This post is several days old due to lack of cell service. I’ll get a second, more recent post up by tomorrow.

How does it feel to start the CDT? It feels likenothing. One step. Another. Like walking out to your car or down to the grocery store. It also feels like everything. A journey of 3000 miles beginning with a single step.

There was a lot of nervous energy during the bumpy, 3 hour shuttle ride to the trail’s southern terminus. We arrived and took the obligatory pictures, and stuck our feet under the border fence into Mexico.

During the first few hours, my thoughts were mostly ‘This is my life, someone pinch me!’. It was absolutely perfect: sunny but not too hot, and gorgeous desert scenery. The first day we made it to the first water cache, 15 miles from the start. I’ve never been more tired than when we camped for the night.

We planned for an easy second day. Just 12 miles to the second water cache. Planned, being the operative word. We didn’t count on the almost 8 miles of downed trail markers. A large part of the day was spent wandering off course, checking GPS, and finding our way back.

To make things even more challenging, we were constantly traveling up and down gullys. The last few miles of the day actually had markers, and went by much more quickly. We had to wrestle the wind to set up our tent. Everything kept flying out of our hands in the strong gusts, and although we finally got it set up, I’m still not sure how. All night long the wind threatened to tear our tent into pieces or roll it -and us – end over end over the desert. As Britta remarked, these were Dutch Harbor scale winds. (Other hikers referred to it as gale force winds.)

We set an alarm for 6am the third day and got an earlier start. The mile markers were all beautifully visible, and a lot of the walking was on an old road. The wind didn’t let up until late afternoon, so much of the day was spent nearly getting blown off into a nearby cactus whenever a strong gust suddenly hit. I’m not any good at estimating wind speeds, so let’s just say if I had a paraglider, I’d probably be in Montana already.

During our lunch break, I peeled off my socks to discover some grains of sand had found their way inside and left me with 3 giant blisters. I cleaned them as best I could and very smartly sanitized the raw spots with GermX instead of the antibiotic ointment in my first aid kit. Let’s just say I won’t be forgetting I have a first aid kit any time soon.

I was packing up after lunch when I noticed one of my water bladders was leaking. A cactus needle had somehow punched itself through the thick plastic of the bottom. I patched it with duct tape, and so far it’s held up. I still may pick up a new water bottle in the next town.

I also saw – and nearly stepped on – my first snake. It looked like a rattler, but I didn’t stick around to find out. It didn’t rattle or move, just remained stretched out and camouflaged by the ground it was on. I gave it a wide berth. The other wildlife we’ve seen (deer, jackrabbits, and lizards) has been a lot less intimidating. Well, except for the cows which randomly roam around. I don’t like cows. One of them even watched us the entire time as we walked past, and I’m fairly certain he was plotting revenge for us passing through his grazing grounds.

We fell asleep that night to the sounds of coyotes. Almost half way to the first town!