Today it rained almost at the same time as yesterday and for nearly the same time. A herd of cows came to my first water source, Fuertas Spring, and eyeballed Stud, Doc Bug, and I as we munched lunch. We met a girl, Kendra from Maine, and her dog named Moose, who looked to be a black lab. She claimed Moose was able to keep up with her 40mi runs back home. I was amazed by the fact that such a black and large dog was able to make it through the New Mexican boot heel. Where even hikers now talk about its dreaded heat and lack of water.

I found that while Chris was drying his sleeping bag on a log along the trail when that rain began he pulled his bag quick to keep from getting wet to find that he snagged the damn thing on the log and ripped a hole in the toe box and lost a little down before patching it under a pine with tape. I joked that the zero degree bag was likely a 3-5 degree bag now.

After crossing over the high flowing Rio Chama (a river) on "Skull Bridge" which was as the as scary is it sounded I found camp was with fellow hikers Himal, Wings, and Chris. We had yet another fire, this time made by Himal. I was intrigued by how he collected a bunch of fluffy debris from the nearby cedar trees lit it , then slowly began adding larger and larger sticks. Much different than my usual, make a tipi technique, which takes much longer. He played the ukulele as we horfed dinner down as the sun set. I was close to getting my harmonica out to jam.