Well, we finally got snowed on. After pushing our luck for weeks and weeks as we continued across Colorado, the snow finally fell. While we’d definitely prefer to be warm and dry at all times, we knew winter had to happen eventually, so we’re making the best of it as we go.

Thankfully, we do have a set of incredibly warm sleeping bags and some decent 4-season camping equipment, so that should definitely help keep away the cold, at least while we’re sleeping. Plus, we’ll be getting picked up and brought home to South Dakota for the month of December, so even though it’ll be cold there, we’ll at least be indoors a majority of the time.

Anyway, onto our recent progress. After leaving Ridgway (which was a delight), we made our way toward Montrose, Colorado. We’d actually been in Montrose before, during our unexpected return trip to South Dakota a few weeks ago, but we got to see a different part of the city which ended up being pretty nice.

Anyway, right before we got to Montrose, our friend Lonni (who continues going out of her way to make our lives better) and her friend Thomas told us they’d reserved us a room for two nights at the Country Lodge, a really nice place that was perfectly situated along the road we’d need to take out of town.

The Country Lodge was wonderful, and the people who run it were incredibly kind and helpful. In fact, because we had some things we needed to figure out and do, we stayed an extra day and Jeff, one of the owners/managers, offered to let us stay for an extra night. Needless to say, we felt blessed.

After tearing ourselves away from the Country Lodge, we finally started walking down the road toward Gunnison, our next reasonably-sized town on the route. Gunnison, we’ve been told, is the coldest city in Colorado, so we’re hoping one of the churches in town invites us in for the night rather than making us camp.

Anyway, on the way out of Montrose, we did some tent camping again. It was getting chilly (and we felt pretty bummed after having such a nice place for several nights), but we survived safe and sound. The only problem was that the wind was horrendous, and Lindsie and I both woke up around 3 am and never fell back asleep because our tent was flapping and bending like a cartoon.

The next morning, neither one of us felt particularly great. We noticed that we were near a big, semi-empty building that looked like a rarely-used Department of Transportation building. We didn’t see any signs saying “Do Not Enter” or “Employees Only,” and it had a GIGANTIC garage door that was wide open.

So we decided to camp in there for the night. It was great because we were able to stay out of the wind and we were much, much warmer than we’d been the night before. Plus, as a bonus, there was a functioning electrical outlet, so we were able to charge all of our electronic stuff all night long.

The next morning, some Department of Transportation folks pulled in, but they weren’t too mad at us. They just told us we had to head out because they were going to be using the building all day, which worked out perfectly because we were already packing up.

We said goodbye to our helpful empty building/garage thing and continued on down Highway 50. As we walked, we got rained on a little bit, but not enough to stop walking. Eventually the sun came back out and we ended up reaching our goal for the evening, which was Cimarron, a not-really-town that had a convenience store, a gas station, and a campground. We camped out for the night at the campground, and I (Mike) woke up around 3 am to the sound of rain falling on our tent.

At least, I thought it was rain.

It was actually snow. So for the first time during our journey, as I mentioned in the beginning of the post, we got snowed on. It was a pretty bleary scene when I crawled out of our tent. Completely gray sky, snow still falling around us, and because it had started as rain, most of our stuff was covered in ice as well. This wasn’t a winter wonderland type of snow. It was much less pleasant than that.

As we contemplated our next steps, we came across a park ranger who was checking the campground. He told us it was supposed to get really cold the coming night, and then should warm up for at least a few days after that. We realized that being stuck outside again might not be our best bet, so we packed up (wet and icy though it was) and started walking down the road again. There was a campground and lodge about 4 miles down the road from us, and we were hoping to make it there before it got dark again.

Thankfully, the sun decided to come out right before we started walking, which melted some of the snow, and, more importantly, melted some of the day’s dreariness away. Suddenly it felt like there was hope in the world yet again. After just a little bit of time walking, we reached the campground and they had one available cabin left for us to rent (thank you, Jesus, for providing once again). Although the price tag was higher than we’d prefer, we decided that having a warm, comfortable room for the night was a little more important this time around.

After we woke up, we decided to try to start walking down the road again. Unfortunately, the weather was the coldest it had been so far (18 degrees with the sun out and shining brightly), but we set out bundled up and trying to stay as warm as possible. This effort led to us making a tough decision, which we’re going to post about in our next post.

Talk about a cliffhanger, right?

Anyway, thanks so much for the continued encouragement and support. We just feel so blessed that people keep commenting on the blog, leaving messages on Facebook, and just generally being supportive as we walk. We’ll have an update on what’s next in our future very soon.

-Mike and Lindsie (and Jaeda)