CDT Excerpts: GOP Grub, Mud, Pie Town Fantasies
The GOP knows how to squeeze money out of liberal hikers: throw a cowboy breakfast on the CDT. From Haiku:
We all ended up back at Doc Campbell’s to use the phone, and then we saw that there was a “cowboy breakfast” being put on across the road. It was sponsored by the New Mexico Republican Party, but food’s food so we all went over and ate under the giant GOP elephant banner. Those cowboys know how to cook: bacon, biscuits and gravy, baked beans, hash browns, and eggs, all kept warm over a fire. Fire-brewed coffee, too. Delicious.
“Hot and dry” New Mexico is treating this year’s northbounders to some water. Bethany has joined up with Shaggy & Haiku’s crew for the soaking:
then, about 130p, the daily thunderstorms blew in, including some pea-sized hail for good measure. it rained for a few hours and just as it was letting up our route left the gravel road for a minor forest track. and in about 10 steps, each shoe was caked with 3 inches of very heavy mud. it was comical at first, but quickly lost its novelty and just became exhausting. we slogged up the road for an hour and a half to make litle more than 3 miles before giving up early for the day. in order to reap the benefits of group travel, you have to keep the group together, which meant stopping early today.
The whole while, visions of Pie Town dance in their heads:
Star thinks she can eat a whole pie in Pie Town. I am saying that I can eat 1.75 pies in Pie town. The rules are that it has to be in one sitting, we have to pay for the other persons pie(s), if we fail. If we both forfeit, the person with the most of their portion left, loses. So its going to be on in 4 days. I hope Star knows who she is messing with… May god be with her.
And of course the real joys of reading New Mexico trail journals are the horrifying descriptions of the drinking water:
We got down into a valley, which was near where we could look for water, so some of us took the water bottles for the rest and headed toward the water, which was labeled “G C Tank No. 2″ on the map. A “tank” as we’ve learned means an earth embankment built up to contain a seep or a spring into a small pond, so that cattle can drink from them. This was some scummy water. When Shaggy dipped his water bottle in, it came up with a leech attached to it. There were sea monkeys swimming in our water bottles. I’m not joking. I was really glad I had my filter, but the others were treating with chemicals, so they had some sour faces when they saw the water.
