Best day yet! Back on the trail!

Day 58. Best day yet! Woke up to Practically naked Ranger Ross in the kitchen with the cats eating the butter. Then Ross cooked with it. Ici. Our first hostel experience was interesting. There were 3-4 other continental divide hikers staying there as well. We had a room with double Queen bunk beds. We are getting closer to Jon and Lois every day. Soon we will be 4 to a bed! It’s probably a good thing we are almost at the end of this journey. 🤣 There was a great bike stand and tool set at the hostel which was great. We washed clothes and hung them out overnight. I hung out the tent this morning to dry from yesterday. No solar power left early this morning so no lights and no internet when we got up. We left the hostel after breakfast and rode our bikes to the grocery store. On the way we were stopped by Sasquatches, or is plural for yeti - sasqui? We Shopped for Groceries for six days, the longest stretch yet with no re-supply And we had to pack water for 2 days so our bikes were the heaviest yet. After shopping, Tara was missing a bag of food, realized when we were packing our bikes in the grocery parking lot. You realize how much packaging material there is when you needed to fit it all on the bike! We even let the air out of the chip bags and cracker bags, anything with air in it gets opened and squished. First a bag of rolls was mia, then the broccoli, an avacado and apple. The prior customer must have absconded with an extra bag! The store replaced all the missing items. Our next stop at Walmart was for some additional dehydrated food for John and Lois and bike lights for us for the back, a bike lock and shampoo. Finally on our bikes and headed to the route- 9 miles before we even started the day! We climbed up through a canyon. 14 miles. Dusty road- trucks with wood. People are allowed to collect firewood on national forest lands I think with a permit. We stopped for lunch about 10 miles before the summit of the day. Tara lost a shoe and was Worried it had fallen off her bike. Really she was holding them both….. are we losing it?! Yes! Nice canyon climb with red and horizontally striped mountains towering over us. Smelled a skunk at lunch and speculated it was a wild pig. (Per the book.) road through lava fields and then we passed the Oso Tower Lookout. The lava fields are large flows of lava that look like a river flow. They go on for miles and some are higher than others. The road was hard with dried out mud. The warning sign was intimidating (see the photo!) but we believed the weather had dried the road enough to make it passable. It was bumpy but fun. We passed the poi of a log house that wasn’t too exciting. Tara set the Guinness book of world records / heaviest bike to hold vertical/upright while simultaneously peeing. (No pictures but Jon was quite impressed.) We wild camped tonight. The animal of the day was giant ant hills! Happy to eat some heavy food to lighten the bikes for tomorrow but conserving our water as we don’t know when we will find water again. The day was sunny and warm, with shorts and short sleeves! An adventure in scary night noises this evening. I felt great today, attributing it to the great dinner last night but Lois was tired at the end of the day. We all have good days and bad days but tomorrow will be a great day when we get pie in pie town!