Days 34-36: Grants/Albuquerque/Medford

Day 34: Grants

An entire zero day free and clear in Grants!

But nothing happens in Grants in the morning, so… half of it would just be lying around.

It started with a miserable effort to make percolator coffee on the stove–the trucker lady who’d stayed in the room next door after I went to bed had cleared out by the time I left my room. (Actually, it started with getting a few more days ahead on this blog while still in bed, but that didn’t take long.)

Anyway, the percolator produced nothing more than slightly brown hot water in the hour I left it on the stove, so Ranger Ross came in and tried again, and this time something almost coffee-like, though very weak, appeared. He left to go on patrol shortly thereafter.

So I gathered up all my party foods from the fridge and carried them up to the dorm house to catch up on my shoes on the roku TV until noon. During this time, a free-spirited wanderer of a guest came in declaring he didn’t know how long he was staying or where he was going as he didn’t like to make any plans. But he absolutely had to have a public space like a coffee shop or library to work on his laptop. He left to do that and I never saw him again.

Early in the afternoon, I put the rest of my clothes in the wash and took a bike uptown to visit the Cibola Arts Council, a gallery of local artists with a small exhibit of historical photos and artifacts from the area, mostly documenting the time from the 19th Century through the 70s. I think I was the first visitor in half a month.

As the winery next door was closed, I returned to the hostel to hang up my laundry, then pedaled out to Elkins Brewery at the far edge of town. I arrived just after it opened but it already had half a dozen people in it. I spoke extensively with a very interesting man who worked there for most of the time I was there enjoying my flight. He was a vet and operated a professional photography company, having operated his own company as a school and event photographer, as well as doing events for Getty and set lighting and continuity photography for a number of films. He had gotten a server license on a whim and had been a bartender at both breweries in town. He was also a serious biker and had grown up in the area.

After an hour or so there, I made a mistake by going to Pizza 9 to dine in. The pizza they mistakenly referred to as a Chicago-style deep dish was actually quite good. I ordered too much for me to eat though (an entire medium) and ate it all. I was basically ignored by my server and had to fight to get service. There was a graduation party in the other room and the DJs were actually spinning some great tracks, though it might have distracted the servers from their other customers. They also had a drive through window and deliveries. But the servers seemed to just stand around, so maybe they were doing okay staffing-wise and just needed better training and management.

Anyway, the reason that was a mistake is that I went to Junkyard on 66 Brewery next and, since they didn’t do flights, I could only try one beer before I was completely full. It was a cool place and they had barbecue for sale, so I should have just gone there to begin with. I left after the one beer with an intention to return after I had digested some and maybe try the sour or the guest stout, but it didn’t really happen.

I lay in bed in my room listening to a podcast and making one call, and by the time I felt like I had room in my stomach, I was sleepy and the brewery would be closing soon after I could get there anyway. So I got packed, then took a quick shower to try to cool off (after a couple of girls started to move into the next room, changed their minds, and left, all without saying a word to me even as they walked right past me) and went to bed nude because it was just so hot in my room.

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Day 35: Albuquerque

Since I was already packed, all I had to do before my ride arrived was put my linens and towels in the wash, clean the bathroom, and generally tidy up what I dirtied. All part of the hostel experience.

When Margaret and her daughter Anne Grace arrived a bit after 8, I was sitting outside at the picnic table with my cherries and a last root beer while one of the hostel cats investigated all of my things.

What I can say about the ~1 hour trip to Albuquerque is that I did not really have to put in any effort to keep up my end of the conversation. Margaret had more than enough stories to fill a ride to anywhere, and even the simplest question could draw one out that would eventually make a related point. I can’t possibly remember everything I learned about life in rural New Mexico, but I came away with the impression that it is very different from the life I’m used to.

We parked at the corner of Old Town long before much of it had opened and started wandering around poking into shops full of native jewelry, pottery, and bolo ties. We were probably the first to buy ice cream that morning. I also tried the most incredible green chile corn muffin.

After a few hours of wandering past the three century old adobe buildings and seeing the area slowly come to life, we decided to visit the Albuquerque Museum, which had both an art gallery (mixing every style and medium together in one connected space) and a local history and culture gallery. Possibly Anna was not particularly enthralled with all the things we saw, but she remained remarkably tractable and well-behaved for the entire hour and change we spent there. It was clear that she was flagging a bit by the end, but then, so was I.

So I led the way to Ponderosa Brewing Company where Margaret and I had the most enormous deconstructed chef’s salads and Anna picked apart some burgers and fries. It was a nice little respite from the heat with some very tasty cold brews.

After lunch, we still had enough time for something fun, so we walked backed into Old Town to visit the Rattlesnake Museum, which was a tiny little space brimming with an immense collection of reptiles in small cages, mostly rattlesnakes. Some of them were huge and some were tiny. Many of the snakes had rare colorings or patterns. Most of them were species I had never seen, including one variety discovered only as recently as 1999 that biologists have not yet decided whether to classify as a new species or a subspecies of an existing one. It was definitely worth the visit.

After that, we had just enough time for Anna to explore a flower garden before we needed to get me to the airport. I said my goodbyes in the car just after 3, checked my backpack, recalled it, put my knife in it, then sent it back again. Security was a breeze, so I spent most of 2 hours sitting at the gate.

Then it was a brief hop from ABQ to SLC, where I had a three hour layover until my connection to MFR. In other words, my travel for the day involved more time spent in airports than on airplanes. I’m sure Umesh Vazirani would say I’m spending too much time in airports.

I spent the first hour and a half of my wait in a pub having dinner (jambalaya with a brownie for dessert plus coffee to keep me awake until I could finally make it to my hotel that night). Then I went to my gate and spent the next hour talking to a fellow traveler who was raised in New Mexico but was going to school for computer science in Ashland. Very engaging and a great way to pass the remaining time.

Finally, it was a short 1.5 hour hop to Medford. The airport shuttle came and picked me up after a short wait and I was delivered to my hotel about midnight. As soon as I got to my room I was getting ready for bed. If not for the coffee I had during my layover, I probably would have fallen asleep on the shuttle ride over. As it was, I managed to stay awake just long enough to take in my hotel room to the fullest. It was just fine for a cheap hotel. All the amenities I could want…

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Day 36: Medford

…The most important of which would be a grocery store a hundred yards away.

I slept in as much as I could. My watch told me to get up at 5, but I easily got back to sleep after that. My eyes told me to get up at 6–there was sunlight leaking around the blackout curtains. I found that harder to ignore, but I tried, and got a handful more winks before getting up a bit after 7.

After showering and everything, I went to the breakfast room for the grab and go breakfast. The same stuff as the Burbank Quality Inn, which is to say not much of a breakfast. But hey, it was included. So I took a couple of pastries sealed in plastic, a couple of yogurt cups, a banana, and a coffee in the tiniest disposable cup.

I ate in my room then walked over to the grocery store. An hour later I came back with everything I would need for a few days on the trail and more. After putting it all in my pack along with my full bag of water, I left my room 15 minutes before checkout time with a pack weighing only 2.5 tons to weight at the lobby for my Uber to REI.

It was only five minutes or so away and I was in and trying on boots by a bit after eleven. I acquired new boots, an extra pair of socks, new shorts, new calf sleeves, a new long-handled spoon, a couple of fancy dried dinners (since I had avoided buying dinners at the grocery store just to make room for some of that delicious pad Thai in a pouch), and a whole bunch of Nuun. After signing the PCT log book and spending another 15 minutes fitting everything else in my pack, I walked out wearing my new shorts, calf sleeves, and boots to wait for my Lyft just after noon.

I shot Matt a message letting him know when I would arrive in Talent and he okayed. You remember Matt? He is the one that rescued me off the trail in the middle of the snow back in November. And he was actually excited to take me back up.

I got to the Ray’s Food Place 5 minutes before him, so I went inside to the deli counter to buy some proper lunch. The trip up to the trail would take at least an hour, and the flimsy hotel breakfast was already wearing off. I got a fried chicken breast and some potato wedges and a Powerade to start getting hydrated. Matt plus one showed up in his big gray F-350 while I was eating.

It turned out one of his daughters wanted to come along. She turned out to be just as excited as he was. They went inside to get snacks for the trip while I tossed my pack in the bed. The truck was a crew cab, so there was more than enough room for us all.

Once we got started up that long dirt road into the mountains, there was plenty to talk about. The weather. (It had been in the hundreds in the valley a week ago and might be getting up there again, but also a heavy rain a few days before had fallen as snow up in the mountains.) Why he hadn’t brought the Jeep. (The stereo amplifier was busted.) Why one of his twin daughters came along. (She was the nature lover like him; the other took after her mom and had no interest in it.) How the valley was recovering from the Alameda fire. (Great for him, though he was getting tired of doing nothing but putting back together everything he had lost, but there were still plenty of people in hotels or FEMA shelters or living in encampments along the bike path in Medford. These latter would be a fine way to let the huge numbers of newly homeless make the best of a bad situation if they could keep the camps clean and stop setting poorly contained fires during exactly the sorts of conditions that led to two cities getting burned down just half a year before. Also, many people with property couldn’t afford to rebuild with the price of lumber having inflated to nine times its previous price.) He also volunteered which of his relatives are good for nothing, or on trial for murder, and that the friend who had gone rolling in Jeeps with him that day last November had an alcohol problem. I have never felt so plugged in to the rumor mill.

We ended up going up by a completely different road than we came down by last year, and everything looked completely different anyway without all the snow. Neither of us, in fact, had been up to Wrangle Camp in the summer, so we stopped there to take a look at it in less-white conditions. I also learned there was a small cabin of sorts just a tiny bit further down the road. I wonder if I could have spent the night there instead of the privy if I had known it existed.

Anyway, we drove the rest of the way up to the pass and took a picture before he and his daughter took the truck down a different road to spend the rest of the day exploring. Matt refused any sort of compensation and I never got his daughter’s name. As we parted, we looked up at the handful of heavy black clouds dotting the sky, and Matt said, “I think it’s going to rain tomorrow.”

Anyway, I was finally hiking again. Three days in town was plenty enough for me. And it was a lovely little bit of trail indeed. It frequently came out onto exposed hillsides with incredible views.

After a little over 3 miles of slowly climbing along a hillside, I reached the high point for the day, crossed a road, and stopped for a break. I made an immunity nuun drink, but I couldn’t finish it.

In fact, I found that I was basically overhydrated. It was both cooler and more humid than what I was used to in New Mexico, so I was losing hardly any water through sweat. I was peeing more often and it was coming out as clear and uncolored as a fresh spring.

Speaking of springs, I passed a ton of them as I began my descent from that mountain. Every quarter mile or so, there was water flowing over the trail. At one point, there was a huge pond just down the hill from me. Combine that with how hydrated I was staying without drinking more and it was clear that I was carrying the weight of a full water bag for absolutely no reason. I’m going to have to adjust to carrying less water for a while. It’s such a contrast to where I just left, where a full bag is often not enough by itself and I was always thirsty.

I also encountered my first snow on the trail on the north side of Observation Peak, including a huge drift that I had to kick steps into to get on top of. I had a lot more of that to look forward to.

I stopped for dinner in a meadow at the California/Oregon border. By this time, the clouds had joined forces into one large raincloud except at the horizon where blue sky was visible. Just as I was finishing up, it started lightly sprinkling on me. I had enough time to pack up and get my Packa on before it got heavy.

In fact, it was still only a light rain when I reached the border marker a half mile later (the trail just runs right along the border for a half a mile before the “official” crossing where it turns straight down the hill into California). There are only two state border crossings on the PCT, and this was the only one on land. It was also the first one true northbounders would see. There was a log book, and I found some names I recognized in it from last year. Also, I was only the third one to sign it that day even though it had very few signatures over the last few months. When it rains it pours, I guess.

Speaking of rain, I hurriedly closed the border box to keep the book from getting soaked and hiked another half mile downhill to the Donomoe Cabin, which had been restored in recent years enough to provide hikers some shelter. As soon as I was high and dry under the tin roof, the rain really picked up. Thanks for waiting, clouds.

It was just me and the mice in the cabin that night. I slept on a folding cot–practically a bed right?–and the mice did a fine job of staying out of my stuff. It was quite chilly outside, but it stayed a few degrees warmer inside the cabin.

It wasn’t a long hiking day by any means, but then, I didn’t have far to get. Everything had worked out fine to get me on the trail with time to spare and few miles to go. The trail was mostly smooth and easy, especially compared to the condition I last saw it in, and the next day would be no trouble either.

Trail miles: 7.4

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