Today's hike is the reward for yesterday's road walking. There is still a lot of road walk but there is even more trail and views.
The day started with a 5 mile asphalt road walk to a Mesa. There is supposed to be a trail up the Mesa but we got off the road a little to early and bush whacked our way up. We found the trail up at the rim of the Mesa. It was cool. There was a big drop to a lava field that stretched for miles to our west. We had such a great view. At the end of the trail was a lookout to a nice big arch. What made this trail more interesting is there is no trail down. It's supposed to be an out and back type thing. But that's not something thru hikers do so we just found a non sheer cliff and went down it Maine style.
At the bottom we grabbed lunch then hiked another few miles on the road to a trailhead. The trailhead is where the official CDT comes out to hike into grants. I didn't want to do another 20 miles on asphalt and Ley had an alternate through two valleys but I had to hike an extra 10 miles. Giggles decided he wanted to get to town and took the road.
The trail went across a lava field for 7 miles. Luckily my shin splints were feeling really good or that would have been a difficult hike with all the uneven footing. The lava was just like hiking in Hawaii. It was a bit disturbing coming across some huge crevasses but anytime it was more than a step across the forest service had built a rock bridge of sorts.
The lava hike slowed me down and I didn't get out of it till 7 pm. I still had 3 miles to hike to get to water, and even though I had enough for a dry camp I wanted to get there so I didn't have to deal with it in the morning. I wanted to get an early start tomorrow so I had time to enjoy town and not just run chores. I made it right around 815 which gave me 20 minutes before dark to get setup and filter the water.
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