After leaving Gwynne Tank

we got a few groceries in Reserve again and tried to get gas across the street at a place that was closed but did dispense gas if you used a credit card.  Dave tried with two different credit/debit cards, but each was declined with the message “wrong zip code”.  So we had to drive all the way to Quemado for gas.  The credit card worked there, but when Dave tried to buy beer with his debit card, it didn’t work.  My debit card did work.  Eventually, a few days later, he got through to the bank and they reactivated his debit card.  That gas station in Reserve somehow caused the bank to flag his card and freeze it .

 

We dumped our trash in one of the huge bear-proof dumpsters at Quemado Lake Campground and refilled all our water jugs.  Then we drove back to CR42 (remember that road with all the mud puddles?) and drove 2 miles up the road to take a turn-off to the Hole in the Wall trailhead.  Our plan was to sleep that night at the trailhead, then hike in the morning.  Hole in the Wall is supposed to be a little keyhole shaped area surrounded by lava beds of El Malpais.  Animals in that area have evolved differently from those in the surrounding area because it’s an “island”, with animals cut off by the lava beds from other areas.  Frankly, I don’t see how it can be an “island”, since we drove right in on an open road.  How can they be so cut off and isolated?  Didn’t make sense to me.

 

Anyway, spent the night at the trailhead.  In the morning, we couldn’t figure out where the heck the trail was!  The big trailhead sign was blank, no info posted at all, and the only “trail” was the remnants of an old road that ran through a cow pasture.  We were confused.  This area was labeled as “wilderness”.  You weren’t supposed to take any mechanized vehicles into this area, including bicycles.  Since when is “wilderness” also a commercial cow pasture?  There were plenty of cow/calf pairs and the “trail” had a lot of horse apples on it as well.  We walked on it for a while, then struck off across the field to get away from all the cow pies and horse apples.  It was rolling terrain with the rough lava bed edges very visible.  It was interesting that the lava beds had tons of pine trees growing there, while the area adjacent was grassland, no trees.