Day 20 – 5/12/13 – 30.9 mi (360.8)

Happy Mother’s Day!

We left the Thomas’s before 6am, partly because we knew we wanted to get a lot of miles in and partly so that we’d not be a captive audience for breakfast war stories.

Road miles are boring, but they are fast. All day was on dirt roads except about 5 miles along a sandy path up Amijo canyon. The original plan was to go 25 miles to a windmill for water, but we got there early and there was no decent place to camp, so we kept going.

This afternoon, I caught up to Liz, who didn’t stay at the Thomas’s last night, and we walked the last 5 miles together to a picnic area just below the Narrows of El Malpais volcanic area. Ninja and Strider joined us a bit later. We had intended on camping another mile up on the rim trail, but we lost all motivation sitting at a picnic table. From the picnic area, we could tell the sunset would’ve been incredible from the rim. Oh well, there’ll be more.

The Daily Ninjup Report
As I was writing this from my sleeping bag, I called over to Ninja to ask how many push-ups she’d done today. Her answer was not fit to print. But she is dedicated! She got out of her sleeping bag and did 5 right away!