Walked the main road out of town with my arm stretched out and my thumb up. Reached a gas station and stood there since it was an easy place for people to pull off. Took 4 minutes. Got a doozy this time. Young guy in his 20′s in a pickup truck. Wasn’t sure he spoke English at first but then he started talking…

Guy: Yeah, sometimes I just pull off right here and smoke and watch UFO’s fly over the mountain range.
Me: Really? What kind of UFO’s? (I really wanted to ask what he was smoking instead.)
Guy: Oh, the good kind. The kind you can’t identify.
Me: Wow. What do they look like?
Guy: Well, if you get binoculars out, they look like flowers – the underneath part. And they turn their lights off when they fly over Leadville.
Me: Dang. How fast do they fly?
Guy: Oh, they haul ass. They fly into the valley over there. I think the aliens live there. There’s a constant hum in that valley.

He changed the subject and proceeded to tell me all about how the polarization of the universe is going to change and it’s happened 4 times before and there are cities built on top of cities because of it and the Mayans couldn’t have had that knowledge – they had to have gotten it from a higher power.

Ok then…

That was the longest 8 miles of my life. Just as we were reaching Tennessee Pass, my dropoff point, traffic stopped for a roadwork area. I took advantage of the delay and announced that I’d just walk the last 1/4 mile to the trail. I thanked him and got the hell out of there.

Back on the trail, the miles flew by until I got to Holy Cross Wilderness and a steep section. By the time I got over the last ridge, thunderstorms with lightening were over on the next ridge a couple miles away. I hauled ass like a UFO down below treeline and set up camp at the first flat spot I could find in a drizzle. Expecting to get blasted by the storm, I crawled in the tent to wait it out. It never came my way and an hour later the sun was back out. It was 4 pm. I contemplated packing up and continuing on for a few more miles but decided against it. Tomorrow looked to be an easier hike. I’ll do a couple extra miles then. Off to an evening of hiding in the tent from mosquitoes and reading.