Reaching the southern end of the geographical continental divide mountain range

Day: 148

Date: 08.10.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 2'301.8

Miles hiked: 27.4 miles / 43.9 km

Elevations: 1'289 ascent (393.2 m Aufstieg) / 3'976 feet descent (1'212.7 m)

Camping at: 6'447 feet / 1'966.4 m

I am excited to reach Ghost Ranch today. Channy, a hiker I hiked the Great Divide Basin in Wyoming with, worked here for a couple of years. I imagined a big wooden block house, a restaurant and a gift store. However, we still have 12 miles before reaching Ghost Ranch. The first 8 miles or so were rather borning. All along dirt roads, poorly marked, sometimes badly flooded and no views. But then we started to descend to the desert through a Canyon. That means we are leaving the southern end of the geographical continental divide mountains. The landscape changed dramatically and in no time we left the Ponderosa trees behind us and entered the desert with cactus and a trail on sand. I loved it! I do like the desert. It is so warm suddenly and I am still wearing my wooden had and my long johns! The hike was epic down a narrow canyon, through a valley along a long wall (similar to the Chinese Wall, just not as long and impressive, so we called it the Japanese wall😁), still full of beautiful wild flowers and huge cactusses and down to the Ghost Ranch, surrounded by magnificent, multilayered cliff walls, red hills and mesas. This has been my favorite section since being back on trail. But the Ghost ranch turns out to be completely different than I imagined. We reached it just shortly before 1pm. Passing the 'dining hall' first, we checked it out to get lunch. We learned that only guest staying here for the night are entitled to eat here. But there is no other restaurant around. As it was just shortly before 1pm, when lunch is over, they made an exception and allowed us to eat lunch there, even for free! Not much was left though but I did get a nice salad, some seafood soup and yummy pastries. The vibes here are strange, I don't like them much. I learned that Ghost Ranch is a retreat and education center owned by the presbyterian church. It was also home and studio of Georgia O'Keaffe, as well as the subject of many of her paintings. That explains the rather weird vibes. We then checked out the visitor center where we pick up our next resupply box. As internet is out of service today, they were not allowed to sell anything. We intended to stay here for the night, but not feeling so comfortable here we decided to hike out after we were allowed to shower and do laundry. We got a hitch back to the trail and another hitch down a long and boring dirt road section to the Chama river. We hiked a couple of more miles through a beautiful desert section before setting camp below a tree, watching an amazing desert sunset. It is a wonderful warm and bright evening as it is full moon either today or tomorrow. We cook in the semi dark, only wearing my jumper and enjoy the evening in the desert. I simply love it!

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