Taking a Recovery Day after Treacherous Trail Conditions

Last night I realized that my charging block, which had been plugged in all day, hadn’t charged at all. I decided to leave it plugged in overnight and see what happened. But this morning when I woke up, it was pretty clear that the brick was not charging. I’ve had this block for the whole triple crown so far and it’s been very reliable. Typically it only takes maybe four or five hours to fully charge.

This is a piece of gear that I really can’t hike without. I use it at the end of the day every single day to charge my phone. Luckily, we’re in a town that has a Walmart, so I knew that I could get a new one immediately. But these things take hours to charge. I woke up around 8 o’clock this morning and walked over to Walmart to buy one. But I knew that it wasn’t going to charge by the time we hiked out around 11am.

Sadly I had to replace my anker 20000 block with a new one because of the flood.

I got back to the room and plugged it in. Unfortunately, the anker block that I got is a heavier model for some reason. But I’m just happy that I could get one at all in town. I plugged it in and then began packing up and organizing my gear. But as it got closer to 11am, I was nowhere near fully charged. Initially, I just asked the front desk for late check out, which they allowed. Then Sparkle and James came over to the room and we were all hanging out and talking. Then we all just made the decision to take the day off today.

I’m still so exhausted from everything that went on over the last few days. And truly yesterday wasn’t a zero day. We hiked continuously for the two days prior. Then got into town around 4am yesterday. After having not even slept the night before at all. The idea of taking a zero was just too good to pass up. My block needed to charge and we really would have benefited from the day off.

Once we decided to take another zero, we booked our room for another night, which was luckily very cheap. Then I reached out to Nana Man to see if he was still in town. Yesterday morning when we were coming into town after the flash flood, we wound up getting a hitch those last 3 miles in a cop car. It saved us an hour of walking that night, which was incredible. That was also a bucket list hitch of mine. But I don’t want to miss out on those miles. So I asked Nana if he could come and pick me up and drive me down the road so I could do those miles. I have a continuous footpath on the continental divide trail other than that segment of trail. And I don’t want to throw that away.

Not long after that, Nana came and picked me up and drove me down the road. Then I had to walk about 2.5 miles to get back into Grants. Luckily the trail passes right through town so this was a super convenient slack pack to do. I only brought my fanny pack with my phone and wallet. And I carried my rain jacket in case I got cold. I didn’t even bring water or anything because it was going to be less than an hour.

Nana Man gave me a ride down the road so that I could make up the few miles that I had missed yesterday morning.

I made a couple phone calls while I walked. Then I got back into town and went to Dairy Queen to get a milkshake. And I got some Taco Bell for lunch and then headed back to the room to relax. My new charging brick was fully charged, which was great. I mailed the other one home because there’s a chance that I can fix it. I am under the impression that there’s just sand or something obstructing the charging port. Because the block was still effectively charging my phone. I just wasn’t able to plug it in and recharge it again.

Walking back into Grants after making up the few miles I’d missed.

The rest of the day was nice and relaxing. I got some work and writing done, which was great. I tried to get as many calories in as possible. We hung out with Sparkle and James and some other hikers. Then later on in the evening, we went over to the Asian buffet again to get some dinner. That’s definitely the best deal in town and it’s actually a pretty high quality buffet. After that we had back to the room to chill and relax for the rest of the nights. I’m so glad that we took today off.

Round 2 at the Asian buffet for dinner!

Some dessert from the Asian buffet.