CDT - Day 56 - New Friends
I slept really well at my campsite, the wind died down completely, and the temperature was perfect. In the morning when I woke up I heard the voices of a few other hikers that had camped near me. I didn't get a chance to meet them, but I knew they were there. I was up and out on the trail by 6:45 a.m., a little earlier than usual.
The hike started off with an immediate climb, and that would continue for the pretty much the entire day. The first couple of miles were steep, but then it eventually turned into just a casual climb. I took the blue line alternate which put me on an old railroad grade trail, which saved me a little bit of time and distance.
The Spotify app on my phone decided that it wouldn't load all day long. There's a bug where it fails to load if the phone is rebooted and the Internet connectivity is missing. I sometimes go a little crazy without my music, all I have are my thoughts, and talking to the animals around me. The marmots are not very good at talking with me.
Around 12:00 p.m. I came across three CDT hikers eating lunch at a stream. IQ, Sticks & Stones, and Steady were very pleasant to chat with. They took off shortly after I got there, but I ended up catching up with them a few miles later. I hiked with them for the rest of the day. We took the purple alternate route out to Mirror Lake, thinking that it might be a good place to camp. It turned out to not be a great place to camp, plus we got there kind of early in the day. We decided to just keep going north on the purple line towards a few other spots that sounded better for camping. After 20 miles of hiking we did eventually find a great spot where our four tents would fit.
Funny story about IQ; he's from Phoenix and lived in the same apartment complex as my brother Charl, the Monte Viejo apartments near the 101 and Cavecreek. In fact that was the first apartment I moved into after moving out of my parent's house. It really is a small world sometimes.