​Day 5: 92 miles from Mexico

We woke up in Lordsburg after a nice meal of cheeseburgers and milkshakes at Kranberry’s, the restaurant in town, with Ducky, Wonder Woman, Dan and us. Wonder Woman found me a sundress in the hiker box so I was able to match her fabled “town gown” she wore on the PCT that she had told me so much about. It felt so ridiculous and amazing to traipse through this small New Mexican border town in my flip flops and dress. After dinner we made our way to the liquor store and got some beers for the room. Wonder Woman and I soaked our swollen, blistered feet in a makeshift ice bath in the motel bathroom and scrolled through each others instagrams, getting a glimpse of our off-trail life.

We stayed up way too late watching basketball and glued to our phones, then had a great nights sleep.

When we woke up, we started on our chores right away. Radio and Dan grabbed me breakfast from McDonalds, Wonder Woman and I kept our feet elevated to help the swelling. The Econoldge did our laundry for $5, and we had most of our food from the box we left at the motel so I didn’t need to do too much resupply. In order to rest our feet we decided to spend the day in town and hike out in the evening.

While waiting outside the grocery store, drinking as much water and eating as many fresh veggies from the store as we could, we met a few other CDT hikers including two sisters, Rat and Ant. They were cool and we spent most of the day loitering outside the store (there was an outlet and plenty of food). The Lordsburg crazies definitely came out - we had a few homeless people come up to us and harass us, but we had such a big group that I felt fine. Other townspeople asked about the hike and wished us well, but overall it was an interesting people watching experience.

At 5pm we packed up and headed out for an easy 7 miles out of town. We wanted to give our feet a near-o’s day of rest and after the 1.5 mile highway walk we camped in a wash in a large open plain. Ducky and the girls camped with us too and we had a nice little dinner party (Doritos, dried mangos and a snickers for me).

The sky was beautiful yet again and we settled into a cozy nights sleep.

Day 6: 113 miles from Mexico

We woke up and started hiking across the barren, desert plain. While we had camped at a wash with a few trees, those were pretty much the only trees in sight.

I was plodding along telling everyone about a Planet Money podcast I had listened to the night before about the economics of dollar stores popping up in rural communities (especially fitting since the tiny town of Lordsburg had two different dollar store chains within a few blocks of another) when I almost stepped right on top of a rattlesnake. He was a small one and didn’t rattle, but when Dan got a bit closer to check him out, the little guy lunged at him.

We were pretty on edge after that, and not too much later, Radio heard a big warning rattle from a bush in a wash we were crossing. This rattlesnake was much bigger and we moved on quickly.

And then, a little while later on a patch of grass growing between the tire tracks of a dirt road, ANOTHER rattlesnake rattled at Radio and scared me and Wonder Woman. I couldn’t believe we saw so many rattlesnakes in one day.

Today was a day with a lot of long water carries. The water caches we relied on in the first section weren’t maintained past Lordsburg, so we have to really rely on cattle trough sources. When we stopped at the first one, Radio tested his cow whispering abilities and we watched some cows tussle with each other as they fought over water, thankfully on the other side of the fence from us.

Today was also another really hot day, but soon we started climbing (a surprisingly welcome change) into a totally different landscape of pine trees and soft dirt trail.

We camped at another cow through (fought through some algae to scoop up the water and double filtered it) and had a nice dinner with everyone again.

Day 7: 136 miles from Mexico

We climbed into some pine trees and hills today, following dirt roads and going over two little peaks - Jacks Mountain and Burro Mountain. I taped up my foot with some KT tape which really seemed to help the plantar pain, but the general aches were still there. We had a slow going morning and ended up having to do most of our miles in the afternoon, which is not my favorite.

There wasn’t a lot of water today again but the carries weren’t too bad. Usually, we’ve been camping at a water source and have a reliable one halfway through the day, a system that’s been working fine. We also had our first natural water sources on trail so far - creeks that weren’t quite flowing but had pools we could scoop water out of.

We were surprised with some trail magic today - a cooler full of bottled water, propel mix, chips, and other goodies including tampons and pads, menthol pain gel and band aids. It was a really thoughtful trail magic cooler and supposedly our first and last trail magic of the CDT.

Day 8: 162 miles from Mexico (Silver City, NM)

I woke up feeling much better today after we had a good nights rest in a clean sandy wash.

We only had 13 miles to go until the trail turned into a highway walk towards Silver City, our next trail town. In the morning, hiking among the pine trees, we made a reservation at a hotel in downtown Silver City, and spent the rest of the day fantasizing about the amenities Silver City, the “Tokyo of New Mexico” would have. Obviously a Ritz Carlton with a CDT hiker rate.

When we got to the road, Vinny and Dan decided to be “true to the thru” and hike the trail, which was the highway, for 13 miles. With our sore feet, Wonder Woman and I thumbed it to town and got a ride from a nice local lady. When we got to town we took care of some errands and got a nice spread (bougie gun and tonics, fresh baked bread and goat cheese/olive tapenade) for the boys ready after looking through all 200 Met Gala looks at the local brewery.