Month: June 2017

June 24:   The 21st was a travel day but I had a lot of things to get done on my way to Utah.  I stopped in Alamosa, CO to get breakfast, update my blog and go to the same outdoor outfitter I stopped at on my way through the first time.  Updating my blog took way longer than expected as I was trying to re-organize the pictures and by the time I finished it was 11:30 meaning it took me about 3 hours to eat breakfast and update my blog and when I got over to the outdoorsmen store they were closed because Wednesdays are their “play day” and only stay open from 8-11.  So now I had to stop in Durango, CO to try to repair my tent and buy new hiking boots.

The drive from Alamosa to Durango was very picturesque driving through the San Juan Mountains but also a little nerve racking as I’m driving down  mountain roads on slick, misty blacktop.

My stop in Durango also took way longer than expected as I had to repair my tent which wasn’t quick and I couldn’t decide on a pair of boots.  The salesperson helping me was unbelievably patient while I tried on every boot in the store.  Even when he handed me the eighth or ninth boot, I tried it on and I said, “Well they are comfortable but they are pretty ugly, aren’t they?”  Awkwardly, he responded that these are the boots he wears and loves them.  I didn’t say much the rest of the time in the store.

After I left Durango my final destination was Moab, UT where I was staying in the local hostel.  I got there around 730PM and I had been on the road for about 12.5 hours.  A trip that should have taken me about 6.

I slept very poorly my first night in Moab, so I got up late on the 22nd and went to Arches National Park.  Arches is very similar to the Great Sand Dunes National Park as it is a very touristy park.  There is one road through the park.  I basically just drove to the end of the park did about a 4 mile out and back hike to see some arches then started driving back towards the entrance stopping at several different viewpoints to see some more arches.  I was probably in the park for about 5 hours.  I will go back tomorrow for about an hour to see one more Arch I missed but if I had planned my day better I could have seen everything in the park in 1 day.  After, Arches I went to get dinner, beers and plan out the next day at the Moab Microbrewery.  I got their IPA and their Rocket (coffee flavored) lager.  I highly recommend the brewery.  I also had decided I was going to do the most written about hike in Canyonlands the following day, The Chesler Park Loop.  It is an 11 mile lollipop loop in the Needles district which I wanted to get up very early for so I could finish it before it got too hot outside.

When I got back from the brewery I took care of a few things then started heading to bed but as I was I walking to bed I passed a picnic table outside the hostel and was asked to sit down and have a beer.  I couldn’t say no, obviously, and sat down and talked with the group for about 2 hours.  Most of the people there were also single travelers, moving through Moab for one reason or another.  Tom, a Toronto resident, took a month to drive from Toronto to Vancouver then down the pacific coast to Joshua Tree NP and is now driving northeast heading back to Toronto.  He looked younger than me and said he was a wedding photographer and summers are busy so this would be his last summer trip for many years so he wanted to make the most of it.  He gave me a lot of good spots to hit as I leave Montana and head up into Canada.  Zuzu and John were traveling from Houston, of all places, heading to Montana where Zuzu was from as she also decided to move out of Houston and move closer to home.  It’s the thing to do.

Steven has just moved back to Utah from Wyoming.  He is working in Moab and staying at the hostel until he finds a more permanent place to live.  Then finally, Michael, an Australian who initiated the congregation grabbing people as they walked by the table asking if they would like to join and have a beer.  Michael was 8 weeks into an enormous trip that I have no idea how long will take and he probably doesn’t know either.  He started in LA and plans to drive across the USA, then fly to Europe and travel from Western Europe all the way through the Middle East to India then somehow get to Japan before he flies back to Australia.  All doing this on his motorcycle.  I don’t know how he plans to get his bike from NY to Europe but somehow he got it to LA so I guess it is possible. 

After staying up until almost midnight that night I thought waking up at 5 to do an 11 mile hike was a bad idea.  So I pulled another audible and drove through the Island of the Sky district of Canyonlands.  Canyonlands is where the Green River and the Colorado River converge making a “Y” shaped canyon.  It was an awe-inspiring view.  The pictures really don’t do it justice.  The size and scale of the canyons are unbelievable.  You really need to be here to appreciate it.

Today, I completed the Chesler Park Loop and it lived up to expectations.  The 11 mile hike passes you through red rocks, grass land prairies, slot canyons while all lined by the namesake of the district, the needles, giant spires of rock shooting out of the ground hundreds of feet. 

Until next time…

Matthew

 

 

 

June 25:  So due to the nature of how I am writing my blog there may be some inconsistencies in chronology due to when I write the post versus when they get posted.  I write my posts when I have time in the evening and if I don’t have internet access at the time I just write in a Word document then copy/paste it later when I find internet access.

The date directly above each post is an automatically generated date from the website when I make the post.  This is the date the post was published to the website not necessarily the day I wrote the post.

The first few characters of each post are the date of writing the post.  For example, in the “Great Sand Dunes National Park” post the date one line above the post is June 21, 2017, the day I had internet access and literally published the post.  However, the first line of the posts reads June 20 which is when I actually sat down to write it.

Not sure if that needing clearing up or not but I thought the two dates on a single post was confusing.

Matthew

June 25:  I’ve been getting some feedback that the photos are downloading slowly.  I made a few changes to the website to hopefully speed up the download speeds on your individual devices.  As you can tell each album is now on its own website.  I like this organization better plus I believe it will help minimally with download speed.  I also enabled caching so once you view a picture once it should be a lot faster to download the second time if you want to re-view it.

The most dramatic change I’ve made is I have drastically reduced the file size of my pictures.  This definitely should increase download speeds but sacrifices image quality.  I have only reduced the image sizes for the most recent “Canyonlands” Album.  I hope the images are still looking good.  If the images are still looking good and it helps the download speeds I will continue to take this extra step before uploading them to the website.

Any feedback would be appreciated on whether these changes helped or if there is no noticeable change and if the image quality is still acceptable.  Let me know.

Matthew

June 20:  I got to the Great Sand Dunes Oasis (a campground just outside the park) around 5:30PM on the 19^th.  This place is amazing.  It provided me a shower, laundry service and a restaurant.  It was unbelievable.  As soon as I got there, I showered and ate dinner in the restaurant.  On the 20^th I got to the park visitor center around 830AM (Got my book stamped) and talked to the park volunteer about the different hikes.  The mosquitoes are really bad right now around the park so anything that wasn’t in the dunes was a no-no. I decided to hike to the “High Dune”.  Notice the name is High Dune and not “Highest Dune” as there is a taller dune somewhere in the park but a much further walk from the visitor center.  Trudging up sand to the High Dune was tiring and took me about an hour to go up those 600+ ft.  It took me about 10 seconds to run down them.  Running down sand dunes is my new favorite hobby.  I even walked a good ways back up the dunes just to run back down them.

 The dunes are bizarre.  They don’t belong in the surrounding scenery of mountains and wetlands.  They seem to come out of nowhere, for no reason.  Of course there is a reason but I won’t bore you with it.  It involves erosion, wind, water/stream location and mountain pass location.  Sometimes learning why things are, the way they are makes them less interesting so I’ll just look at, hike and especially, run down them.

Tomorrow I’ll stop at the same outdoor sports door I stopped at on Saturday to, hopefully, repair my tent (Oh, also the sole of my hiking boot fell off today running down the dunes so I have to replace those.  I have had those for 5 years and several long hiking trips so I was probably due.  Glad I found out now.), then onto Moab Utah.  I wanted to try to squeeze in some things in Western Colorado including Mesa Verde NP and the San Juan Mountains but I will have to come back I guess.  There is a lot to see in Utah and my first anchor point of my trip in Glacier National Park in Montana is fast approaching.  Until next time.

Matthew

June 20:  After making a quick stop in Alamosa, CO for some gas and stop by an outdoor sports door for a hiking map and bear spray I ended up in Fort Garland.  I decided to spend the night in a hotel to organize myself before my hike the next day.  After checking in and showering (it was glorious) I went to get dinner at All Gon’ Pizza.  It was Saturday night and they had an elderly couple playing guitars and signing Merle Haggard and John Denver tunes.  I spent most of the time in the restaurant on my phone researching my hike and making sure there were no wildfires in the area.  When the guitar duo went on break the male guitarist tapped me on my shoulder and asked me where I was from.  Maybe it was because I was eating by myself, or because I was playing on my phone the whole time, or because I was wearing a NY Rangers shirt or maybe because he knows everyone in the town that he knew I wasn’t from around there but either way it was nice of him to introduce himself to me.  His name is Sonny and he is originally from outside Shreveport, LA.  I told him I was travelling from Houston, that I also had lived in Louisiana for a time and that I was enjoying the show.  He broke into his thick Cajun accent, thanked me and got back to it.

On the 18^th I drove up into the Sangre de Cristo mountain range.  It was about a 2.5 hour drive and there are two spots to park your car, a 2WD parking lot which adds about 3.5 miles to your hike or a 4WD parking lot.  Well with my “new” Subaru forester I felt like I could brave the 4WD road.  So brave I did, but freaking out I was, the whole time.  It took me about 20 minutes to drive those 3.5 miles.  I was scared I was going to blow a tire or bottom out or even worse damage something underneath my car but alas I made it to the top.  My goal was to hike 5 miles the first day going up about 2000ft to the South Colony Lakes then summit Humboldt Peak (14,065ft) the next day which was another 1.5 miles and another 2000ft elevation gain followed by hiking back out to my car. 

I got started relatively late since I had to drive from Fort Garland so I didn’t get on the trail until around 11AM.  The beginning of the hike was relatively uneventful.  I lost the trail slightly going over some boulder fields and some snow fields.  I also got pretty close to a wild goat (to return later) but other than that really nothing to report on.  Finally after about 4 hours of hiking (I am slow.  I know.) I ended up at Upper South Colony Lake.  I found a nice camp site right off the trail dropped my pack and relieved myself (This is important. Not just to gross you out, but it probably will).  I turned to start setting up my pack and out of nowhere (it seemed) about 6 marmots ran out of the brush to my pee spot.  I chill out for a few minutes seeing if they leave, but they don’t so I pick up my things and start hiking around the lake for another campsite.  After about 30 minutes I couldn’t find one that was protected from the wind so I returned hoping the marmots had left.  When I got back to the original campsite there were a few marmots but I decided to start setting up camp.  After I finished setting up my tent and was getting ready to go “make” water, the marmots returned and started messing with my tent.  Chewing on my tent straps and one even grabbed my hiking pole and ran away with it.  I chased it and thankfully it let the pole go about 20 yards away.  After this I packed everything back up and turned to leave and as I did there were six wild goats staring at me on top of a rock about 30 yards from me.  I slowly moved away from them and they moved along down passed the lake.  I finally settled on this patch of grass with no wind protection and looked up and 4 more goats were standing on the next hill staring me down.  At this point I had moved my bear spray to my cargo pant pocket and continued setting up my tent.  As I finished and moved to “make” water they moved down around my tent then followed me to the lake.  I seriously thought they were stalking me.  One of the bad things about camping by yourself is there is no one there to tell you to, “Relax they are just curious.” and “They are more afraid of you, then you are of them.”  Coming from your own head it isn’t nearly as convincing.  I quickly “made” water moved out of their way, took a roundabout way back to my camp site and I didn’t see them again for the rest of the night.  I was pretty anxious the rest of the night but I made dinner, read a little and tried to go to bed early (I think I got in bed around 8pm).

The next morning I hit the trail around 645am.  I only took the bare minimum to summit Humboldt which included water, food, warm clothing, medic kit and my camera.  The rest of the stuff I left at the camp site.  The food I left at the campsite I left in my “bear box” about 30 yards from my tent.  The other items like my sleeping bag, sleeping pad, pillow, stove, etc I left in my tent.  I also dropped my tent so it wouldn’t blow away (these details will matter later).  I started my ascent and, God, was it a slog.  If I went slow the day before, I was moving slothlike trying to get up this mountain.  I felt tired and nauseous for the first 30 minutes and basically I had to just keep moving at an incredibly slow pace to not over exert myself.  This is not to show how hard this hike is.  This a relatively easy hike for this mountain range.  This is more to show how bad I am at ascending in elevation.  This has happened to me before and I don’t know if it is because I am not used to the elevation or I am not in good hiking shape or I am just naturally not good at this but regardless this is one of the easiest 14ers in Colorado (one of the reasons I chose it ) and it was kicking my ass.  Most people I met on the trail were summiting the peak from the 4WD parking lot in one day.  Granted they don’t have to carry a tent or a sleeping bag etc. but still, all of them were exponentially better at hiking that I.

I took me about 2.5 hours to go the 1.5 miles, 2000ft up.  Not only was I moving ridiculously slowly but I had trouble staying on the trail once I got close to the top of the mountain because there was no trail.  It was just a boulder field you had to climb up and I couldn’t see where I was going and I almost gave up at one point but I stopped, regrouped, ate some trail mix and continued.  Finally reaching the top I could look east over the Wet Mountain Valley in Eastern Colorado and west overlooking Broken Hand Pass, Crestone Needle, Crestone Peak, the San Luis Valley and the San Juan Mountain range far out in the distance.  I spent about 40 minutes at the summit eating and taking pictures then headed back down the mountain.  It took me about 1.5 hours to go down. 

Upon reaching my equipment I noticed 1.5” long cylinders around my tent.  At first I thought they were some type of worm but I soon realized they were manmade and must have come from something inside my tent.  SHITTTTT!!!  Something got in my tent.  I pulled the rain fly off my tent and saw a 3” diameter hole eaten through my tent and my pillow destroyed.  Fucking MARMOT!!!  I was so pissed, probably more at myself then anything but I don’t know where I should have left it and there was no way I was going to be able to summit with all that gear on my back.  The silver lining is they didn’t eat my sleeping bag or my sleeping pad which I just got in Tulsa 4 days prior so that is good.  The pillow was a piece of crap and hopefully I can repair my tent so maybe it won’t be so bad.  I packed everything up and headed back down.  Even with getting lost again on the way out, it only took me a little over 2 hours to get out.  Once I reached my car I packed everything up and drove the 2 hour drive to Great Sand Dunes National Park.

Matthew

June 20:  I arrived in New Mexico on June 15^th immediately making an audible on my destination that night.  Instead of staying at Santa Rosa State park where it was in the 90s I continued on for another 2 hours to Big Tesuque Campground in the Santa Fe National Forest where it dropped into the 40s.  That night I met Eddie who had left Idaho to visit his Aunt who lived in Santa Fe but on his way down, she passed away.  Even though his Aunt had passed, when Eddie arrived in Santa Fe, he decided to stay.  Leaving everything behind in Idaho (including a job and wife) and start a life in Santa Fe.  His daughter and son-in-law came to join him from Oregon.  He had been in Santa Fe for about 6 weeks and had another 3 before his house was ready for him to move into.  I think he had been living at that campground the whole time.  When I asked why he left Idaho he said he wasn’t happy and needed a change.  I have no idea how much of that story was true but it was entertaining to listen to while I was making my dinner for the night.

The next day I walked around downtown Santa Fe, went to the Loretto Chapel and saw the magnificent staircase (spiral staircase with no center structural column).  Santa Fe is a cute tourist town with many shops and galleries.  I have never seen so many art or jewelry or photography galleries in my life.  Even the coffee shops and restaurants call themselves galleries.  After my walk through Santa Fe, I drove to Bandelier National Monument in Los Alamos, NM.  Once I a parked my car in the campsite I walked to the park shuttle where I met Levi, Shannon and their son Rage who was 10-11ish I believe (I thought I heard his mom call him Corbin once but the rest of the time they both called him Rage).  Levi had spent his high school years in Los Alamos but they lived in New Braunfels, TX now so we were able to bond over living in South Texas.  They were nice enough to adopt me for the day as we walked through the ruins of the ancient Pueblo peoples’ village.  The village was built in what is now called the Frijoles canyon.  The mesa and mountains surrounding the canyon were formed through two volcanic eruptions.  The walls of the canyon are made of soft rock that was turned into swiss cheese through wind erosion.  The Pueblo people used tools to carve out homes in this rock face creating cliff dwellings.  I climbed up 140ft ladder to the Alcove House which is a deep depression in the rock face that allows many people to sit up there to avoid the wind and weather.  While Levi, Rage and I (Shannon stayed on the ground) were at the top we met several other families who made the climb up.  Some families were from Dallas, the others from Houston.  Seriously, everyone up there was from Texas.  It was weird.

Heading back to my campsite for the night I could see the effects of the El Cajete wildfire billowing smoke over head.  Thankfully the wind wasn’t pushing the smoke directly over Bandelier so it was mostly clear.  That evening I drove over to the city of Los Alamos for the free Friday night concert series.  The Red Elvisies were the feature band that night whose lead singer is from Moscow and after every song he would scream into the microphone, “Are you having fun?!?!?” in his deep Russian accent.  He would say that two or three times after every song then start the next song.  At first it was annoying then I couldn’t help but laugh.  Like one of those commercials you can’t stand but then you become endeared to.  “Head On, Apply Directly to the Forehead”.

On the 17^th, I drove to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico which is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the United States.  After I walked through the village looking at the old mud buildings and their art, jewelry and photography galleries, I stopped by the café where I talked to Glinda Concha.  We talked for about 30 minutes while I ate my frybread.  She is 61 years old and grew up in the Taos Pueblo.  She told me how the village used to look.  With a baseball diamond in the middle of the village where the children played and how the river provided all the water they needed.  She told me about how they had to fight for their water from the Federal Government as the source of the river was starting to be used for cattle grazing.  Finally she talked about how the government’s assimilation program (moving pueblo people into the cities) and the utilities coming out to their village saw people move out of the pueblo and leave it to where it is today.

After I left the Taos Pueblo I went North passing over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge (Sorry I didn’t take a picture but as there were approximately 200 people on the bridge taking a picture when I crossed, I’m sure you can google some good ones) then onto Colorado.

Matthew

I have been on the road for a week and to be honest it has been relatively easy in a sense that I have had 3 stops at friends’ homes.  Through seven nights I have spent 4 nights in friends’ beds, 2 nights in my car and 1 night in the backcountry.  This was strategically done to not completely jump into living out of my car right away.  A night in the car, then a night in a house, then repeat.  For over half the trip, I  have had a roof over my head and good friends to talk to.  From this point forward it won’t be like that.  The next time I will see someone I know will be in 13 days in Montana and I already can’t wait to see you, Frank.  I have struggled cooking while car camping, sleeping in the backcountry and have had bouts of loneliness.  And these struggles have all come during the easiest part of my trip.  I told myself before the trip, “At the beginning I will need time to adjust and towards the end there will come a point when I get sick of this.  The goal is to get through the adjustment as quickly as possible and be able to delay the end for as long as possible.”

Well here goes nothing.  As I enter New Mexico the heart of this trip really starts tonight.  Home is long gone and I’ll be relying on only myself and my Subaru to keep me moving through this.  The struggles were expected and this wasn’t meant to be a “picnic”, so the objective is to overcome the struggles, learn and stay positive.  I know I need to be patient with myself when I make mistakes, do things inefficiently and take wrong turns.  Push through the tough times and enjoy the good times, simple enough.

Tonight I will car camp again (hopefully better this time) in Santa Rosa State Park then onto Bandelier National Monument tomorrow.

Hope you are all enjoying the pictures.  The scenery will be changing tomorrow.

Matthew

June 15:  I’m currently sitting in a Starbucks in Amarillo, TX.  One reason is because I’ve been driving for the last six hours and still have another three and needed a break, but also I am not sure when I will have WiFi again and wanted to update everybody.

The last few days have seen me move from Hot Springs to Little Rock to Devil’s Den State Park to Broken Arrow, OK.  I have crossed off two states off my bucket list in Arkansas and Oklahoma and I soon will be able to cross off New Mexico as I will be heading to just outside Santa Fe after I leave Amarillo.

I left Hot Springs last Saturday after making a trip up the observation tower in the park to overlook the city of Hot Springs and the surrounding Ouachita National Forest to head to the Kincannons in Little Rock.  I met Andrew at the Flying Fish in downtown Little Rock where I enjoyed 2 shrimp skewers and a Lost 40 IPA.  After meeting up with Christina, Alex and Rainey we headed back to their beautiful home before heading back downtown for dinner and drinks.

We ate and drank at the local Lost 40 Brewery where I “sampled” the Rockhound IPA and Love Honey Bock.  I highly recommend stopping by the brewery if you are in Little Rock.  Later we walked through downtown where we were able to hear Bell Biv DeVoe belt out the their famous “Poison” as we walked by the Funkfest at the downtown amphitheater.  We hung out at Stickyz for a little bit before turning in.  Thank you to Andrew and Christina for your hospitality.

Sunday, I moved out of Little Rock to tag Mount Magazine, the high point of Arkansas.  You can almost drive all the way to the summit so I drove as far as I could then hiked the last half mile.

Devil’s Den State Park was my next destination which is about 20 minutes south of Fayetteville, Arkansas.  I arrived around 4:30 in the afternoon on Sunday and spent the next few hours getting ready for my two day hike which was to start on Monday and eat dinner.  I used my new camp stove to cook myself rice and chickpeas with teriyaki sauce.  It wasn’t half bad.  It wasn’t really that good either though but it had carbs and proteins.  This was probably the roughest night for me so far.  Car camping by myself was a lot more difficult than I imagined.  Between trying to prepare myself for my hike (which was stressful to make sure I didn’t forget anything), deciding what I wanted to eat, making dinner, then cleaning up from dinner I felt like I was getting very little done but it was taking forever.  All the while, I was missing the USA vs Mexico soccer match which was killing me.  Car camping is something I definitely need to get better and more efficient at.  That night I slept for the second time in my car bed and it was way more successful then the first time.  A lot of this trip, will just take conditioning myself.  Probably the biggest thing I miss is not having prolonged access to air conditioning.

Monday morning I started my first solo, overnight hike on the Butterfield Hiking Trail.  This hike is a 14.7 mile loop starting in the Devil’s Den State Park and traveling into the Ozark National Forest then back to the trailhead.  The first day I hiked 9.5 miles and got to my campsite around 2PM.  The hike was well marked so trail finding was very easy.  The scenery was pretty similiar to what I described for the Music Mountain Hike.  The trail was lined with oak and maple trees and it was unbelievably green.  I’ve heard how beautiful this forest is in the fall and after seeing all this green I can only imagine how wonderful it must look with all the autumn colors (Not something I got a lot of for the last 5 years in Houston).

My campsite was at the intersection of the Blackburn Creek and Lee Creek.  When I arrived there, I “washed” my clothes in the Lee Creek and went for a “swim”.  I setup my tent, filtered water, built a fire for later then… relaxed, which was challenging because it was very buggy.  I read for a couple hours on my new kindle, A Handmaid’s Tale, went for another swim then ate dinner.  Right before dusk I worked on getting my fire lit.  I attempted to take some night pictures with my new camera lens but none of them came out great so that is why there are none in the “Photos” page.  I turned in for the night and quickly found out that sleeping by yourself in the wilderness is more unsettling than I thought it would be.   Between the nerves of sleeping outside by myself, the moon shining a spotlight on me and finding out that my sleeping pad had sprung a leak, I really struggled to sleep that night.  I got up early since I wasn’t sleeping anyone and made my way back to my car.  After a 5.5 mile hike back to my car, a shower and re-packing my car I got on the road to the Boyd’s.

I stopped at Grubs near Dickson street in Fayetteville, AR for lunch (thanks for the suggestion Robert) then drove to Robert and Leah’s in Broken Arrow, OK.  I got to meet their two children, Archer and Lydia, finally and see Robert and Leah for the first time in what felt like forever.  Last night Robert and I went to Bricktown Brewery for $2 beers, can’t beat that.  Check off the “Three Guardsman IPA” and the “Old King Kolsch”.  Thank you to Robert and Leah for putting up with me for two nights.  I really needed that extra day to get some things in order for my trip and catch up on some sleep from that terrible night sleep on my hike.  Hope to see you guys again soon.

From here, I’m heading to NM, Southern Colorado then cutting over to the southeastern corner of Utah and travelling up to Salt Lake City.

I’m going to start working on some posts revolving around things I did to get ready for my trip and things I use on my backpacking trips.  If there are other things you guys are looking for please let me know.

Matthew

June 9:  In hindsight, there was really no reason to worry but when you are 2 hours into your hike, its 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon and you can’t find your final destination, your mind starts running numbers like you are calculating the re-entry velocity for the space shuttle.

“Well I’ve gone 2 hours, sunset isn’t for another 4 so I should be good.  But I need to get back, setup my bed, make dinner, jump in the Gulpha Creek to wash all this sweat off.  So I should probably be back 2 hours before sunset.  Maybe I can book it back and make up 30mins?  Maybe I only need an hour at camp? Should I just turn around now…  I just hiked all this way and I’m not gonna summit this thing?  I have to be close at this point, right?  Who cares if I summit? I do.  When was the last time I saw another human?”

These racing thoughts are what were going through my head and even though I generally strive to avoid other humans on my hikes, it was a little disconcerting since this park is not that big and I didn’t think the Music Mountain Summit (high point in the park) was that far.  After running the calcs in my head I told myself I would turn around at 5PM but I also really wanted to hit the high point in the park so I started running down the trail.  The high point is only 1405ft but running along the ridge line led to a lot of ups and down which can be disheartening when you are running up a hill only to see it lead you back down.  At 5pm I was running what was supposed to be my last uphill which again just lead to another downslope.  As I debated with myself whether I could fudge another 30 minutes then sprint back down the mountain, I took my phone out to see if I could use my gaia gps app to see if I could tell how far I was from the summit.  The gps worked and said the summit was just over the next uphill climb.  I’m off and running…  And I find this piece of shit sign…

Not specifically a summit sign but according to my GPS and based off the distances on the sign and my visitor center map, I had made it.

I briskly walked back and made it to my car by 7.  Plenty of time before sunset.  What was I worried about?

June 9:  I drove from Magnolia to Hot Springs, AR this morning to experience Hot Springs National Park.  I walked into the visitor center (got my stamp, Woot, I remembered) and jumped on a tour of the Fordyce Bathhouse as it was starting.  The tour was interesting enough to 1.) give a little history of the city (Al Capone loved it here), 2.) learn the different techniques the bathhouse used to relax/heal their patrons (passing a low voltage current through the water to stimulate your nerves and muscles was one, would not advise), and 3.) step back in time to see what a spa was like 100 years ago (check out this gym).

After the tour, I walked down Central Avenue and it reminded me of an Old Western town.  Quaint but busy with classic western architecture, both sides of the street lined with shops, restaurants and bars.  I stopped in at Superior Bathhouse, the local brewery, for a beer and Cuban sandwich.  The brewery is actually in the National Park and it uses the thermal water to brew its beer.  The Outlaw IPA was very good.

Factoid for the day:  The water discharges out of the ground at ~143 degrees F

Bonus factoid:  The thermal water that is coming out of the ground today, fell to the ground as rain 4000 years ago.

I wanted to get to my campsite and go on a hike so I forwent actually experiencing the hot springs.  Maybe at the end of my trip I’ll find some hot springs to relax in.

The campsite is about a 5 min drive from the visitor center and brewery.  I parked my car, put some essentials in day bag and headed out on my hike…