Forest service road to who knows

We got up early today. The weather forecast had the temps in the upper 90s. So we decided to do pct style and get up early, siesta, hike late. I dilly dallied a bit cause I didn't think it would be that bad but we were still hiking by 5 am. I was wrong it got hot and it got hot early. By 1030 the temperature was already over 85, at 7500 ft. Even still we made good time and had done 17 miles by 1 pm. The last 2 were rough though. It was a climb up to 8400 ft in rising temps with not enough water. Still when we got atop the mountain the siesta was fantastic and there was only a few downhill miles to a fenced spring.

I started to get thirsty so I headed down to the spring to grab some water. It was a nice fenced, boxed spring that fed a cow water trough outside the fence. The cows were all around the trough so I walked over to the source to try grab water. Am I glad I did. Inside the spring box were three bloated dead squirrels floating in it. I was completely out of water at this point so I had to fill up. I went down to the cow trough hoping that the water pouring out spent a minimum amount of time in the death pool. On the way down I watched some cows lick the spigot the water was coming out of. The water looked perfect coming out of the the trough since you couldn't see the cow saliva or dead things.  I filtered and treated with aquamira. It tasted fine and if the combination filter and aquamira don't work I'll never make it to new Mexico anyway. Still it was probably the nastiest water I've knowingly drunk.

I warned beads and papi about the source but beads still drank it unfiltered. I don't know if she's not right in the head or if as a vet she knows something I don't. The next source was about 7 easy miles away so I drank as little as I could and skipped cooking dinner. Just eating beef jerky as a revenge toward the damn cows. We kept hiking until 11ish to take advantage of the temperatures while we could. I have no idea where we finally called it a night, just cowboy camping and sleeping asap since we planned on getting up and going by 445 the morning temps.