Steamboat Springs

I am now stuck in steamboat for a week. It's a great place to be stuck. Austin is the grounds keeper for a historic summer camp and we are staying in one of the cabins here. The place is called the Perry - Mansfield school. It was founded in 1913 by "Two bear hunting lesbians teaching dance and theater." It is the oldest arts school in the country and all kinds of famous ppl come here. Regardless it's an amazingly beautiful property. It's only 2 miles from town but still wild enough for bears, elk, moose and all kinds of wild things to wander around. Unfortunately the bears have become a problem and they have traps setup to catch them. They have been breaking into the kitchen and cabins so here so need to be removed. They caught one the second night I was here but it was gone by the time I got back from town. It was a problem bear but there is another one which is actually doing the breaking into buildings so they are still trying to trap it. I hope they catch it soon cause the kids are showing up next week.

This is a busy week of kayaking, bike racing, art shows, and a marathon going on in town. It's a great town but not what I'd call a hiker town. Most of the locals don't know there is the CDT and two major bike routes that pass through here.

I didn't get to experience most of the activities since I managed to chip a tooth. It was my bottom right wisdom tooth. I didn't even realize it happened and just thought a piece of rock had gotten into my dorittos. I eventually noticed and made an emergency appointment with one of the local dentists. The first dentist decided that it would be best to just pull the stupid wisdom tooth rather repair it to only have it fall apart at a later date. The tooth never fully grew in and was slightly below gum line so was hard to floss and brush. The dentist tried to pull it but was unable. He had gone on a canoeing trip and sprained his middle finger so wasn't able to get a good grip on the tooth. The other dentists in the office were to busy so the sent me off to an oral surgeon who could squeeze me in. They were nice enough to give me a ride across town with my now broken tooth at least. After a 2 hour wait the new dentist was finally able to see me. They redid the anesthesia and gave me some laughing gas then pulled the tooth. It was a tough one with 4 roots so I'm glad the surgeon did it since the first dentist thought there was only 2. That pretty much ruined my zero days for steamboat. I couldn't eat town food since I needed to eat mush and I couldn't walk around much due to the pain and drugs.

So I've been hanging out at the cabin looking at the near perfect weather and wondering if continuing on the CDT is the right choice. The PCT is really easy this year and will cost about the same to get to as glacier. But I set out to do the CDT so I'm not going to give up until I've exhausted all possibilities for finishing it.