CDT Day 95 – Pie Town

Date: 10/1/20

Daily Miles: 23

Total Miles: 1743

We decided to get an early start this morning. Since we would just be walking on a quiet dirt road, we figured it was ok to start in the dark. So, we were packed up and walking by 5:30am.

It was cold out, but we were bundled up and it didn’t feel so bad once we were moving. It was a full moon, so once we were on the road, we just turned off our headlamps and walked by moonlight for the next hour. We have come to really enjoy walking at that time of the morning, when the sky turns from star-filled to sunrise.

There was no need to look at our navigation app today, since we just walked on one road all day. It is pretty easy to zone out on days like this and today was no exception.

The landscape was pretty constant all day…lots of junipers and pinyon pines. A lot of the road was fenced on both sides again, so we were glad that we had stopped where we did last night to camp.

We managed to find a few bits of shade for breaks during the day, but it was really hot today. We felt exposed to the sun all day and there was no breeze. We are definitely ready for cooler fall weather to come to New Mexico.

We got into Pie Town at about 3:00pm and headed to the Toaster House (so named for all the toasters along the front fence and archway). It is a hiker/biker hostel in this teeny tiny town. We met Jefferson who seems to be the caretaker and Carl who is a bike packer riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.

We were excited to learn that there was in fact a restaurant in operation in town…we were under the impression that there was nowhere in town to get food. We realized this an hour before they closed, so we made a beeline with Carl to The Gathering Place. We had a really delicious dinner followed by some amazing pie and ice cream. We were completely stuffed but very happy. We had a lot of fun swapping stories with Carl who has done a ton of international bike packing trips.

Tonight we are hammocking in the backyard of the Toaster House. We are putting in our earplugs tonight with the hope that we will be able to sleep in tomorrow morning. It is supposed to get down into the 30s tonight for the third night in a row, so it might be some chilly feet that end up waking us up tomorrow morning.