CDT18
12th May Friday
Long dusty road along Pie Town Road
27miles (43km)
The morning start was at 6:45 with only a distant cloud on the horizon and nothing but blue sky. The bad weather the previous couple of days were two storm fronts that came through which we learnt while we were in Pie Town. The forecast for the next week is fine weather but that didn’t stop me from getting cold in my sleeping bag last night.
Sights along the road we walked
First break was our second breakfast after walking 2 hours and 45 minutes where we covered about 8 miles, the walking is on gravel road and for the majority of the morning it was all up hill. Not very exciting this morning walk among the dusty road passing a couple of ranches. But our next water supply is soon so I’d like to hydrate as much as possible and not carry excess water as my bag with 6 days worth of food is heavy enough.
Entrance to the Ranch
We got to our water point and as it turned out, it was a farm when an elderly couple living there and they came out to greet us. The old man was 85 years old and told us stories of his time in the Korean war back in the 1950’s. Ken spoke to him for a while as they both had something in common and used a lot of military talk that went over my head.
John Thomson, a trail angel that helps out the hikers with water for many years
John Thomson, the old man’s name, gave us directions for our next water supply which was 8 miles further up the road.
Disused house, outside Thompson’s farm
We filled up everything and carrying 6 days worth of food and 5 litres of water, it was really hard going and we had to stop more frequent to rest our sore feet.
Water source we share with the cows
According to the information we have, the water points that we were going to use on the trail for the next days have either dried up or no longer in service. This wasn’t very good news so we decided to go for the direct path to the highway and tomorrow make our way into Grants for a well reserved two days rest.