight. There were a couple animal noises and a loud screeching near dawn (probably an owl), but the animals left me alone. There was a picked clean cow carcass less than 100 yards from my camp, but it wasn’t too recent.
It got below freezing last night, as evidenced by frost on grassy areas and icy trail, but it was not nearly as cold as the last 2 nights. After a nice partial sunrise from my camp, I tried to take off in just my normal hiking clothes, but had to stop shortly to put on a shell upper layer to protect from the wind.
There were a fair number of bones along the trail today. I saw far more remains of dead animals than live animals (just a few cows).
The trail was once again flat ponderosa forest, occasionally opening up to a flat meadow or juniper/pinyon. There was a lot of cow ponds around, but they were all disgustingly muddy and obviously get heavy cow activity. My cow pond water source from last night wasn’t too bad, so I carried a couple liters of water out from it. It was a cooler day, so that lasted me most of the day thankfully.
I’m getting pretty tired of the flat forest. There is just very little to see. It was nice at first, but after hundreds of miles of just trees, it got old a while back. I need some more scenery to break things up, and didn’t realize so much of the trail would be buried in forest. However, that should change tomorrow when I start my descent from the Colorado Plateau.
Much of today was just grinding out the miles due to the lack of scenery. It’s not what I’d prefer, but all trail isn’t magnificent.
As I was walking down the trail, I noticed something moving at my feet. It was a tarantula that had its front leg raised and was jumping at me, as if it meant to attack. It was obviously easily avoided, but it was pretty odd how aggressive the thing was. I took a step back and poked it a bit with my hiking pole as any human would but didn’t get much response. Apparently it just wanted me, not my pole.
Later in the day, the trail dropped down into a shallow canyon, what a change! It was only about 100 feet deep and forested, but it was nice to be hiking down something different with more character. I was doing great on time because of the mile grind, so I took a good break in the canyon, and almost fell asleep on the pine needles in the warmth of the sun.
I hadn’t gotten water from any of the muddy cow ponds I had been passing, so I diverted slightly from the trail to stop by a ranger station and get some water. I also used the water to flush the dirt out of my filter, something that is often needed out here with the poor water quality. Then it was just a short hike to another closed down campground where I had planned to camp. The water was off, but it had a dumpster, unlocked privies, and I even found a campsite with a large pile of firewood! Needless to say, that was my campsite.
I got in a bit early at 4, but 22 miles was good enough for today, and there was a chance that Breaks was going to catch up with me here. Shortly before dark, she rolled in. We each have our own free sites, since why not? We own the campground tonight.
I made a good fire using the empty cardboard TP tubes in the privy and enjoyed the ambiance of the fire for dinner and the night. Also nice to journal to the firelight.
The lack of scenery has gotten me down, but that should drastically change tomorrow and I’m looking forward to that.
