Pie In The Toaster

It started raining in the middle of the night, and hard too.  The sound of the falling rain on the park shelter’s roof woke us up several times.  Aided by the wind, the rain was even able to blow into the shelter, forcing us to cover ourselves with our tarp.

By daybreak the rain had mostly stopped however, and we crawled out of our bags and over to the Daily Pie for breakfast.  As you might guess, Pie Town prides itself on it’s namesake.  Back in the 1920s, before Pie Town was Pie Town, a man by the name of Clyde Norman began making and selling pies at this little blip along the coast-to-coast US 60.   Eventually, word spread of “Pie Town” and the city was born.  So after our usual breakfast, we indulged in a few pieces of pie – cherry, banana cream and apple crumb.  While talking to the owner of the restaurant, we were informed we unnecessarily slummed it up last night.  Just down the road from where we slept there’s a Continental Divide Trail house, free to use for all CD thru-hikers and GDR riders.  With the bad weather settling in we decided to check it out and evaluate our options.

The house was easy to find, it had toasters strung up around the entrance, giving it the name of The Toaster House.  Originally the home of Nita, Don and their family, the Toaster House was opened to travelers after their family moved into a new home.  Full of knickknacks, old family photos, and notes and cards from past travelers, the house is a treasure trove for a set of starved minds like ours.  The discovery of a small TV (its Saturday after all, so we’re sure there’s some college football) made our decision a lot easier.  We opted to wait out the weather in the comfort of the Toaster House.

The TV was a bittersweet find however.  The house unfortunately didn’t have cable, and all our attempts to fashion an antenna failed to pick up any signals.  That is, until Jeff discovered this particular house sported an external FM tower antenna.  We traced the coaxial cable into the house and connected the TV to the massive tower, allowing us to wait out the storms while enjoying a few college games.

For lunch we headed to the other restaurant in town, the Pie-o-Neer, run by one of the kindest persons we’ve encountered so far, Kathy.  As expected, lunch consisted of more pie, and we even got a pie to go.

Back at the house we did some basic bike maintenance, mainly relating to our recent spout of flat tires.  Jeff and Kelly filled their tires with Slime, which we were able to buy at the only grocery/gas station in town, and Brett did some additional patching on his tubes.

Later in the day we pleasantly surprised by the arrival of fellow GDR riders, Simon and Lucy.  After seeing them last in Salida, they’ve been playing catch-up for the past 10 days.  We shared horror stories about the wind before calling it a night.