First Zero: Grants, New Mexico

Day 23
Day 23 on the CDT, we woke up at the Junkyard Brewery on the edge of Grants, NM. In the early hours of the morning, I was hearing a noise that sounded like Trouble was rolling over and touching my sleeping pad. At the time, I thought nothing of it, and went back to sleep. I heard this noise quite a few times between 3:00am and 7:00am when we got up. When I finally sat up, I realized what the noise was that I was hearing. The baffles inside of my sleeping pad were coming apart, and my sleeping pad was turning into a bouncy castle!

Mail Pick-up
After packing up, we stopped by a Mexican restaurant and got some potatoes and avocado toast. Next stop: the post office! We were expecting to pick up four packages: our food drop, my new insoles, Trouble’s new sandals, and a battery replacement kit for Trouble’s phone. Unfortunately, the man behind the counter only had one package. While at the post office, I got a notification from USPS that our package from REI had been returned to sender. I brought the man at the post office the tracking number and he was miraculously able to find it in the back still! Luckily the package had both the insoles and the sandals in them! We found out that the iPhone battery replacement kit had been redirected to UPS across the street, so that’s would be our next stop. We were able to mail out a couple postcards and stickers home before headed over to UPS.

I was feeling a little bit nervous that they wouldn’t have our package at UPS because it had been addressed to the post office. When we walked into the UPS store, it was actually just a cafe that also does UPS. We told the man at the counter that we were expecting a package and he told me that he only had one: and told me that it was for me! Phew! I bought a smoothie at the store, and it was awesome. We ran into Happy Six and D20 on the street on the way to our hostel!

Lava Flow Hostel
When we got to the hostel, the doors were already open and there were a couple hikers inside. One was named “Scrappy”, and we later learned that he lost his debit card and was staying in Grants until he can get a new card mailed out.

At the Lava Flow hostel, we stayed in the bunkhouse and it turns out that we had the whole place to ourselves! We were waiting for someone to respond to us on Facebook about when he can fix Trouble’s phone. When I chatted with him four days ago, he told me “yes” that he can fix it on Saturday. Unfortunately, he has been ghosting us all day and it seems like he is the only person in town who can do these kinds of phone fixes. Sometimes it really feels like we are at the mercy of others sometimes on this trail: relying on other people’s help and not always being in control of the situation.

What to do?
On Day 24 we woke up at the Lava Flow hostel: still no response from the phone guy. We were trying to decide if we wanted to hike out today with a broken phone or not. I decided that I would try to fix it myself with the kit that we had bought online. Unfortunately, even after an hour and with all the tools we had the phone screen was not coming off. We were going through our options of what was next, and decided to text a few other hikers to see if they would be in town. Turns out that Tuba and Kanga were going to be hitchhiking to Albuquerque today.. which gave us the idea that maybe we could try the same.
I called a cell phone repair shop and spoke to a really helpful guy there told me that he is open until 5:00 pm, and was willing to stay late if we didn’t get there until later. I took my second shower in a row, and we made a sign to hitchhike to Albuquerque (a one hour and 15 minute drive away). Scrappy was in the house talking to us, and asked if we wanted to take the bear spray in the hiker box with us! He gave us a small feather and two small garnets that he found for good luck. I told him that we would be back tonight.

Easy Hitch
It was about noon when we left the hostel. We walked three blocks, and a nice man in a jeep drove us to the highway ramp. When we got to the highway ramp, the third car to pass picked us up! It was a man in a really nice truck who was going to Albuquerque to visit family in the hospital. He drove us all the way to the cellphone repair shop and would not take any gas money from us. We arrived at our destination at about 1:30pm!

Problem Solved
When we walked into the cellphone store, the man there was surprised that we made it so soon. He told us that it would take him about 15 minutes to fix the phone and told us about all of the restaurants that were in the plaza. The cell phone repair man even held our backpacks behind the counter while we went for food. A couple pieces of avocado bagel later, we returned to the cell phone store, and the phone was back to functioning!

Back to Grants
The next part of our mission would be to hitchhike back to Grants. Thankfully, our location was right off of the highway so it was a short walk to the on-ramp. When we got to the on-ramp, I had a message in my inbox from a trail angel who had seen the post I wrote asking if anyone in Grants was able to bring us to Albuquerque to get a cellphone fixed. He told me that he was able to help, and I explained that we were trying to hitchhike back to Grants. He told me that if we were willing to wait, he could come and pick us up in about an hour. Perfect! We put our thumbs down, and our hobo Grants sign away and headed over to the Starbucks to wait for our new friend Jason to come save the day.

It turns out that he had actually met Jason before! Remember the water and Oreo cookies that I was talking about on the way into Grants???? That was Jason! Jason is the man! We ended up going on a field trip to Costco so that Jason could grab more water for hikers. Thankfully the nice guy at the Optical Centre was able to tighten my glasses for me and wash them. We also went on a little trip to REI, where I was able to try on multiple pairs of shoes that I have been thinking about (my current shoes are discontinued, so if they are not available from Amazon I may have to switch shoes during this trail). I also got to try on the running shoes that I might use for the marathon I’m running in October! After leaving REI empty-handed, we got a ride back to the hostel where we met Scrappy outside. We laughed when we saw him and I said, “I told you we would be back tonight!”. It was only about 7:00pm. We ended up staying another night at the Lava Flow Hostel, and even did a “fancy spa night” with hot water and Epsom salt in bags to soak our feet.

Free Coffee!
In the morning I woke up and had my third shower in a row, and we headed down to Mt Taylor Coffee to get our free coffee. (There is this doctor in town who buys all of the CDT hikers coffee at this shop: you just need to tell them that you’re a CDT hiker!)
When we were drinking our coffee, we actually met the coffee doctor and got to thank him!

Headed Out
We also saw Freewill and Pack Runner and chatted with them for a while at the coffee shop! On the way out of town we got these nasty fast food tacos, filled up our water, and got cold drinks from the store. Big Spoon and Slay were up by the store heading out of town around the same time as us so we chatted with them quickly! We headed up the road and out of town, and passed a jail on the way out.
It was kind of funny to see the signs telling drivers not to pick up hitchhikers in this area…