We started out on the CDT and hiked for a couple of days which were pretty brutal in the hot sun with little to no shadows. Ninja still found it hard to push up the mountains with the heavy pack out of town but we did pretty good miles nonetheless.
After about 3 days of this decided to do another medical check and hiked our own route with shortcutting a descent chunk of the trail down to the highway. We walked on the Great Divide bicycle route on a random chance and met a few bikers.
At the end of the day we went full hikertrash and Ninja went into a private ranch and asked if we could camp out on the property. The first ranch nobody answered the door but in the second ranch the caretaker Harry was OK with us camping out front next to the barn. He also told us the first ranch we tried was build by a millionaire and used to be a weekend party getaway but recently changed the owner. He apologized that he had no beers for us but later on he came to our tent to chat and had gotten some beers from the neighbour.
He was very kind and made us coffee the next morning and let us use his shower so we would not smell too bad when going to the Walk in clinic. He also needed to go to Dillon – a larger city 50 miles away – and graciously took us along in his truck.
We spent the night in Dillon with no serious issues found from the lab results and after dealing with Ninjas travel insurance we hitched towards Lima to get back to the CDT.
The ride to Lima was not to hard to get, we made a sign and after about 30 minutes an older couple picked us up and asked us a little in wonder: “what do you want to go to Lima to?!” and after we explained that we are hiking the trail they told us they were just wondering as they live in Lima and there is basically nothing there. When we got close to the Inn they offered is to camp in their yard, which we graciously accepted and after we out up a sun umbrella we were offered some beers and chatted through the afternoon. In the evening they offered us to sleep in their old RV and take a shower in their house in the morning and then drive us back to the trail.
All in all a very fun section with a lot of kindness that we received.
