Friday, April 21, 2017

Day 34. April 3. Zero Mile Rest Day at LF Ranch

Day 34. Monday April 3. Zero mile rest day at LF Ranch. Walked zero miles, zero ft up, zero ft down. Total grade zero ft/mile. 

Dear Trail Friends,

I am sitting inside the bunkhouse my second night at LF Ranch and it is pouring rain. A few minutes ago powerful gusts of wind swept through pummeling the air with gravel and sand. I am soooo happy I am not in my tent tonight. 

I really needed this rest and I feel much better. I enjoyed getting a glimpse of ranch life and learning about the leasing of public land for cattle grazing and the repair of fences, and herding cattle back if other leasers don't keep their fences repaired, and finding cows and their young when it's time to brand calves, and just watching the constant work involved in ranching. It was an adventure and I am so glad I decided to take a rest day here. 

Photo 1 is the view from the little outdoor glass table where I ate my meals. Mary Ann and Shawn joined me for dinner last night. I ate breakfast (photo 2) on my own, and shared dinner tonight with Slo Bro (like me a mature hiker though a couple years younger and like me a pacific northwesterner - from Eugene) my roommate in the bunkhouse tonight. SLO Bro has generously agreed to share his cabin in Pine with me so I can spend the night there (which means enjoying a relaxed dinner rather than rushing off by 5:00 to a campsite a couple miles beyond town. 

 

 

To fully appreciate the breakfast and the view you should have sound effects too: the clucking of hens, crowing of the rooster, the meow-like calls of the peacock and peahens, and the sound of cattle in the big truck (photo 3) moving around and banging on the metal sides of the truck. 

 

Even though I enlarged the photo you have to look really closely to see the heads of the young bulls in the truck. If you can't see them please do your best to imagine them. If this offends your ethics of kindness to animals I apologize. It would have deeply offended mine in my younger days. 

Photo 4 is one of the peacocks showing his stuff. Definitely an interesting world to be part of. Did you know that chickens and pea-fowl serve as natural bug killers for an organic garden? Of course they sometimes gobble up some veggies as well, but they grow back. I learned all kinds of things here. (The collage of one photo is a little weird but it was the only way I knew to edit the photo a bit - you get the picture). 

 

Finally photo 5 is a collage of photos of the ranch: flowering trees (first I've seen in Arizona, made me homesick for spring in Orcas), the corral (which we walked through to go down to the East Verde River so I could see the river crossing I will be doing tomorrow morning. It looked challenging then and may well be more so after tonight's heavy rain), and the organic garden that provided much of our meals. 

 
 

So. Tomorrow we will be back on the trail. A fairly big climb with a lot of steep places with loose rocks. For a change. I am happy to report that Slo Bro agrees that this trail is much harder than the PCT. He says that, apart from the elevation issue, it is also harder than the Colorado trail (much higher elevations but few very steep grades). I just mention that because who knows maybe someday I will hike the Colorado trail. (That's what a day of rest will do for you. One day she's thinking this trail is too much for her, the next she is dreaming of climbing thousands of feet higher. . .

See you on the trail tomorrow. Thanks for resting with me. It felt so good to just sit and do nothing but be, didn't it?



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