Another Long Walk: Day 13: Silver City Arrival! Civilization, at last!

May 3: I slept well during the night, but the traffic on Highway 180 started picking up around 6:00am which woke me up and encouraged me to get going. I was surprised at the amount of traffic so early in the morning. So I got an early start, anxious to get this road walk out of the way and into Silver City.

The walk itself was quick. I only had to do about 8 miles into town, and along the almost entirely flat road with a pack light from the lack of food and water, I made good time. The only real event of any note at all was the fact that I passed over the Continental Divide, marked by a big sign telling me that the elevation was 6,230 feet above sea level.

The morning's road walk took me over the Continental Divide on my way into Silver City.

On my way through town, the route I took happened to go directly by the hiker hostel. Evenstar had texted me that she arrived the night before and was staying at the hostel, so I texted her from the outside that I was passing by and she came out for a few minutes to chat.

She reported that she had already been to the post office and her package had yet to arrive, but it was expected to arrive with the 11:00am shipment--another hour or two away. Since we had both mailed packages from the same post office to the same post office at exactly the same time, it seemed likely that our packages were hanging out together and therefore my laptop hadn't arrived yet either. Oh, well....

I continued onward, but stopped at the post office anyway to pick up stamps and mail some postcards, but since I was there, I asked them to check for my package and--surprise! It had arrived! Yea! I had figured I'd have to backtrack and return later in the day to get it, so I was happy that was no longer the case and texted Evenstar about the package's arrival. Perhaps hers was ready for pickup as well.

From there, I continued onward toward the Motel 6. It was still way early in the morning, though, and definitely way too early for check-in, but there was a Denny's restaurant a couple of blocks before the motel so I figured I'd stop there for a brunch first.

That was a fiasco. I think they were severely understaffed, and the check-in process was a disorganized mess. It appeared that they had two different waiting lists for people wanting to eat. Not sure what the difference between the two lists were, I put myself on both of them. The wait for a table took about 40 minutes, and it might have been even longer except several groups got tired of waiting and left before they were called. (Which, of course, slowed things down as the wait staff called out names of missing groups before giving up and going on to the next name.)

It was frustrating and I was tempted to leave myself, except I was on foot with a heavy pack and carrying my package from the post office which was too big to fit in my pack. My options were limited to something nearby, and there just wasn't anything in easy walking distance. Easy walking distance, in this case, meant about 5 minutes. I just did not want to walk anymore.

So I waited it out, and eventually got seated. By then it was so late, though, I didn't feel like eating late breakfast, but rather an early lunch and ordered a sandwich instead of the pancakes I had been hankering for.

Lunch at Denny's! I like that my pack had its own booth to sit in. =)

I enjoyed the meal, but it was lonely without my trail family. I had a lot more fun at the Denny's in Lordsburg! Oh, well... With my tummy filled and content, I then wandered over to the Motel 6 to check in. It was still hours before the official check-in time, but I hoped I could check in early. At this point, I didn't really have anything else to do.

No rooms were currently ready, but they told me they'd have one ready in about 20 minutes. So I waited outside and surfed the web on my phone to kill time until my room was finally ready.

Once my room was ready, I immediately jumped in the shower to clean up and later in the afternoon did my laundry in the coin-operated machines available at the hotel.

The only time I left the hotel was to walk down to Albertsons for some dinner and snacks.

My home for the night! When I checked the prices online, it was only $40/night! It was an offer I couldn't refuse.... Which is why I decided to stay here rather than the hostel where Evenstar was staying.

Evenstar texted me that her maildrop had somehow ended up in Industry, a city in California! California?! Why did they send it there? It literally just had to go up the road a few dozen miles, but it somehow ended up in an entirely different (and un-adjacent) state.

So Evenstar was a bit miffed about her package going astray and seemed to feel it was totally unfair that my package had arrived safe and sound. They were supposed to be hanging out together! How did they get separated? We may never know....

The good news, however, was that they expected the package to make it back to Silver City at 9:00 tonight. The post office, of course, would be closed, but she should be able to pick it up again in the morning. But will it really be there...? We'd just have to wait and see... =)

I got another update from Addie as well who texted me that fire officials had allowed her through the area closed to prescribed burns as long as she made it through by Wednesday. (It was Monday today, so totally easy for her to do.) I was so envious! She didn't have to detour off the trail at all! She didn't think she'd make it into town today, though, since it would have required something like a 30-mile day of hiking for her.

None of us were entirely sure about Pez's whereabouts since he didn't have a phone with a SIM card that would work in the US, but we hoped his knees were doing better and that he'd arrived in town soon. Addie had hiked out of Lordsburg with him, but they had since hiked at their own pace and parted ways so could no longer provide updates about him.

And that was the end of another day on the trail....