Grants, NM

  Greetings from Grants, NM! We are taking a little extra time in town because my feet have been suffering from a lot of painful blisters.  My old shoes are worn out and I just revceived a new pair today and Im hoping they will help my feet. I opted to walk in my flip flops the other day when we got to a long road walk because my feet were so sore.  Many hikers feet swell after all the miles we put in and it is not uncommon for us to need to get a larger size shoe. The shoes I started in were a half size too big and are now too small, but the new ones fit and I'm hoping my feet will stay the same size :)
  It has only been a few days since we left Pie Town, and the trail has mostly been on roads, both paved and dirt.  The day we left town we hiked 30 miles and here is a picture of the road we were following. This was taken in the evening about 28 miles in.

   Tonight we are staying with the wonderful trail angels in town, Carole and Hugo, and a number of other hikers are coming over soon for dinner.  Our plan is to hike out tomorrow morning, and by mid day we will be on top of Mount Taylor, the highest mountain in New Mexico at over 11,000 feet, the highest I have hiked before!

Here are a few more pictures from over the past week or so that I hope you will enjoy.
-Jetpack

View of the Gila cliff dwellings

Inside the Cliff dwellings

Near the Gila cliff dwellings

Eating some delicious PIE in Pie Town!

A great water source

Crossing the Gila river

Near the Middle Fork of the Gila River

Pie Town, NM

Greetings from Pie Town, NM! We arrived yesterday just in time to get some food and eat some delicious pie. Pie Town is not so much a town as it is an area with a few churches, two restaurants famous for their pie and an awesome hostel for hikers, bikers and anyone traveling. We took our first zero today ( day off-hiked zero miles) which felt great! We have been doing big miles the past week and our bodies need the rest.   It has been an amazing last ten days since Silver City, the trail has been so varied and early this week we went through what had been my favorite part of the trail so far; the Gila River.  After a week in the dry desert the river was a welcomed change.  But we did not just walk along the river, we crossed it (waded through it) for five days. On Monday alone, we counted 75 river crossings!   The water was extremely refreshing as it was still very hot during the day, but quite the way to start the day when it's only in the 40's-brrrr! None the less the Gila river is a beautiful place, in a deep canyon, winding along for miles and miles.

The beautiful Gila river

 Another one of our favorite things about the Gila is that there are a number of natural hot springs along the river which felt really good so soak in!

Hot Springs :)

At the moment I'm sitting in the only place in town where I can get any service, and there is not enough for me to upload pictures, so apologies but I will post more when I'm in town next week. Thanks for reading, happy trails! -Jetpack

One week on the trail!

Greetings from Silver City, New Mexico! We made it into town this morning and are taking a break for the day.  Wow, we have been on the trail for a week already and what a week it has been!

Ready to hike north! (At the border)

We spent the first five days in the very hot and dry desert- what a place to hike through.  Here, the trail switches between sandy/gravel road, and traveling cross country, where there is no trail and we area walking from one trail marker to the next, making our own path. One surprising thing is that there are trail markers, something I was not expecting. Sometimes they are very far apart and you cannot see from one to the next, but they are there if you look.  Traveling cross country means LOTS and lots of thorns and prickers. I truly think that over 95% of every plant we saw in the desert has some type of sharp thorns growing from it, ready to stick into our shoes, socks or pants.

The desert

 None the less, the desert is beautiful. It is so open, we can look back for days and see where we have come.  We've had beautiful blue skies every day, but with that, very little shade.  We hike all day with long sleeves and hats and bandanas to protect ourselves from the sun but are still not able to completely avoid it.
  One thing we have had to be very careful about is water.  We have not seen a single natural water source yet, so in the beginning we had to rely on water caches (water that trail angels leave for us at road crossings). After that, we were on our own to get water from the only other source available- water tanks used for the cattle. We've gotten very good at getting water from these sources, and the water has been surprisingly good so far, but we still treat it just to be safe. Here are some of the more interesting water sources we have found:

  On Sunday afternoon the landscape changed and we finally headed up into the mountains of the Gila National Forest.  We were finally hiking among trees!! There has been an abundance of shade, fewer cattle and a wonderful breeze. Yesterday we were up at over 8,000 feet and had beautiful views all around. This picture, taken Sunday afternoon was a wonderful change of scenery from the flat, hot, open desert.

  We have seen some very interesting wildlife so far; lots of snakes (mostly rattlers), lizards, jack rabbits, deer, a wild boar and yesterday morning as we started hiking, we saw bear tracks in the sand. Bears in New Mexico??! So I looked it up online and read that in fact the Gila National forest does have black bear! Who would have thought!
   One thing I was a bit unsure of when we left was navigation. I had heard the trail was not well marked and it was very easy to get lost. So far, I have not found that to be true. There have been lots of markers and when we started into the Gila National Forest two days ago, for the first time we were following a well worn path!  We still have our maps and GPS which have proven extremely helpful many times.
  I have very limited time on a library computer at the moment, but we will keep you posted on our progress. Thank you for reading and happy hiking!
-Jetpack