May 9, 2021
Woke up at 4:55am to head to the airport for my 6:20am flight to El Paso, TX. I was pretty tired from coaching at the state track meet the day before.
Had no issues making it to Dallas for my connecting flight then that’s when things got interesting. I checked my messages as soon as I landed and got one from Amtrak saying my train from El Paso to Lordsburgh would not be stopping in El Paso today. I called their service line to talk with someone. That person said the train was still running but there was a big delay because of a freight train and would be arriving at 6:45pm and not the 1:15pm at its normal schedule time. This was not going to work as I would be getting into Lordsburgh really late and still needed to purchase my food for the first leg of my hike.
So while waiting for flight to El Paso to board I looked into other options and found a Greyhound bus leaving at 1:15pm and arriving at 4pm. I wasn’t thrilled about taking a bus as I was looking forward to a train ride.
Once I got that all settled I boarded the plane only to get right back off because of a mechanical issue. Ended up being a 1.5 hour delay. This got me nervous I was going to miss my bus, I was going to be cutting it close. In the end it all worked out as I didn’t realize there was a time change in El Paso so I gained an hour.
Grabbed my bag after landing and got an Uber to the bus station where I hung around for an hour waiting to board.
There is a reason I was going to take the train rather than the bus, you’ll be meet some interesting people driving across country on a Greyhound.
We ended up getting to Lordsburgh about 30 minutes early, I think because we didn’t make any stops as I believe there was one scheduled.
I was dropped off at the McDonald’s then walked about a quarter of a mile down the main road to the Econo Lodge where I would be staying the night and get picked up tomorrow morning for my shuttle to the Mexico border.
After checking I noticed in my guide book of the town that the main grocery store is closed on Sundays, can’t believe I didn’t realize that. Luckily just across the street was a Dollar General which has a good amount of groceries. So walked back about half of mile over that. I got 3.5 days of supplies to get me back to Lordsburgh as the trail goes right through, around mile 85.
After buying my supplies I had an early dinner as went to the pizza place next door to the hotel, Mamma’s Pizza where I ordered a calzone to take back to my room.
After dinner I got all my gear ready for the morning as I was to be in the hotel lobby at 6:15am to meet up with the shuttle driver.
I made it early night and probably fell asleep around 8pm while watching the movie Step Brothers. You know I was tired if I fell asleep watching that movie.
Here is a video of my gear.