Hiking a Huge Day Just for Denny’s

This morning we slept in at our little apartment. It was supposed to be a really cold morning so we weren’t eager to get going. But eventually, we packed up to begin walking. James was planning on just hitching the road down to Silver city. That meant he would carry all of our food and we could just bring snacks for the day. Which was going to lighten our load significantly.

Sparkle and I made the decision to just road walk the 40 miles between Doc Campbell’s Post and Silver city. The distance and elevation gain was about the same if we went through the lower Gila. But because of the conditions we’ve been going through the last couple days, I figured the Gila was going to be a lot more slow going. If we did the road walk, we could probably get into Silver City tonight.

Around 11am we finally headed out and began walking the road. Our day started with a very steep climb up the road which I was not expecting. Little did I know at the time we would have to do about 5500 feet of elevation gain over the course of the day on our road walk. That was pretty surprising. While we were climbing the first big hill, James drove by us in the passenger seat of someone’s car. He had successfully caught the hitch out of Doc Campbell’s post. We would be seeing him later on in Silver city.

We spent a couple hours climbing up to the top of that first hill. Every time I thought we were going to get to the top, we would round another corner and have to keep climbing. But at least the climb was graded for vehicles so it was very gradual. About two or three hours into the day we went past a vehicle pull off by an overlook and a pit toilet. We decided to stop off here for our first break of the day. I think that I had come to this pull off before when I was traveling the country in my vehicle years back. There was a mural painted on the rock wall of the overlook. That was very familiar to me. It was colorful and beautiful and had a bunch of cute little animals painted on it.

The mural at the pull off alongside the road.

We hung out at that overlook for a little while before continuing on. Then we just kept on road walking. We had to do a very small amount of climbing after that, but then it was all downhill from there for a while. I hadn’t looked at the maps or anything so I was hoping that we wouldn’t have much more climbing for the day. But eventually, Sparkle checked and I realized we had at least two or three more large climbs, just like that first one.

It was nice for the next hour or two going entirely downhill. We were just cruising along walking together. At one point a vehicle drove by us and pulled over very quickly to stop in front of us. Sparkle and I were obviously a little bit nervous because we weren’t sure what to expect. But this guy was so ridiculously nice and he asked us if you needed any water. And we certainly did. This long stretch of road had almost no water along it. So he wanted to carry as much as possible, just in case we had to do the 40 miles without ever getting water. He gave us each a liter which meant we could drink as much as we wanted to. That made the two of us feel much better.

Beautiful desert views from one of the overlooks along the road.

After that, we are both feeling way better and I was able to drink as much as I needed to. Prior to that I was kind of nursing my water because I didn’t want to risk running too low. Now we are doing great. Over the next hour or so we did have a bit of a strange encounter with a vehicle. The two of us were just walking along the road, laughing and joking around. Then all of a sudden I dropped something or something happened, which required me to turn around. That’s what I noticed that a car was tailing us driving ridiculously slow behind us. We never even would’ve noticed this if I hadn’t turned around. They were far enough behind us that you couldn’t hear the vehicle. But they were very clearly stopped behind us and slowly inching down the road.

Sparkle walking along the road up ahead of me.

Once we noticed, we became on edge. Both of us took photos and videos of the car just in case. And it continued to idle behind us for a while before eventually picking up speed and passing us. It just made me wonder what their intention was. Did they only start driving again because we noticed that they were there? Or were they maybe just doing something in the vehicle that had nothing to do with us at all. Either way the situation was a little bit strange and definitely put us on edge.

When you’re walking along a road walk such as this it’s easy to become a bit anxious. We are on this one road for the entire day leading from Doc Campbell to Silver city. Anyone who drives by us know exactly where we’re going and where we will be. There’s also no service along the road, at least where we are now. Obviously there are two of us to the likelihood of something happening is much less. But we’re in a fairly vulnerable situation being out on the road all day. It’s smart to always remain on edge and to be cautious of your surroundings, even when you’re hiking with someone else.

A long stretch of road up ahead.

We walked for another couple of hours before stopping off for our next break. I was feeling quite good but wanted to stop and stretch periodically because we were going to be doing an approximately 40 mile day. There were mile markers stretching along the road indicating the distance to Silver city. So we at least had a ballpark of how much further we had to go. At this point, we were somewhere in the 20 mile markers, which didn’t seem too bad at the time. We just kept joking that if it was only 20 or so miles to Silver city then we would have no problem pushing the whole way there. Obviously, if we needed to, we could stop somewhere along the road and tent in the woods. But if we didn’t hit a water source between now and then then we would probably have to go all the way to town.

My thought was that if we were feeling good, we might as well go all the way to town tonight. That way we could just sleep in tomorrow and spend the entire day in town.

Otherwise, we would have a handful of miles to do in the morning tomorrow and then would get into town sometime in the afternoon. Then we’d have to do all of our chores tomorrow And would still wind up spending the night either way. Every now and then it just makes more sense to me to bite the bullet and do a big push. Then get to spend even more time in town.

Walking along the road up ahead.

It wasn’t long after this the sun began to set. The days have been so short recently as it gets closer to winter. That’s always a sign that it’s time for a thru hike to come to an end. By the end of a southbound hike the days are so short.

As it got dark, the road got a little bit eerie. We entered into a very odd feeling forested area. I’ve done so many road walks over the years. Probably over 1700 miles of walking along roads. But this stretch of road felt like a scene out of a scary movie. The road was dim and winded around. It was so incredibly quiet as well.

At one point of vehicle pulled over with a young man in the passenger seat and an older man behind the wheel. They asked us if we had seen a blue vehicle, stalled or pulled over alongside the road at some point. Apparently a friend of theirs went to the cliff dwellings earlier this morning. Then they were supposed to come back to Silver city about five hours ago. But they never returned.

They asked us a bunch of questions and described the vehicle. But we had been walking along the road all day. We noticed every single vehicle or person that we saw along the way. The only vehicles we have seen pulled off on the side of the road was one vehicle at a trailhead and one truck. But I saw the person in the truck walking off into the woods and they seem to be doing something. Plus, both of those vehicles didn’t match the description. When you are road walking all day long, you tend to be aware of your surroundings. We hadn’t seen the person they were looking for.

They seemed very concerned and were worried the person‘s car might’ve broken down. Or worse, they had driven off the road somewhere. Eventually, they headed along their way going the opposite direction of us towards the cliff dwellings. It wasn’t until hours later that another vehicle pulled by us asking us the same question.

This time the same person who had been in the passenger seat of the previous vehicle was now driving this different vehicle. Apparently they’ve been driving around this entire time and were still searching. They gave us a little bit more information and told us that they had contacted the police and search and rescue. Apparently the police basically just blew them off and weren’t too concerned. Though if you had walked or driven down this road, you would realize why they were concerned. There were many places along the road with huge drop offs on cliffs. And a lot of those areas didn’t have guard rails. It was not an unrealistic thought that someone could’ve driven off the side of the road somewhere around here with very little evidence. Plus, there was only one road stretching between these two locations. So where could a person go? Especially after hours of them being missing.

Only 19 miles to go as the sun began to set!

When the car drove by us for the second time, it was much later in the evening. Maybe around at 10pm. The two people in the car were clearly very concerned about their missing friend. He was supposed to get back to town five hours ago and even longer now. But there was absolutely no evidence of his vehicle anywhere. Eventually, they drove away and we talked about that for a while.

The whole situation was so strange. I hope the search and rescue comes out and they hopefully will find this person in one piece. But it’s not crazy to think a distracted driver could drive off the side of the road and drop down a cliff near here.

That was such a strange situation, even though it didn’t seem dangerous to us. Never once in either circumstance did it seem like the person was trying to persuade us of anything or trick us. They had nothing to gain from telling us their story. Especially because they weren’t trying to convince us to help them in the search or get in their vehicle. They were truly just asking if we had seen anything, which we hadn’t.

We continued road walking after that all through the night. Eventually, we got off the creepy wooded section of road and got closer to some buildings. It was very heartwarming to see some houses and know that we were getting closer. But even once we got to some a sign of civilization, we still had hours of walking to go to get to Silver city. I was feeling really good though, and I knew we would make it there eventually.

Around 11pm we decided to call James who was in town. We told him about our ETA and our plans for the night. He said that he got a room for the night with two beds, which was perfect. And if we texted him when we got closer to town, he would meet us at Denny’s because he was still awake and didn’t think that he would be asleep by then. At this point we were probably seven or so miles out, and would get there sometime after 1am.

Once we got off the phone with him, we were newly motivated to push the rest of the way. We stopped off for one more break and put even more layers on because it was cold. Then we just kept moving to get to town. At least at this point in the day, we had done all of the climbing that we had to do. A few hours ago we had one last huge hill to climb, and then the trail flattened out for the rest of the day.

Finally getting into silver city for the night.

It was pretty much all flat the remainder of the way to Silver city. The mile markers were counting down and we were finally in single digits and getting close. I was so excited to get to Denny’s to grab some dinner. Then to finally go to sleep for the night. We are both really tired, but when the two of us at our mind or something, nothing is going to stop us.

Around 1am we finally got to the edge of Silver city and gotten into town. Then we headed straight to the Denny’s to meet up with James. When we walked into the Denny’s, I was shocked to see Tigger, a thru hiker that I hadn’t seen since around Teton. I went up to him and said hello and apparently he had been at that Halloween party earlier tonight. There’s a huge Halloween party in town with tons of hikers that we had heard about. But we knew that we weren’t going to get to town in time.

Another hiker 7 pack came up and was talking to us while we were sitting at the table trying to order. He was absolutely trashed and we talked to him for a while. Clearly everyone had been partying for hours and now it was pretty late in the night. Because it was Halloween night, the Denny’s was really busy and the server was not very good at her job. It took us hours to sit, order, and get our food. It was pretty crazy. But we were so tired and so hungry. We just wanted to get the food so we could go to bed.

Halloween night at Dennys! We almost completely forgot that it was Halloween night until we arrived.

It wasn’t until sometime between 2:30-3am that we finally headed back to the motel for the night. It was so great to get into the room and drop our packs. Then I took a quick shower before I got into bed for the night.