After waking up to the sounds of the other bikers, we realized we were one of the last to leave the house.... This became a common occurrence, where we would leave late and arrive late but continue the same mileage as other folks. We were all heading to Grants and were looking forward to a rest day when we got there. The road outside of Pie Town was deep, red sand alternating with hard, rutted washboard. The morning consisted of endless expanses of desert on either side and quite a bit of cursing and/or crying from myself whenever my bike was suddenly grabbed by the sand and thrown off balance. I got off and pushed whenever I suspected it was too much for my handling skills and Ziven patiently waited for me to catch up. The road eventually firmed up and the washboard replaced the sand, rattling us up and down for miles and miles. Sick and tired of this rough treatment and slow progress despite the flatness, we were more than pleased when the gravel road we were on finally linked up with a small asphalt highway. We happily zoomed along, willing to stand the hotness of the afternoon in exchange for the bone rattling of the morning.

We stopped for snacks periodically and wound through more desert as well as interesting igneous and sedimentary rock formations that loomed on either side, either large expanses of dark volcanic rock or thick spires of rock like what the Grand Canyon is made of. Once through the rocky landscape, we could see Grants off in the distance and took a quick rest at a Subway off the overpass to eat a footlong cookie and drink lemonade. The others were heading to a Hampton Inn-type establishment for the night but we were more fiscally constrained and opted to check out Lava Flow Hostel downtown. We passed a sad looking carnival on the outskirts of town and detoured to the Walmart to stock up on trail food and snacks. While I got overwhelmed with the size and chaos of Walmart, Ziven stayed outside chatting to a man in Spanish about our adventure. When I came out we met Jeff and Gary, who would become recurring characters throughout our trip. We also ran into Dave and Pete who shared their plan for the next few days and shared the sentiment with us that they would not stay for a rest day in this town, which was not as nice as we had expected. We bid them goodnight and pedalled off into town to locate the hostel.

It was in a neighborhood of smaller houses and consisted of a lot with a main house, a shower house, and a bunk house. We stepped inside the main house to check it out and one of the CDT hikers said we were free to stay in any of the beds that were open. Still opting to save even more money, we chose to erect our tent between the shower house and the bunk house, cozily snuggled by the two buildings. We took showers and then found a pizza place for dinner. The place was Hawaiian themed and had a strange vibe and included a shuttered Chuck E. Cheese style arcade. We ordered and ate quickly, cognizant of the fact that we had shown up 20 minutes before they closed. We each ordered a small margarita pizza and I was unable to finish all of mine due to the thick crust and we donated it to the communal fridge when we returned to the hostel. We chatted with one of the hikers for a bit, learning that she owned a ghost town in Utah and was in the process of selling it while writing memoirs about her life there over the past few years. Another hiker came in and was somewhat erratic looking, with feathers sticking out of his dreads and proclaiming that “There’s a lot of drug activity in the park over there.” We were unsure if that was supposed to be a good or bad thing and stayed quiet. Eventually we bade goodnight to the hikers (I have since forgotten their somewhat silly trail names) and we cozied into our tent between the buildings for some TV and sleep.