Day 26 – The Slowdown
Day miles: 15.3
Trip miles: 475.8
Today was a light day of hiking. Now that I have gotten through the open parts of the trail in New Mexico, and have plans to walk around the remaining fire closures between Cuba and Chama, I wanted to take a breather. I had originally planned on entering the San Juans in Colorado around June 15. I’ll be a few days before that, but I’m still in line with my timing.
My plan is to hike about 20-22 miles tomorrow, then get up really early and hike into town Tuesday morning for breakfast. I really want to go to a place called Cuban Cafe. I’ll then hike out Wednesday and make it to Chama via roads in three days. I plan to rest a day there before heading into the San Juans.
So, today was an exercise in hiking more slowly and spending a lot of time sitting and dozing off by a water cache. Fortunately, the section of trail I hiked today is one of my favorites in New Mexico.
It was relatively warm this morning and I had a nice sunrise to view. I tried to sleep in, but I woke up at 5:30am needing to pee. I took my time getting ready and left camp around 7.
First I hiked up an open expanse with beautiful mesas in the background. Eventually I was walking below, and then on, large mesas. There were a few steep climbs as the trail wound through short switchbacks to get to the tops of the mesas. The CDT alternates between being up high and down low. When it was low, it passed by interesting rock formations. When it was high, the views were incredibly expansive. It really was beautiful.
It was hot today, or at least the sun felt powerful. I mucked around taking a lot of video and photos. Unfortunately I dropped my camera and damaged it slightly. It doesn’t appear to be a mortal wound, but I am going to need to see if I can fix it. The fall created a raised area on the side of the retractable lens that makes it hard for the camera lens to retract properly. Fortunately I can still shoot with it, at least for now.
I met up with Stormy after a long ridge walk along a mesa. I found him lying down on top of a wooden pallet surrounded by a large water cache. We stayed there for a while, perhaps even two hours. We knew we weren’t going much farther for the day. It was hard to sit still though – I’m so used to walking!
We used the time to plan out the Cuba to Chama road walk a bit. Right now that plan centers around a diner we found in the middle of nowhere, which requires us to be able to get through a construction zone by a large dam. It is going to be interesting for sure!
We found a decent spot to camp, though as soon as I got set up, a family of cows came over to investigate. Fortunately they moved on.
Today’s hiking was gorgeous and I was glad to have some time to just take it all in. I had a satisfying dinner of ramen and am grateful for my campsite – I think I will have a good view of the sunrise!
Day 27 – The Long Break
Day miles: 23.1
Trip miles: 498.9
I fell asleep before 9:30PM last night and didn’t awaken until 6AM – a solid night’s sleep. The sun was already getting ready to peak out from behind the distant mountains, hinting at full-blown day with blue, orange, and yellow hues.
I got up to pee, then returned to my tent to pack up and make some coffee. I was in. I hurry. I knew I would hike about 24 miles and find a place just before the road into Cuba to crash for the night. It had been so hot the last few days that I didn’t want to camp too early. Doing that is difficult because unless there is good shade, sitting inside a tent or outside in the sun is unappealing.
By the time my coffee was heated, the sun had risen, sending its full power directly into my tent. Nuts! I drank my not-too-hot coffee in my sauna tent anyway, then set about getting out.
I set my water rations in the shade so they would retain some level of coolness for a little while. It would be a little over 12 miles to the next water source. I shoved my quilt in my bag, rolled up my sleeping pad, then tucked the rest of my gear away and disassembled my tent. Three packets of oatmeal later and I was gone.
The morning hiking was beautiful, fun, and tough. The trail was well-marked with cairns and posts. It passed up and down mesas, by unique rock formations, and offered stunning views. It was hot though, and I just couldn’t seem to catch a breeze.
I shot quite a lot of video. The vistas were good and the trail quite unique. The mesa rock was a mix of sandy beige, deep red, black, and a yellowish orange. I was hungry, and at one point a section of the cliff wall began to look like bacon. It reminded me of the planet Jupiter, which always reminds me of bacon.
I hiked on, up and down and up and down. It was fun and I was loving the scenery. At one point, a group of five vultures clustered in the air really close to me, just coasting on the updrafts back and forth, effortlessly. They flew so close to me that I could see the details of their faces and beaks. I wondered if they were betting that I would not make it to the next water source and instead shrivel up there on the trail and die. All kidding aside, it looked like they were enjoying themselves. I never once saw one of them flap its wings – they glided the entire time.
I pulled up at the water source about 20 past noon. Stormy was there getting his spot set up to eat some food and rest. It kind of felt like being back in the desert again. I suppose we were – this section of trail is definitely still high desert, with plenty of cacti and heat to prove it.
The water source was a piped spring pouring out into a water tank. High above it the rock walls formed a concave cliff face. At least several dozen swallows were flying about. The cliff overhang was lined with their mud nests. Water flowed cool and clear from the spring.
The tank was a different matter. While full of clear spring water, it resembled a bit of a Frankensteinian aquarium. Seahorse looking things, wiggle worms, water bugs, and all of the creatures you might expect to show up under the lens of a microscope were all bopping about amidst various water plants. The carcasses of drowned bugs and flies lifelessly decorated the surface, in a tasteful array of course.
I tried to help a floundering moth and placed it on a rock so that it could dry out. It flopped about for 8 seconds and then flung itself back into the tank. Perhaps the trauma was just too much to bear. This was a good water source though. The worst sources are not the ones with seahorses and bopping bugs, but the brown ones filled with silt. Those will clog a filter like no one’s business.
I sat in the shade to rehydrate, and then walked over to explore an old stone house foundation. It looked to be a two-room setup. There was still a bit of would left where a door had been, and in a few of the stone joints. It made sense that someone might have settled near this spring. I wondered if they had set up the initial tank to capture the spring water, as well as to assist with smartening up the DNA of the local bug population.
I had a few snacks, drank some more water, and realized I had a LOT of time to kill. I had no cell service, and given it was only 10 more miles to the road into Cuba, I probably wouldn’t leave the shade and water until 5PM. That would put me at a place to camp around 8.
So, I sat and caught up journaling, then made notes and a shopping list for the next leg. Stormy and I plan to make the road walk from Cuba to Chama in three days. We will pass a few places along the way where we can get some food and snacks, so it should be pretty straightforward. There is one longer stretch without water, but we will manage. Then, it’s Colorado time!
I’m excited about the food in Cuba. We plan to wake up early and roll right out to a place called the Cuban Cafe. It opens at 6AM, so we will gorge ourselves and charge electronics. A hiker I met while on the Benton MacKaye Trail, Low Branch, is a bit up ahead of me in Colorado, also hiking the CDT. He messaged me that there is a food truck in Cuba serving up the best burritos he had in all of New Mexico! So, I definitely will try those. The truck is called Blancas Tamales and is supposed to be behind the Del Prado Hotel.
I stayed at the Del Prado in 2019. I plan to camp at Theresa’s RV Park on the north side of town this time. It’s a lot cheaper ($10), is on our route out, and I can worry about laundry and all that in Chama. I’ll just rinse my shirt in the shower at the RV park.
Thanks to my wife, I will have a box waiting in Chama. This contains my winter gear, some more Leuko tape, and my ursack for grizzly country. I plan to send my grizzly gear up trail to somewhere in Wyoming before the Wind River Range. I still need to decide where. I’ll send a few other things ahead as well, like the Leuko tape (after I replenish my supply). The box contains my micro spikes, which I will carry into the San Juans, as well as a new pair of shoes.
I could probably squeak another hundred miles out of my current shoes. I can typically grind 700 out of a pair of Olympus. But, if something is going to go wrong in a hike, it usually does so early. I’d much rather swap my shoes a little earlier in the second pair. The desert rocks and dirt took their toll on this first pair; it’s time for new ones. The new pair will simply have the factory insoles in them. I had planned to use inserts, but given they were the cause of many blisters early on, I am abandoning that idea.
My feet have been doing great! The Altra factory insoles are treating me well, and my blisters are largely just huge calluses now. My left foot is 100% good to go, and my right is about 97%. I still have a little tenderness on the right pad from one final blister I irritated on the road walk out of Grants, but I noticed that today there was a marked improvement in it and I don’t really notice it anymore. The single track trail in this section has been great for my feet, as has toning down the pace a bit.
I also plan to send a few things home. I’m no longer using a stuff sack for my quilt. I just shove my quilt into the bottom of my bag, which is lined with a contractor bag to keep things dry. I’m going to repurpose that stuff sack for my various loose items (med kit, etc.)and electronics. The current stuff sack those are in is a bit small and the larger one for my quilt is no heavier. I’ll get rid of the stuff sacks for my tent and sleeping pad. I never use those anyway. I’ll send home one extra camera battery – I’m finding that I’m ok with two.
And so it goes. Despite years of gear optimization, I find that I always discover ways to cut weight as I hike along. I was already considering some of these things, but just didn’t have a chance to try them out before starting my hike.
I mentioned that I will take my spikes into the San Juans. I have decided not to carry an ice axe. Given the low snow year and the timing of my entry, I don’t expect to need it. Yes, there will still be snow and some passes might be tricky, but my experience tells me that I will not use an axe at this point. I only use it when I am fairly sure I might need to self arrest and can’t get around the sketchy area another way. Otherwise, I am much more stable with my micro spikes and both trekking poles. The axe becomes another thing to carry, which detracts from stability. I feel confident in this decision based on the conditions I am seeing from the reports of other hikers who are already in the San Juans, as well as in comparison with the experience I had in 2019.
We sat around for quite a while in the shade at the spring. Unfortunately, the flies were relentless and the occasional breeze was not enough to dissuade them. It was hot though, and this was our last water until town tomorrow, so we waited until about a quarter past 5PM to leave.
I carried out 4.5 liters into the blazing sun. We had roughly 11 miles to go to camp just before the road into Cuba. The trail for the rest of the day was stunning. I walked between huge boulders, by strange rock formations, and made a steep climb up probably the highest mesa I’d hiked yet. The trail ran along the mesa top for quite a while before bringing me back down to a field full of brush, rock formations, and cows.
Before I reached the cows, I walked up on a large coyote. It stealthily ran off the trail in front of me and I was unable to see it again, let alone get a picture. Stormy caught up with me and we walked by loads of cows, including some really cute calves. One of the calves even ran at us when we had our backs turned. I spin around and it veered off course back to mom. I think it was just playing.
We walked through sunset and arrived near the road at 8:30. The dusk colors in this little valley were beautiful. We have our alarms set to start hiking by 4:30AM tomorrow so we can get to the restaurant when it opens at 6. I’m already hungry, so it’s time for bed!
Day 28 – The Cuban Hustle
Day miles: 6.1
Trip miles: 505
At 4:10AM I was up like a rocket. I had one thing on my mind – breakfast at the Cuban Cafe. It opened at 6 and we had a little less than 5 miles to reach it. At 4:30 Stormy and I were already walking into town. I brushed my teeth while I walked.
As we got close to the main intersection on the south side of town, a big herd of seven to ten elk jumped over a barbed wire fence, crossed the road in front of us (and a car), then hopped another barbed wire fence. In a matter of minutes they were a quarter mile away.
We arrived at the Cuban Cafe at 5:55AM, grabbed our wallets, collapsed our trekking poles, and waited. Draggin and Blueberry had split a room at the motel across the street the night before and were meeting us for breakfast. Blueberry lost her lucky hat on trail and Stormy found it, so he would return the hat and we would have a final meal before those two hiked out of town.
The cafe opened promptly at 6, and Draggin and Blueberry showed up shortly after. The Cuban Cafe is a wonderful place. The locals are super friendly, the food is excellent, and it is exactly the one-of-a-kind spot you want to eat at when you visit a town. Sure Cuba has a McDonald’s and a Subway, but I like the local spots, and the more they resemble a diner the better.
I ordered a half portion breakfast burrito. The full portion was basically two burritos, but I had a plan in mind. Breakfast burritos in New Mexico are usually served with your choice of red or green chili. I tend to pick green, which is a little less spicy. I just like the flavor better.
After I polished off the burrito and about 6 cups of coffee (another reason I love diners is bottomless coffee), I ordered huevos rancheros. I don’t recommend hiking through New Mexico without at least having this once. It was also delicious, though my all-time favorite will always be the breakfast burrito.
We chatted the usual hiker chat, including swapping notes about the road walk to Chama. After Blueberry and Draggin left, Stormy and I stayed to charge electronics, and I created the road walk route in my GAIA gps app. We added a few waypoints for where we might find water.
Stormy headed to the post office to pick up some shoes from home. His shoes resembled the Flintstone’s family car. He had a hole all of the way through one heel that was about the width of a small marble. He tried to patch it in Grants, but it was painful. The sole was peeling off the toes and that crevice was jammed full of gravel. There was a rip in the side and little tread on the bottom. Let’s just say they were past their prime.
I downed one last cup of coffee, then headed across the street to Dollar General to resupply. It was a great Dollar General! When it comes to all of the various dollar stores out there, I’m definitely on team DG. I even owned stock in the company at one point. I bought some different snacks this time, most notably Sour Patch Kids and some meat sticks. I figured I could use some more processed sugar, salt, and saturated fat in my diet.
Stormy met me at the DG and we wandered down to McDonald’s to hang out and finish charging our electronics. For $1, you can get a fountain drink at McDonald’s. They have Powerade. So, rather than buying a single Powerade at the gas station for over $2, we sat in McDonald’s and enjoyed the free refills. I also ate a small French fries, just to have a mid-morning palate cleanser.
Around noon we wandered over to a food truck called Blancas Tamales. I had heard from a hiker buddy named Low Branch that they had the best burritos in all of New Mexico. Chewy, who worked there, recommended the grilled beef burrito, so that’s what we got.
We took our burritos to go and continued hiking north to Mickey’s Saveway, a small grocery store. They didn’t have anything interesting, so we pushed on to the RV park.
Cuba is one of those towns where there doesn’t seem to be much going on, but there are a ton of people just passing through. There are lots of boarded up and rundown businesses, so it isn’t the most attractive of towns. The surrounding landscape is beautiful, however, and the businesses and people that are around and open are mostly very hiker friendly.
It was the best of towns, it was the worst of towns, it was the place for burritos, it had a McDonald’s, it was the center of travel, but no one stayed there, it was surrounded by mountains, it was hot like the desert, it was the season of drought, we were told it might rain, it was the epoch of sadness, it was the epoch of light. From my observational eye, Cuba was about as Dickensian as a place in a time with a people can get.
On the one hand, most locals were very friendly. There appeared, however, to be rampant alcoholism and drug abuse, so the occasional panhandling was going on. Happiness and sadness seemed to balance on a teeter-totter fulcrum point, threatening to plunge the town in either direction at any given moment. I definitely enjoyed Cuba more this stay than in 2019, but I very much felt the undercurrent of a tale of two cities here. But what do I know – I was just a passing observer.
We arrived at Theresa’s RV Park on the north side of town. We downed our burritos there. They were great, but I still think the burrito I had on the outskirts of Silver City was a bit better. Burritos are to New Mexico as Pizza and Bagels are to New York – it’s their thing.
Theresa’s RV park was a random find in the Farouf app. It was $5 to tent there and $5 for a shower (towel and soap provided). It didn’t make sense to spend $80 on a dumpy hotel when we had this option, so we took it.
At first glance you wouldn’t know Theresa’s was an RV Park. Think of it less like “park” being a common area where people gather and picnic, and more of it as a predicate whereby you leave your car motionless somewhere. It has no charms, no frills, and what looked to be 7 to 10 hookups for RVs. These are all, of course, behind Theresa’s home and hair salon.
Theresa’s initial business was a one-chair hair salon, conveniently attached to the side of her house. I’m fact, when I knocked and opened the door, she was there cutting a gentleman’s hair. She later told us that she saw the opportunity to put electric hookups in the backyard and charge rent for RV’ers to park there. I loved her entrepreneurial spirit.
Theresa confessed that the RV business saved her when Covid first hit. People were afraid to get haircuts, but her EV business thrived. Then, as some local accommodations got a reputation for being less than friendly to hikers, people looked for other options. Once Theresa made it into the FarOut app with positive comments, she began to get more hiker business. And there we found ourselves, knocking at her door, just looking for a friendly face a place to stay. And a shower – I really needed that.
Theresa was a lovely, spunky lady. We ended up spending a lot of time talking with her and petting her elderly cat Molly. I would guess that Theresa was in her late 60s to early 70s. She told us about how the RV business came after her hair salon. She said she tried working at McDonald’s in town, but the young employees there didn’t really work well with her. Theresa struck me as doing quite well as her own boss!
She told us that one of her dreams was to travel back to San Pedro, CA and visit Mary Star of the Sea church where she was baptized. She had wanted to take the trip with her parents, but they have passed on. She is hoping her brother can came help mind her business while she takes the trip, but he is not well. She shrugs and says “but maybe he can; he still has time.” I hoped she might get the opportunity to break away.
She also told us that she had a guest stay from California. He asked her, “Why would you ever want to go there? It’s awful there! Bla bla bla.” I told her that person was just negative and to never let anyone talk her out of a dream. It was her dream after all. I always loved that line in the movie The Pursuit of Happiness where Will Smith’s character says to his son (also his real son), “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. Not even me. If you have a dream, you have to protect it.” So true.
We sat on her front porch for hours just to stay in the shade. It has been quite hot lately – high eighties, maybe low nineties. Theresa had to go to Family Dollar (I guess she’s not team DG…) and offered us a ride into town to get more food. We gratefully accepted and were on our way.
The ride in the car was as adventurous as our hike. Theresa drove with a special confidence that left me gripping the seat, my knuckles whitening. At times she simply asked us if it was “clear to go.” NO! DON’T GO! I shouted a little too loudly at one point as we eased out into T-boning range of an oncoming pickup.
Nevertheless, Theresa gave us the tour of the Cuban strip, whereby we drove from one end of the street to the next and we’re done in about 3-5 minutes. She dropped us at McDonald’s and I downed a Big Mac, medium fries, and vanilla milkshake. I ate a LOT of food today.
Theresa scooped us up when she was done and we three chatted for a bit longer on the porch before she retired inside. We see very grateful for her kindness, company, and assistance. I asked her if I could buy her a meal so she could eat with us and she said “You know, I mostly eat a lot of junk and will probably eat ice cream at home tonight.” Maybe there’s a little bit of thru-hiker in her after all.
Stormy and I pitched our tents and sat at a picnic table behind the house for a while chewing the fat. Tomorrow begins our last segment of New Mexico and final New Mexico road walk due to fire closures. I’m excited to see what the day brings!
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