We start our journey in 3 days. I'm feeling a little stir crazy and a little anxious. Sort of like the night before a big game or a big presentation. We've been planning this day for a long time, and we're ready to go.
We traveled to Arizona a week ahead of our hike date to spend time with my mother and acclimate to the hot and arid desert conditions. Every day, we hiked about 5 mi in the morning sun. It's been about 90° when we finished our morning hikes. There is always a lot to see in the desert. Many plants are in bloom and there's always a lot of critters running around the desert.
We had the opportunity to work on our “hey… there's a snake at your feet skills today”. It was a miserable failure. Pooh was walking along the trail while focusing on taking a picture. I saw a snake at her feet and told her to step to her right, which would have been away from the snake. In her panic, she stepped to the left twice towards the snake!! Luckily, the snake was harmless. We'll work on this skill some more. I was probably a little too animated as I wasn't sure what kind of snake it was, which added some tension to a stressful situation. I believe this is a bull snake, which looks like a western diamondback rattlesnake.
Tomorrow morning (Monday) we catch the Amtrak from Tucson to Lordsburg, New Mexico. We'll be in Lordsburg until Wednesday morning when we catch the shuttle to the Mexican border at 6:15 a.m. The shuttle is a paid service provided by the Continental Divide Trail Coalition (CDTC). The ride to the border is approximately 3 hours. We'll start hiking around 10:00 a.m. Ideally, in the desert you want to hike in the morning or in the evenings and try not to hike in the heat of the day. The first day our goal is 10 mi, which will be a bit of a challenge with the late start. As part of the shuttle service fee, the CDTC caches water for us. The location of the water dictates the schedule for the first week.
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