Ovando - Lincoln
Time Traveled: 3.5 hrs
Distance: 30 miles
Food Eaten: coffee w/cream & sugar, 2 pancakes, 2 eggs, hash browns, orange juice, Rawvolution bar, Probar, dates, fish & chips (halibut & french fries w/ketchup & tartar sauce), roasted veggie dinner w/onion, garlic, olive oil, beer, zucchini, red bell pepper, mushrooms,
In Ovando, we woke up cold and hungry. The first thing we did was head over to the cafe across the street for breakfast. The majority of patrons occupying the cafe was a group of about 15 elderly men who were having their weekly meeting. They were all rather ruddy looking, but quite healthy as well which would be just the kind of look you would imagine farmers and cattle ranchers to have. All of them had either gray or white hair, tanned, weathered skin and a few had beards.
Every single one of those men were smiling, joking and even getting a little rambunctious, no doubt with the help from the coffee. There was a little grandma who kept coming by to refill everyone's cups every few minutes. The only other person working was a middle aged woman who seemed to do everything else. She kept herself very busy as she took our orders, made our food, and served it to us. All of this was done in a very able and diplomatic fashion. Everyone got their food in the order of who arrived at the cafe first.
The service at Ovando Cafe isn't what I would call friendly, but rather efficient and dependable. It sure made our morning to have that delicious breakfast and it was rather fun to watch the townsfolk.
As we packed up camp, Skip returned to watch us. There wasn't much talking from him today, just a few "Yups" as we sporadically threw meaningless questions at him to lessen the awkward atmosphere which lingered in his presence.
Fortunately, our Ovando stay came quickly to an end and we were out of town and back on the pavement. Four days ago we started and stayed on the pavement until yesterday when we went back into the mountain dirt roads. The moody sky as well as our weak bodies told us that yet another day on the mountain highway is the to go on our quest to get to Lincoln.
We were glad we took the route as we got into the town a lot sooner than if we took the mountain pass which was enclosed in a mess of angry, dark clouds. As always, when we did arrive in Lincoln, we went looking for hot food right away. Some horribly delicious fried food was found at one of the few eating establishments and then we found the campground as well as our "interesting" camp host.
It shouldn't have been too surprising that our camp host visited us three times that night, as the place was almost empty. He came by twice for normal procedure and duty and the third time was to invite us to watch the National Republican Convention. We knew it was a safe bet to decline his invitation when he expressed his conservative views to us which seemed to focus around his not wanting a black man for president.
That night, it was very cold and we kept warm by building a huge bonfire out of all the free firewood. When it was time to sleep, I had a hard time getting comfortable because I kept hearing noises. My imagination went wild when I saw moving shadows lit up from lights outside of the tent. Of course it was just hungry dear sniffing our our scraps, but it frightened me nonetheless, and I wasn't able to drift into slumber until I had taken a look outside to ease my fears.
Well, it worked. I finally felt my eyelids grow heavy and I passed into a subconscious world.
