Luckily it was a short road walk into Pie Town, less than 15 miles. It started sleeting about half way to town. So cold and windy, my umbrella nearly flipped in. About a mile before getting to Nita's Toaster House a local named Justin offered to drive me the rest of the way to town, I hopped in. Hitching into smaller towns is nice because every now and then you get a tour and a little bit of backstory to the drivers life. There was a cooler in the back of his pickup truck that I threw my pack into. He said to crack open a beer, and said that'd he'd give me a tour of Pie Town. The didn't have much it was essentially a tourist trap passing through kind of town, but it had such character. Dry and dusty and packed with Pie making bakeries along its main road. Justin has only been living here for the past year with his wife and kids, but loves it out here after moving from Alabama. We visited his "Man Cave" which was essentially just a tent he set up down a two track at the edge of town. He said it was a place to go when he wanted to get away from home. I explained to him how to fix the zipper on his Coleman tent. Justin explained to me that cheap trucks like his Isuzu only put power through the back right tires, and that Ford trucks didn't have that issue.
After my tour I met the owner Nita's at the Toaster House. A sweet welcoming lady who raised a family at the house long ago who now lives in a new home a few miles down the road. Everything was communal, open to hikers and bikers, donation only, and had two wood burners which made the home toasty. I talked with a town road trippers at "The Gathering Place", one of the pie bakeries/restaurants in town. They ended up gifting me a free blackberry pie without my knowledge. I was elated, and ended up sitting back down and eating half before paying for my quesadilla and heading back to mingle at the Toaster House. Chris, now named Troad (a word he coined which merged the word trail and road which we all found funny) and I got bombarded with hail on the short walk back to the house.
