Day 28: Crazy day

Tuesday, July 14

So Heather and I planned to go into Anaconda to pick up our package we mailed from Butte today.

We hadn't decided if we were going to stay in Anaconda, or just go in, resupply, and get out.

We were camped about 16 miles from the road we needed to hitch from.

We ended up leaving camp before everyone else, but only by 10-15 minutes. HikerBox and Heartbreaker were also going into Anaconda to resupply. Andy, Leah, Crosby and Memphis weren't going in.

Since it was early, we saw a big elk near the trail.

We had a few climbs early, but it mostly downhill. We only stopped once to watch the last 5 minutes of today's Tour de France stage on my phone and another break 2 miles from the road. We left at about 6:30 and got to the road at 12:00pm.

It was a semi-remote road. So about 10 minutes went by until we finally saw a car. But luckily he stopped and drove us into Anaconda. He dropped us off directly at the lost office, we picked up our package, loaded our backpacks and headed to the pizza place.

It was a pizza by the slice type of place and it was really good. The owner knew we were hikers and gave us free soda.

During lunch we decided that we'd head back to trail after a stop at the grocery store to pick up a few more food items. I got some avocados, hard boiled eggs, a dozen fresh baked cookies, and a liter of box wine.

We got back to the road and stuck out thumbs out. About 1 minute and we had a guy stop to pick us up. He drove us all the way back to the trail.

By this time it was 3:00pm. Almost record time for a resupply in town. We caught Memphis about 1/4 of a mile down trail. He said HikerBox and Heartbreaker got a ride in about 10 minutes ago. We had almost got back on trail by the time they had just made it to the road!

The 3 of us hiked another 6-7 miles through some cow pastures and dirt roads when a truck pulled up. An older lady was driving and she had another hiker we hadn't met yet in the passenger seat. We knew him from the CDT Facebook group but hadn't met him yet. Turns out she had picked him up from Anaconda. She owns a ranch house near the trail and offered us to stay the night. She had plenty of beds and a shower. We couldn't refuse!

Just a bit down the road we passed Andy and Leah. The lady offered the same to them.

We got to the ranch and it was awesome! She had a main house, bunkhouse, barn, garage, outhouses and shower room. Along with land as far as you could see in all directions.

She lived alone and was one of the nicest people I have ever met. The ranch had no running water or real electricity. It was all off the grid. She had a well and solar panels. She gave us a tour of where we could all sleep. The bunkhouse had about 4 beds and there were 2 other campers to also sleep in. Then she went right to work preparing the shower. Im not sure exactly what she had to do, but she had the generator going and was pumping well water into this big tub.

Anyways, the shower was amazing, it was a wooden room about 10x10 that had a showerhead on one side. There were also a couple windows that looked out onto a field that had Elk grazing in it.

We all cooked dinner on her wood burning stove and sat around the kitchen table and talked. She wanted to hear all about everything CDT related. She is 78 years old and her family had owned the property for 50+ years. She is an active hiker and knows every part of our next section of trail. We learned that she was responsible for turning this whole area into public lands after a German company wanted to develop it all into gated communities. She wrote letters to every conservation agency in the US to save it.

We were all so happy to be there. Definitely the type of "trail magic" that we won't forget.