Day 96: 10/28/17  Montrose to Delta, CO

Miles: 22 Steps: 42,467 Vertical gain: 92 Liquid consumed: 116 oz. Wildlife: Birds, cattle,dogs, horses Faith in Humanity: Not that I lost faith today, but it was I guess a bit of a lonely day as I didn’t really meet anyone... oh well I woke up and was on the road about 8am. Long 22 mile highway walk today. Montrose is a pretty cool town, but it seems like it’d be hard to make a living there. I walked the sidewalk to the Highway shoulder! Woo! Today was a bit uneventful I suppose. Flat road with a lot of farmland surrounding pretty much the whole hike. I listened to music and some podcasts and time passes as it always does. I’ve enjoyed trying to get Into a nice even pace on the roads where I don’t really need to take breaks, just keep going to maybe build endurance? Really it’s that breaks aren’t the most fun: you’re just kind of sitting exposed alongside a busy Road, haha. I’ve also purposely dehydrated myself on many of my road walks so I don’t have to use the restroom as much. Because: there are no restrooms!!! Yay! Some roads are better than others on the bushes next to roads department, but lately things have been pretty wide open. After a long while I made it to town, are some food at a restaurant where there were so many employees but no one really seemed to take pride in their work. Huh. Oh well. I stayed in a cheap hotel that was fine, though I would have preferred to camp. Relaxed and planned the next leg of my route with TV on in the background... I want to say thinks about roadwalks: they’re expensive! I had read about this previously in my research for this trip, but I really wanted to figure it out for myself. If you’re not willing to camp in drainage culverts, under bridges or trespass, you’re stuck either paying for a hotel or campground. This time of year a lot of the campgrounds were closed, as well, so that option was out. I have been able to connect with friends, friends of friends, use Couchsurfing.org once to get a place to stay, and camp on some public land when possible, but overall it’s been dramatically more expensive than the previous months on my trip. Also, there’s not a lot of good places in many towns to hang out and cook a meal on my stove without looking like a complete homeless person... so you end up buying more restaurant food as well. I’m glad to have experienced this other than all of the money I seemingly wasted, but I think what I’ve learned will really help me on the rest of my journey. Certainly makes me glad that I’ll be cycling from Saguaro, AZ to Key West!