The prospect of river crossings does not sound good early in the morning, so we linger in the tent. Ann patches her pants and I make some notes on our maps.

The crossings aren’t bad once we get going. Our map notes tell us there are dozens of crossings, and someone in Silver City estimated 6 or 7 per mile. They aren’t exaggerating, we spend most of the day in the river. It doesn’t take long to get ourselves organized so we don’t have to stop at a crossing, we just plow through and keep going. Our pants get wet, sandals and socks get mucky, but it’s not bad once we’re used to it.

There are lots of things living in the river bottoms. Ducks splash into flight, a frog streaks away under water. At dinner Ann grabs my arm when she sees a 3+ foot snake slithering by, but relaxes when she sees it has no rattle. The snake goes right by us towards a tree where Ann sees another snake just like it except a little darker with an orange tint. The orange snake holds so still we think it must be dead. The lighter snake crawls on top of the orange one. They stay like that a few minutes, then the orange snake moves. In little spurts is slides away, then the lighter one follows. They do this until we lose sight of them.

We resolve to finish our river crossings, which we just manage by dark. There’s a campground at the highway 15 bridge. There we meet Sharon from Kentucky, who invites us to her site. There we meet her son Sean and husband Greg, who shares his wine with us. It’s nice to have a fire to sit around and some company before bed.