CDT Day 46 – Elwood Pass

Date: 8/4/20

Daily Miles: 17

Total Miles: 799

Although we had a lot of town tasks to do yesterday in Pagosa Springs, luckily we were able to do almost all of them from our motel bed. So, even though we were working through a list of To Do’s, it still was relaxing.

SweetPea had a new pair of shoes waiting for her in town. Beardoh is going to be getting a new pair of shoes after this next stretch. We were both due, since the tread on our shoes is wearing out, and Beardoh’s shoes have holes.

This morning, we had breakfast at the motel and then met up with a taxi we had arranged to bring us back to the trail. We didn’t feel the need to rush out this morning so we got back to the trail just after 9am.

We started on an alternate which spared us climbing up and over a ridge. Instead, we had a gentle climb up to the trail. We were happy to skip the needless up and then back down.

There were so many butterflies on the trail today. They all seemed to be the same kind…small with black and grey wings. There were some yellow wildflowers that they especially liked and they would pretty much cover the flowers.

We came upon a group of AmeriCorps volunteers on the trail doing trail maintenance. It looked like they had been cutting a lot of downed trees out of the trail. We really appreciated all of their work, as the trail has been in pretty good shape today.

The walking was pretty easy today. Any climbs we had were very gentle, but most of the day was spent just along rolling trail. Today felt like we were transitioning out of the high mountains.

We made it to camp by 6:30pm which we were happy about given our late start. The sky is still clear so we’re not worried about rain tonight. Several of us still have our tarps up since they got wet the night before going into town and we didn’t bother to dry them out in the motel.