All washed up

Day (18b) 19

I wrote last nights postaround 8:30. By 9, Andy and I were fast asleep in our tent.

9:15, I'm slightly woken up by a trickling sound, as if a creek was nearby. Two minutes later, the tent is completely surrounded by six inches of water.

"Andy!" I exclaimed, "we're in a river!"

Even though there was a drainage tunnel near our underpass, the raging water were routed right through our 'camp'.

We were in the middle of a flash flood. Our belongings that we kept outside in a gravel attempt to dry from the days rain was washed away, nearly 200 feet from our tent. A pool of water was growing inside our sleeping quarters, and we quickly jumped up grabbing what we could.

We didn't bother throwing on shoes, we were already soaked. Not to mention our footwear was washed away, somewhere.

We grabbed the tent, electronics, and anything else we could, and walked up the river which engulfed us to throw down our salvaged gear on some dry land.

Once we did that, we went down the river to try and find our missing belongings. Surprisingly enough, most was found.

Items lost were, (ironically) our bleach we just procured, one of Andy's insoles, my rain cover for my camera bag, and my cheapo sunglasses were broken in the kerfuffle.

Sopping wet, no wood to make a fire to dry out, and no service to call into the nearby town, the satellite phone came out.

We were forced to call in a ride, spend the night, and following day to clean our wet gear, in Superior.

We were hanging on to our zero day for after the half way point, where we could properly celebrate, but we had no choice but to take that day early.

--

This morning we slept in. We deserved it.

i could already tell Andy was uneasy with the unplanned Zero, as that meant a day behind schedule and getting home. 

All of our gear and clothes sat in a pile in the bathroom, filled with mud and horse manure that had washed through our camp with the raging river.

We couldn't deal with all that first thing, so we walked down the road to a local breakfast spot where we each did our double breakfast (and ordered the exact same items as in Kearny).

Before being able to walk over there, however, a trip to the Dollar General across from the Copper Mountain Motel was in order. Our footwear was disgusting and dripping, and we refused to walk further than the 50 feet needed to get some flip flops.

In nothing more than leggings and our down jackets (the only dry items we currently possessed) we made our way to breakfast.

We once again posted up in the corner of the restaurant, drinking as much coffee as they would pour, and eating enough for a small army, while we contemplated what exactly happened the night prior.

Once our brains began to slightly function once again, we made our way back to the motel to handle our business.

The motel was kind enough to let us use their washing machine for our clothes, and we rinsed the rest of our gear and hung it up to dry.

The remaining hours of the day consisted sof tv and bed. And nothing more.