Pie Town, New Mexico

After living in a van for four years and meeting different people who do that sort of thing, I can see now how the thru-hiking community is similar to the van-life community. Outsiders all think you’re crazy, but to me, there are three truths:
1. There’s people who do it because they have to (or they feel that it is their best option).
2. There’s people who do it because they want to (or because they truly enjoy it).
3. And then there’s just truly weird people!
(Either way, as an extreme-people watcher… I’m here for it. I also vote that we make extreme-people watching an Olympic sport!)

Happy
Trouble was talking about how she has heard a lot of people think that you have to be in some sort of crisis before doing something like this . What does that mean for me if I’m just… happy?

Pie Town
We arrived into Pie Town in the morning of Day 19. When we rolled into town, you could tell that it was (or once was) a very small, religious place. There were at least 4 churches that we counted walking in, and maybe 4 people who lived there in total!
The lady at the post office was helpful, and we got our food resupply box first thing. The next thing we did was to go to the only open restaurant in town: “The Gatherin’ Place”. There must’ve been about 30 hikers in the restaurant at one point! We ate a ton of food, and would later end up back at the restaurant two more times before leaving town.

The Toaster House
That night we stayed at a free hostel called the “Toaster House”. There is no caretaker there, so the hikers just clean up after themselves (mostly). Initially, we weren’t going to stay the night, but after seeing Toaster House, we decided to stay. There were toasters everywhere outside, old hiker shoes, random things on the walls, a nice hiker box, cozy places to sit, and tons of hikers hanging out. I was lucky enough to get my second shower in a row, and there was even conditioner in the shower!



Resupply Fail
Being such a small place, there weren’t many options for resupply in Pie Town. One of the other hikers at Toaster House told us that the General Store would be open until 3:00pm. Only problem was that it was 3.5 miles to walk there, and 3.5 miles to walk back. When you get into town, one doesn’t just feel like walking an extra 7 miles!

Turns out that Trouble, Batona and I needed fuel… so we attempted to hitch hike to the General store. What actually happened, was us walking all the way there. When we got to the store, I was pretty excited because I had to use the bathroom. Unfortunately for all of us, it happened to be closed that day. We had just walked 3.5 miles for no reason! Back down on the road, a nice man in a truck jeep picked us up and drove us back to town. He had a very friendly chihuahua who wanted to be best friends. We were pretty happy to have gotten a ride, but not happy to come back empty-handed.

“Good luck”
All up the trail, you’ll often hear the words “good luck“. It must be an instant thought when learning that someone is crazy enough to hike from Mexico to Canada. The intention behind it means well because they’re wishing you luck to complete the trail. This unfortunately can also come across as: “you’ll need luck to finish”. Either way, I accept their well wishes and don’t take it personally.
…but I don’t think finishing this trail is going to have anything to do with luck!
(But it does help you get rides…)