Snow Mesa and Lake City

September 17th 

(10/12 : photos added)

I was up and hiking by 5 a.m. Between the moonlight and my headlamp, the trail was easy to see. Within an hour I reached Snow Mesa, about 2 miles of rolling grass lands. The hiking was easy in the morning. To the west the  almost-full moon was going down. Behind me to the east the Sun was starting to rise.  For a while I had a great experience with a full moon lighting the direction I was heading and the rising sun casting a shadow from behind me and Illuminating the Western mountains.

Snow Mesa is somewhat featureless. Most of the morning I was walking towards the moon.
I tried to get artsy here but it failed. The sun was rising behind me. The faint trail leads to a trail post in the middle of the photo.
These mountains were to the northwest.
To the west south west, these were the mountains I would climb in the week ahead.

I  wanted to make sure that I would be at Spring Creek Pass to get my ride into Lake City.   I had a little bit of extra time and  I got to the pass about an hour ahead of time and waited for the the ride into the town.

At 10 o’clock Butch showed up and drove me into town. We had a good conversation.  He is from the Houston area and comes up to Lake City every summer.  

I immediately sought out breakfast at the only restaurant serving at that time.  I ordered the hungry man breakfast plus a couple sides. It filled up the full table in the booth I was sitting in. 

After breakfast,I checked into my motel and got my resupply package, did some grocery shopping, and then I went to the Ravens Rest hostel. I met the owner and I gave him money for a room in case Emily showed up.  

Then I did my usual napping and then eating a lunch and then eating a dinner and packing up and getting ready to return to the trail. Lake City is very pretty.  There was a Wine Festival going on.  I liked the town. It had a good feel to it. The only bad experience was at Poker Alice pizza.I went in and ordered and the manager took my $20 and held it up to the light and scriticized it to make sure it wasn’t counterfeit. He made quite a production out of this. The irony was that the $20 bill was from the town’s ATM.  At first I didn’t think anything of it. After all $20 is a big loss to a small business.  However as  subsequent customers ordered, he did not perform the same detailed scrutiny of their cash and so I realized that he only did it to me because I was a scruffy looking dude.  The pizza sucked.
Lake City seems like a nice town and a great resupply I went to bed early and plan to meet butch at 8 o’clock for a ride back to the trail

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