CDT Day 106 – Burro Mountain Homestead

Date: 10/12/20

Daily Miles: 21

Total Miles: 1947

Well, we survived our first night of cowboy camping, and didn’t get stung by any wasps during the night. It was another very comfortable night of sleep.

Walking out of camp this morning, we had almost two miles of walking in deep sand. We kept swerving back and forth across the track as we tried to find a spot where the sand was packed down. Soft sand is always exhausting to walk in.

Luckily after two miles, we ended up on trail that lasted the rest of the day. It was really nice to be on actual trail and we enjoyed it. Most of the day was spent climbing several thousand feet, but the trail was nice and the ascent was so gradual, that we often forgot we were gaining elevation. Only when we noticed more pine trees did we think much about it.

We had planned to get a bit more water at a cow tank about ten miles in today. When we saw that it was a small earthen tank, we were less interested in drinking it. Even though it was quite hot today, we decided to just go with the water we were already carrying to get us 11 miles to our next water source. Later, we wished we had more water with us, since we felt like we had to ration our water a lot more than we wanted.

We decided during the day to go to the Burro Mountain Homestead, which is an RV park and campground. While it is a mile off trail, it has good water, showers and free camping. We decided that it would be a good place to relax and a solid water source.

As we were walking down the dirt road to the park, two southbound CDT hikers caught up with us. Pay It Forward and Dexter were also heading to the Burro Mountain Homestead to camp for the night. We ended up having a great time hanging out with them for the evening. They were really fun and we got to swap some stories of our experiences this summer on the trail. We really relish our encounters with other hikers on the CDT since they happen so infrequently.