Cruz de Ferro is a humble monument to mark the 1,504 meter, 4934 feet location on the camino. Carson and I left a stone for Clif and one for Grandma Hibberd, as we are both walking for each of them. We had a grand plan to sleep at the point of the cross and wake up to leave our rock at the top of the pile at sunrise. It was an amazing moment:-)
We had a day of walking with our Minnesota college students Lucy and Kate. They both go to Carlton college in Northfield. Small world continuing to get smaller. We did a little bit of uphill to the absolute high point of the camino, at 1,515 meters and the majority of the rest of today was downhill, opposite from the near constant uphill yesterday. The most positive I can be is to say I appreciate the downhill because it always leads to uphill... I have a much harder time with my feet on the downhills. Today there were lots of stones and larger sheets of rock we walked on. A small bit was road too.
I can tell I'm more of a mountain girl than desert girl. There are some majorly obvious differences between the meseta and the Spanish mountains. The vegetation is different. Plants are more hearty and less flowery. The animals include my favorite cows and sheep with lots of areas to graze in. The variety of the mountains with wind turbines is beautiful. So. Much. Better. Than. The. Meseta!!!!! Not that I didn't appreciate the meseta, but I prefer the hills and mountains.
We took a scenic route to get into town today, and found ourselves not far from the road route many other pilgrims took. We are sleeping in a huge albergue with small rooms, which is excellent for snoring and privacy reasons. More to come.
Laundry is not our favorite thing to do. Usually Carson gets us going because I like to get in to the albergue, unpack and foot massage/nap rather than laundry. Our clothes are usually full of dust/dirt, wheat, picker bushes, etc. Those of you who know me best know I'm not so good about laundry, but it's different when you don't have clean clothes the next day because you only have 2 shirts. We are usually quite ripe by the end of each walking day, so I appreciate Carson pushing me to participate in the laundry doing party. He gets most of the credit...
When we got to town, we hit our 2nd downpour of rain in 2 days!!!! The Spanish who love here think its great as the ground really needs it. Those of us walking are thankful it is evening showers only... knock on wood!
Tonight we splurged and went to dinner with Kate and Lucy. They were excited to try a pizza place they have been told to go to, so we went to get Spanish pizza and a mixed salad. The pizza was good with goat cheese, capers, bacon, olives and motz. We had to follow up with a tasty dessert of churros y chocolate and mango sorbet. Quite a fun evening of foodies.
This town is very quiet for a Sunday. The grocer is closed, we found only 2 open stores and a bunch of restaurants. It is nice to give employees a day of rest, but we were excited to see the Templar castle. Next time, as we will be back!!!
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