Day 26: A zero in Greer
Here’s a thing: like 99% of shitty motels do not have a sufficient amount of blankets. Our motel in Greer, though, totally does. It is fucking incredible and I don’t take it for granted, not for one second.
I sleep hard. So. Very. Hard. Carrot is awake until 1AM beside me, and I’m so conked out I don’t even notice. I dream of mountains and sex and dirt and wildflowers, which is to say my dreams are a lot like my reality, except I don’t feel the grime on my body in a way that is distressing. I wake up so happy in our motel. Hiking!!!!! And then not hiking for a day!!! And then hiking again!!!!!We wake at 5ish and set straight to work: motel room coffee and writing. We edit photos. We copy and paste our notes into our blogs We are silent and furiously typing, side by side. I love when this happens.
There’s no public laundry facilities in Greer, not even at the RV park. And so! Before we set off to breakfast we prepare a scalding bath for our clothing. We toss in detergent and our shorts and socks and pee rags and immediately the tub emanates a scent of steaming sweat, urine and dirt. We swirl our clothes around a bit, leaving them to soak while we eat. We have some serious tub laundry in our future, but first we need sustenance.
We hitch to the diner a mile away and I moan into my black bean patty and potatoes and salad and toast. They bring me fresh salsa to pour all over everything and fresh salsa makes me feel very, very good.
Once we’re back, I get to scrubbing. We drain the tub, it clogs, we plunge it, it flows free. I scrub each individual item of my clothing onto itself and rinse until the water runs clear. Doing laundry by hand is incredibly taxing, and when I am done, I am exhausted.I yard sale my things in the sun to dry. It’s kind of windy, so I sit outside to keep watch and read on my phone. I look up and there are mountains. I look down and there are dandelions. There is nothing much in this town, so there’s really nothing much to do. I sit and I wait. I am quiet. It feels really good for some time and then it feels....really boring.
Carrot and I have taken a zero day in every single town. Up until today, it has felt wildly necessary for muscle recovery but now....maybe it’s not. We decide we probably won’t take any more zeros. We’re almost done really, only about 140 miles to go. Every day we take off on trail is a day later to seeing our dogs. When we put it like that, it seems obvious. We won’t take what we don’t need!
With the rest of the day, we rest. We buy many bags of chips and rent a DVD from the general store. We pack our things up with a commitment to set out early. Our next section is said to be the absolute hardest of the trail.We are so, so ready.
The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest