Day 187 (HDT 3)

Day 187 (HDT 3): 26 miles

It was a lovely morning waking up in a backyard in moab. I patched up my now dry and clean tent the best I could. Let’s hope it lasts the rest of the trail, or even more so, I don’t need it. Fancy Feast got into her invisible boat mobile for a drive thru coffee shop on the way out of town. Then we walked a scenic road along the Colorado river out of town.

A few miles out of town Kane Spring was dripping from some hanging rocks. We didn’t really need water, but it was nice to see some clear cold water on this trail. The day was nonstop ATV’s passing us in both directions heading up to Hurrah Pass, and for a while afterward, we had to ford a little creek that was flowing from the recent rain. It was nice having clean feet for a few hours at least.

About 20 miles into the day we knew there was a junction around to get down to the Colorado river to get water. We took a junction that ended up being a dead end. While we were walking out of it, Fancy Feast was looking at the map on her phone and wasn’t paying attention to the path. I was in front so I saw the setup. We were walking on a little balance beam of dirt in between 2 but absolutely disgusting puddles of water that looked like a mixture of puke and diarrhea. And the middle dirt was really slippery. So she slipped and fell into the horrid water.

I felt bad, but it wasn’t all bad for me. We shortly found the right way down to water but it was pretty gross and was really shallow and scummy near end. Since her feet were already wet, she volunteered to take one for the team and walk out into the water to fill up bottles at a deeper part.

After we left the road and went cross country for a bit. I don’t know if we had to. It looked like we could’ve just kept following the road cause we reconnected with it anyways, but this was a little adventure and learning experience of when and which rim of a canyon to be on.

This later part of the day was in Bear Ears National Monument and it was incredible. I’m not sure if it was just because there weren’t constant ATV’s (cause the road got pretty rough) but this area was amazing and made me really appreciative