Salida

At Monarch pass is a convience store where I had a double scoop of ice cream before trying to hitch. The second car that drove by picked me up. The timing was perfect because FIBArk, the river festival was just beginning and going all weekend. FIBArk claims it is the oldest river festival in the United States and gets underway Thursday night with a race to the top of the mountain outside of town. There's no trail and it's an all out scramble to the top and back down. The winners do it in about 12 minutes. Along with the festival comes all the fair food. Shroomer got a massive turkey leg, and I had a foot long corn dog. I love corn dogs. All weekend are competitions on the river with rafters and kayakers. Lint and Northern Strider showed up and joined in the festivities. Then we heard Krystele was in town and we searched her out. She is French and doing the CDT with mules. She has a great blog and is quite the personality. Lint is also quite the character and has done more long distance hikes then most people imagine. After finishing the CDT this year, he will have done all three major trails twice, along with a couple of the other less known long distance trails. And has tattoos of the map of each trail. Friday night I went to the free concert in the park, then to a DJ show at a bar. Certainly not a normal night on the trail. Everyone left on Saturday, but I stayed around for one more day of entertainment. There was a parade in the morning with lots of Shriners on all sorts of cars, floats and horses. Then in the afternoon was the houligan race where teams would float down the river on rafts, that were not made out of boats. It was quite the show. I met up with Roxanne and Jay who I had met in Lake City and happened to be in Salida. It was fun to have friends hanging out in town. Roxanne was kind enough to take me to the trail the next day.