Kim Quits the Trail!

We slept late today, but the morning was warm and sunny. We had about 6 miles left to highway 114, and we were so sick of granola, we just skipped breakfast and ate breakfast bars. So by the time we got to the road, I was good and cranky. We had heard of some trail magic (a soda cache!) by the highway, but as we walked further and further from the highway I got crankier and crankier, and Brent just kept going! I figured that we had missed the cache, or it had been removed, but Brent had noticed another road that had begun paralleling the trail. Eventually, we found the cache (thanks Burnt Foot!) and I was forced to eat my grumpiness (and some granola). After a long break, we hiked on.

But the highway crossing made some wheels turn in my head. Brent told me that somewhere down that road was Gunnison, and I knew that Gunnison was a much larger town than Creede. Our research from earlier town stops showed that there were no real transportation options from Creede. No regional transit, no buses, no cabs, no car rental, no train. Gunnison at least has a regional airport. Now, maybe I haven't really mentioned it in this blog, but I'm in the process of getting my old job back at ADP; one of the hiccups has been that I need to get a drug test, and all of the labs that I can go to are in, you know, cities. And I have to go get the test done within 48 hours of getting the offer of conditional employment. Previously, the plan had been to get into Creede, then hitch somewhere bigger, like Alamosa or Pagosa Springs, then try to get to Denver or Colorado Springs from there. But both of those places are over 60 miles from Creede, a long hitch. And then we aren't even there yet, we're just out of Creede! This had been bothering me for a while. I wasn't sure when the offer letter would come, and all of the hitching and transportation just seemed a little shaky. So I mentioned to Brent that it may be better for us to try to hitch into Gunnison, where we know that there's an airport, so probably a car rental, or at least more options. He thought about it for a while, and then we both sat in the middle of the trail and had a long discussion about our options.

Eventually I managed to convince Brent of 2 things: 1) Gunnison is a more dependable place for me to try to get back to civilization from, and 2) really, he'd have a better time hiking without me. So we hiked back to the highway (we had actually gone about 4 miles before we stopped) and plopped ourselves and our packs down on the wide shoulder, and stuck our thumbs out. We were there for about an hour before Art from Grand Junction picked us up. He was awesome! He runs a hotel in Fruita, and told us all about the time he lived in Fiji, and offered us a free stay if we were ever in his neck of the woods. He dropped us off right at the airport, which did have a car rental. The rental counter was closed, so we walked back and found some dinner and a place to stay. We spent the night at the ABC Motel, where they were really nice - they actually drove us out to the laundromat and picked us up!

kim