Welp, one of the questions that I’ve been asked a few times is “is it everything you expected?” The short answer is yes. The long answer is a lot harder. Because yeah, I’m meeting a bunch of cool people, I’m seeing a bunch of cool sights. On the other hand, the motto of the CDT is Embrace the Brutality. It’s absolutely freezing in the mornings and it’s a challenge to force yourself up and out of your warm sleeping bag at 6:30 in the morning. The trail can be steep, rocky, muddy, overgrown, and windy. In some places it isn’t marked well and you might go off path. Not to mention needing to walk long hours every day to avoid getting snowed out in Colorado.
All that said though, I’ve been loving it except for one issue that I wasn’t expecting: homesickness. It’s not an issue unique to me. A lot of other people on trail are suffering from homesickness as well. Missing partners and friends. I know of at least one person who has gotten off trail due to their homesickness. I thought that I was going to be immune. I don’t have a partner and I don’t feel strongly attatched to our home in Moorhead because I’d spent the last four years away at college. Perhaps then, it is a cruel trick that I find myself homesick for college. I find myself wanting to go back to the Swedish House and just enjoy spending time again with my friends. The trick is that of course I can’t go back. We’ve all graduated and spread out across the midwest for the summer and come fall some will move further away, to Illinois and Massachusetts for grad school. That doesn’t stop this desire unfortunately. The truth is I’d get off trail in a heartbeat if I could get that back. I can’t though, I’m immune from being tempted off trail due to this feeling but unfortunately not immune from the feeling itself.
Onto a more positive note, we have hit Darby, MT and will hit Leodore, ID in 120 miles. Almost all of which will be bouncing around between the border of Montana and Idaho. Whoo!! New State! As for the last section it was extremely beautiful. We went through the Anacanda-Pintler wilderness and it was some of the most beautiful sections on trail. Day one was a rather chill 15 miles into a campground and the day after was only 8 as we stopped at a beautiful lake intent on relaxing and enjoying the beauty around us. We could do this because the post office in the next town was going to close early on Saturday and be closed all of Sunday so we figured that we wouldn’t have time to buy food and get it ready to be mailed ahead for the next section as the store is more of a gas station. This didn’t happen and we ended up paying for staying at this lake with 25 mile days with more food than we needed.
Like I mentioned the next few days consisted of extremely beautiful wilderness but unfortunately turned out to be the start of the bugs 😦 Dinner was eater in the tent once or twice to avoid being swarmed with mosquitos and flies but oh well. All in all, none of the days were especially notable(other than finishing our first map on the 4th day) so here is a large photo dump 🙂
CDT Blog 