Day 103: Echos of the Oregon Trail

August 1: I woke up to a fair bit of condensation. I had known that was a possibility, but I didn't even bother to throw a tarp over myself to protect myself from it since I was already still wet from the night before. I could live with a little condensation. I still needed to finish drying out my sleeping bag which I planned to do later in the day anyhow.

The early morning was sunny, but cool and comfortable. I knew, however, the oppressive heat would return by the afternoon. I wasn't looking forward to it! So I started hiking early, trying to get as many miles in as early as I could. 

Notice how red the sunrise was due to all the smoke and dust in the air?

It was only an hour or two later when I arrived at a trailhead water cache, and there I found Janis Joplin, Twain, Tumbles and Captain Jack with all their gear spread out and drying. They had clearly suffered from the same condensation that I did. I had assumed they camped here during the night, but they told me that no, they actually camped earlier but stopped at the water cache to dry out their gear. That surprised me a bit. Already, the humid heat of the day was starting to arrive, but it was still early in the morning. It was just going to get worse later in the afternoon. That's when I wanted to take a break!

I picked up some water and chatted for a few minutes, but then pushed onward.

Another couple of hours later, I noticed a hiker in the distance that seemed to be coming in my direction. Why was there a hiker going in the opposite direction? Could this be... a south-bounder?! I had assumed I would run into the first south-bound hikers on the trail somewhere in Wyoming. Actually, I had assumed that I'd see most (if not all) south-bounders in Wyoming. Just a matter of when they started at the Canadian border, so even though I knew they were getting close, I still managed to be surprised when I finally ran into one. At least a possible one. I'd have to ask to be certain. 

When he got close enough, I made a joke about, "Hey, you know you're going the wrong way, right? Canada is that way," I said, pointing northward.

But no, it was an official south-bounder! He introduced himself as Austin. I wasn't sure if that was a trailname or a real name--it could go either way, really, and I didn't ask. I also didn't think to ask when he started the trail, but he did say that he started at the Canadian border. The thought had occurred to me that if we combined our miles, we'd already be done with the trail! =)

Austin walks southbound, on his way to the Mexican border.

 

I suspect I left no impression on him, just another face among the hundred or more north-bounders that he had already passed, and we continued on in our separate directions. Although this was the first south-bounder that I had seen, it didn't necessarily mean that he was the very front of the them either. It's possible I could have passed by others in Rawlins, or even on the trail itself if we had taken slightly different routes, and not even noticed. It made me happy to see a south-bounder, though. He had already hiked from Canada to this point, so it was definitely possible! Not that I doubted for a second it wasn't possible, but it somehow left more real. Like it was confirmation that Canada really was at the end of this route. =)

Somewhere along the way, I noticed concrete posts periodically along the side of the trail. The precise wording on them varied. Some of them said Oregon Trail, but others also said California Trail--an offshoot of the Oregon Trail that led into California. Another read Seminoe Cutoff, which I can't say that I was familiar with, but it sounded like another variation of the Oregon Trail. Later in the day I'd also pass posts that marked the route as the Pony Express and the Mormon Trail. All sorts of interesting historical routes flowed through this barren landscape, and I imagined what the scene must have been like then. 

The actually scenery probably didn't look much different, but the conditions were certainly very different. Those migrants would probably think I was crazy for wanting to walk through this desolate landscape for... fun?! But I had the advantage that I could easily quit if I wanted to. Walk into town, jump into a bus or train or something and be back in a big city in mere hours. Enjoying air-conditioned buildings, making phone calls to talk instantly to people all over the world, and access to fruits and vegetables that were grown on the other side of the planet. 

I also wasn't particularly concerned about dying of dysentery. Although I did wonder how often people really did die of dysentery out here and how much of that was popularized by the Oregon Trail game. =)

There were two water sources for me to fill up with, nice cold water from deep underground. In both locations, I ran into the group that included Janis Joplin, Twain, Tumbles and Captain Jack. I really needed to give the whole group a name to make it easier to refer to them  later instead of a series of 4 names, but I couldn't think of anything.

Janis I had heard about--it seemed like everyone on the trail had stories about Janis and when I finally met him myself, I joked that it was official--he had now met every single person on the CDT so he could quit if he wanted to now.

Janis set the Fastest Known Time (FKT) for completing the Washington state portion of the PCT, which was about a week or something. The idea of covering about 500 miles in just over a week seems crazy to me. Definitely not my cup of tea! But I was curious about people who do stuff like that so I asked him about it. Originally, he had trained to set the FKT for Oregon but that didn't pan out due to wildfires at the time so he changed to Washington. "Does that mean you have to go back and set it for Oregon?" And he said he'd been thinking about it. 

"Well, if you have the FKT for Oregon and Washington, obviously, you'd have to set it for California after that!" Yeah, well, duh. =) He won't have the record for the entire trail, but he could still have it in sections for the entire trail. But the California section is longer than Oregon and Washington combined, so it's really a whole different beast.

From left to right, Captain Jack, Twain, Tumbles and Janis Jopin.

 

I thought I might run into Sweet Tooth and Bugs taking a break at one of the water sources, but I never wound up seeing them the whole day. They had finally out-distanced me, perhaps never to be seen again. (Not by me, at least.)

At one of the water sources, I took a long break to pull out my wet sleeping bag and ground sheet and finally, after three days, my gear was dry! Completely and totally dry! It was such an amazing milestone.

Except for the two breaks at the water sources, I hiked nearly non-stop. Nothing more than 15 minute breaks for a snack occasionally. The afternoon heat and humidity was brutal, and I even used my umbrella at times to shade myself. I made good time, however, and over the relatively flat and easy terrain, managed to push nearly 30 miles, stopping just before the trail crossed Sweet Creek, in a lush meadow next to the creek.

The meadow was nice with thick, green grass--a nice change from the hard, barren ground from the last few days.

The others camped somewhere ahead of me, although I figured they probably didn't go much beyond where the trail crossed the creek. After that, water was scarce again. So I wound up camping by myself and called it a night.

Camping on this nice, green grass was a luxury!

The boys are drying out from the condensation in the morning.

The good drinking water is in the pipe!

Day 102: "I thought I was gonna die!"

July 31: It was a wet and miserable night. I had found a piece of wood, maybe 18 inches long, that I used to prop my tarp near my head up so I'd have a little breathing room, but then the wind changed 180 degrees and the wind-blown rain started coming right in. So I removed the wood and lost the little breathing room I had.

The rain continued on for hours and hours, a hard, steady rain that slowly seeped through the tarp covering me. Normally I expect a bit of water to seep through the tarp, but when it's set up properly, it'll roll down to the edges and drop keeping me dry. But with the tarp thrown over myself like a blanket, that wasn't happening. It was just seeping onto me and all of my gear. Fortunately, it wasn't a cold rain and the nighttime temperatures weren't particularly cold as well, so I wasn't too worried about hypothermia. I was wet and miserable, though. There was no avoiding that!

What did shatter my perception of safety, however, was the lightning which enveloped me during the night. BOOM! Ear-shattering crashes striking dangerously close. One after another. Boom! Boom! Boom! I was under the tarp with my eyes closed, but the flash was so bright, it blinded me! I pushed my eyes into the crook of my arm to cover my eyes with something more substantial than a thin tarp and my eyelids. Even then, I could still see a bit of the flashes of light, but at least it wasn't positively blinding.

Camped on this old, sudden road turned out to be a great idea in a lightning storm!

I felt fortunate that I was camped down in the slight depression in the otherwise flat, featureless terrain. And the fact that I couldn't even set up my tarp properly was probably beneficial given the lightning since absolutely no part of my camp or myself was more than a few inches high, and--in the slight depression--I was actually lower than the surrounding terrain. Only by a few inches, but still..... with as much lightning striking so closely, keeping a low profile was the name of the game and I was about as low as one could get without digging a trench!

And it continued for hours this way. Heavy rain, booming thunder and blinding lightning. It was a wet, miserable night.

But the storm finally passed, and I survived the night. Near sunrise, I started cleaning up the mess and assessing the damage. Well, mostly just a lot of wet gear. My camp clothes and sleeping bag were my biggest problem. They were all thoroughly wet and would need to be dried out at some point, but it was still overcast, cool and humid early in the morning. Not ideal for drying out gear.

I wrung out as much water as I could. No sense carrying more of it than I had to! My electronics and journal were safe and dry in their Ziplock baggies, so no permanent damage done. But still.... Not a great night.

Dealing with the water slowed my departure, and I wasn't ready to get up and start hiking until closer to 7:00am. And, although I didn't want to do it, I was planning to backtrack 2.1 miles in search of my lost trekking pole. I thought about leaving my pack at camp and traveling without it. What would be the chances of some animal getting into my pack in the hour or so it might take to do the 4.2 miles round-trip? Not like I had to worry about bears out here, but there were definitely other animals that could try checking it out: rabbits, coyotes, pronghorn antelope, etc. 

In the end, it wound up not mattering. When I stuffed my tarp into its bag, I discovered my trekking pole hiding under it, along the left edge. I had it the whole time! I was so mad at myself! I had literally looked under my tarp twice the evening before while looking for it but hadn't spotted it. The trekking pole is several feet long so I thought it would be easy to see when I looked under the tarp, but it turned out to lay precisely along the edge of the tarp, and when I lifted the tarp to look, a few inches on the sides kept it covered. I knew at the time there were a few inches I couldn't see very well, but it seemed impossible for something as long as a trekking pole to hide under such a small area so I didn't actually look as close as I could have. And it wouldn't have been so well hidden, except that it followed precisely along the edge of the tarp. If it had been laying just a few degrees further in any direction, I'd have seen it easily.

My campsite was pretty sad, wet and miserable by morning. I still hadn't found my trekking pole when I took this photo, but can you see it? It's under that narrow, thin spot on the left, under my tarp. How can you blame me for thinking a three-foot trekking pole couldn't possibly hide under such a small area?!

So I was kicking myself when I realized that I had my trekking pole the whole time. It definitely could have been used to keep me much drier during the night if I had it available. However, I was thrilled that I didn't have to backtrack 2.1 miles. I hadn't even left camp yet and already saved myself 4.2 miles of walking! 

The day's hike was largely uneventful. The morning was basically cloudy and depressing. The clouds never really went away, not completely, but they seemed thinner in the afternoon and therefore everything felt a bit brighter and less depressing. The humidity was absolutely awful, however. Temperatures were certainly lower than they had been, but it didn't really fee like that.

If you don't get zapped by lightning, there's this electric fence to do it for you! I swear it was the only electric fence I saw the entire trail. Why here?!

This section of the trail is kind of interesting. Since about Rawlins, I had been hiking through what's known as the Great Divide Basin. It's an interesting area because none of the water that falls here as precipitation ever reaches an ocean. It either evaporates or is absorbed into the ground water. It seemed shocking to me that all the rain that fell last night, absolutely none of it would ever reach an ocean. This is one of the reasons that water is so scarce along this part of the trail, though. There are no rivers or creeks leading from the mountains towards the oceans. The only water sources generally come from underground, which generally come from wells installed so the cattle on the ranches could drink from. There are occasionally cow tanks where runoff water can collect. Not exactly great water from those, however. I definitely prefer the wells!

Late in the afternoon, I caught up with Sweet Tooth and Bugs drying out gear next to one of the cow tanks, and we stopped to talk about the storm last night. They said they had camped on a small bump on the terrain, and Bugs turned to me and said, "I thought I was going to die. I really thought I would die! It would be my last night on Earth!" It was a wild night for sure, but I was glad they didn't get struck by lightning. If they had been, I'd have been the ones to discover their bodies. And, you know, it's not like I wished them ill-well either, but if they were going to die on the trail, I'd just as soon prefer somebody else find their bodies.

Although I found the lightning particularly frightening, I didn't really believe I was in serious danger from it--mostly because I was in that slight depression where it looked like an old road was worn into the ground and had such an incredibly low profile. The lightning was definitely very close and definitely a major annoyance from the deafening booms and blinding flashes of light, but I felt like I was in the best place one could possibly be in such a situation on this featureless terrain. They were actually camped on a small rise, and in tents that stood a few feet high. The idea sent shivers down my spine. They might have been a lot more dry than I was, but their night was a heck of a lot more scary!

But they didn't come out completely dry either, since they had their sleeping bags out now to dry. The wind-powered rain did infiltrate their tents to some degree.

I was ready for a good, long break and pulled out my tarp, groundsheet and come camp clothes to dry as well. We were next to one of the few water sources for the day, and I planned to cook dinner right there next to the water when I had all the water I needed readily available. Bugs and Sweet Tooth had been there for awhile, though, and continued on about 5 or 10 minutes after I arrived.

Dinner was great, and I lounged around for an hour or so letting my gear dry. My tarp and groundsheet were pretty much completely dry by the time I left again. My camp clothes were mostly dry. I figured they'd dry out after I wore them for a half hour. My sleeping bag was a bit more persistent holding in the water, though. It didn't want to dry very quickly at all, but at least some of the puffiness of the down was finally returning. At least it could partially do its job, and fortunately the nights weren't especially cold. I'd be fine. Maybe by morning, my body heat will finally get it fully dried out.

I pushed onward a couple of more hours before setting up camp. The terrain grew a few hills to break the monotony of before. They weren't particularly massive, but definitely noticeable!

The weather forecast didn't call for any rain or storms during the night, so I camped high on a small hill with wide open views. I didn't set up my tarp since rain wasn't in the forecast, but I hoped the wind wouldn't pick up during the night. At the time I stopped, the wind wasn't bad, but who knew how that would change during the night?

A little after sunset, several other thru-hikers passed by including Janice Joplin, Twain, Tumbles and Captain Jack. I had wondered what happened to Twain and Captain Jack. I last saw them the day we left Rawlins and figured they were nearby somewhere, but somehow we never saw each other. Janice Joplin and Tumbles I had no idea were even around, and this was the first time I even met them.

They mostly just admired the view from my camp and said, "Wow! This is pretty nice!" I said that they were welcome to join me, but they wanted to push on a bit further, which they did.

The rest of the evening I had to myself. I ate a few snacks for dinner, then read my Kindle deep into the night.

Stagnant cow water, not the best, but beggars can't be choosers!

Drying out my gear. And look at that beard! Where did that come from?! =)

The sunset turned out nice, but a little muted. =)

Day 101: The Trekking Pole Fiasco

July 30: I didn't sleep well during the night. The wind, rain, and particularly hard ground made a potent combination. I did sleep in a bit as a result, but not too late. I had to take advantage of the early-morning cool temperatures, after all! So I was on the trail and moving by 6:30am.

The day's hike wasn't particularly noteworthy. Temperatures were still hot and humid, but significantly cooler than the last few days. Thank goodness for small favors, right? The terrain was more-or-less the same as before: flat, desolate but otherwise easy.

Morning rainbow!

Three different times throughout the day I caught up with Sweet Tooth and Bugs, each time when they stopped at a water source. Just the fact that there were three different water sources during the day was a bit of a small miracle in itself! They invariably wound up being water from cattle troughs, but those weren't so bad as long as the water came from a well and I could fill up before the water drained into the pool that cattle drank from.

It was at the end of the day when the crisis happened. I'd already covered about 28 miles for the day and decided that it was a good time to stop. Rain was in the forecast for the night, and the winds were fierce! So my main concern was trying to find a place where I could set up camp anywhere the wind wasn't so bad, but it seemed bad everywhere. There just wasn't much around to hide from the wind.

Until... I reached what looked like an old roadbed next to the trail that had been worn down by a foot or so. The slight depression in it provided a small wind break, and it was the best option I had seen for miles so I grabbed it!

I could see lightning coming out of this cloud, and at one point, it looked like a heavy hail storm, although it never did hail on me. (Hail storms, if you're wondering, look a lot whiter than a regular rain storm does.)

 

I spread out my ground sheet, then pulled out my tarp since rain was expected and.... looking around, I didn't see my trekking pole. What happened to my trekking pole?! Nooo!!!!!

The last couple of miles, I thought it was in my pack. I didn't really need it on such flat, easy terrain and hadn't been using it, and I tried thinking back the last time I actually remembered seeing or using the trekking pole, which was about 2.1 miles behind me where I had stopped for a short break. I must have left it there. ARGH!!! I didn't want to backtrack 2.1 miles! Definitely not now as rain appeared to be imminent. 

I did backtrack about 5 minutes on the off chance that it somehow fell out of my pack when I got off the trail and started investigating the sunken road as a potential place to camp, but came up empty.

Setting up my tarp without any trees and no trekking pole.... well, there really was nothing to set up. I wound up throwing the tarp over my campsite like a blanket. Which is something I've done before, but typically just when there's an ever-so-light sprinkle that is likely to pass through quickly. According to the weather forecast, there was a lot of rain expected during the night. This was going to be a miserable night....

 

This is definitely not the best setup when the weather forecast is predicting heavy rains during the night. I'll be throwing everything under the tarp and sleeping with it just laying on the ground like this. (See a bit of my groundsheet sticking out from under the tarp?)

In the morning, I'll have to backtrack and look for the trekking pole. Ugh. If I were in a thick forest, I'd live without it until I could get into town and buy a replacement, but I need this pole just to set up my tarp in this treeless terrain. I did stake out the corners and edges of my tarp, just to make sure the wind didn't blow it away, but with absolutely nothing to support the ridge line, it just laid over me like a blanket.

By the early evening, it started sprinkling. In the distance, I could see flashes from lightning and the rumble of thunder. It was, I knew, going to be a long, miserable night....

The cloud cover definitely helped keep temperatures a bit cooler in the morning, but it would still be miserably hot by the afternoon.

That little black dot ahead is either Bugs or Sweet Pea. I don't remember anymore and it's much too small for me to recognize which one it is.

'Twas the first water source of the day! I'd grab my water from the spring in the covered tube.

They're like little stepping stones across the boggy mud!

Sweet Tooth (L) and Bugs (R) beat the heat of the day by making their own shade.

The second water source of the day was cold, clean water from this pipe! It was, however, located about a half-mile off trail. *sigh*

I sense there's a thru-hiker ahead of me....

I was a bit curious about what this was doing here, so I popped open the container to find out....

Apparently, it's part of this "Lode Mining Claim." I'm still not exactly sure what it meant, but reading the rest of the text, it almost sounded like someone wanted to mine this property and this was how they notified the property owner that they were going to mine it? It all seemed a little odd and weird to me, but not my problem!

It's like someone took all the cow poop in the area and piled it up into a big pile of crap! And I'd find these big piles of poop along the trail quite frequently! Very odd....

What a pretty rainbow! Just ignore the lightning and thunder coming from the cloud behind it! =)

 

Day 100: Leaving Rawlins

July 29: It was finally time to leave Rawlins. Forecasted temperatures were still hot, but finally peaked yesterday and would now descend. For a few days, at least.

Mural near the post office

I wanted an early start, but I couldn't start too early since I needed to drop by the post office to mail some items ahead. My laptop with a few miscellaneous items would be bounced ahead to Pinedale, but I also mailed a number of items to my mom's house that I no longer needed, which included my first journal of the trail. I have to admit, of all the things I mailed, this was the item that worried me the most. It was priceless! It had all of the details I would need to write these blogs (up through yesterday)! If it got lost or damaged in the mail.... *shaking head* But what was the alternative? To carry it? Out in the wilderness, that wasn't necessarily a safe bet either. A rain storm and a failed Ziplock could turn it into complete mush. What if a squirrel nibbled on it during the night? So I decided to risk sending it to my mom. To be fair, the post office had never lost any of my packages. It just took them forever to finally get it to me at times. Time, fortunately, wasn't of the essence in this case.

Anyhow, the post office didn't open until 8:00am, so I had a couple of hours to kill which I used to pack up, eat breakfast and take a shower.

There was no particularly compelling reason for me to walk to the post office a couple of miles away. I'd done the walk a few times already: When I first came into town, when I mailed a food drop to myself up the trail two days ago, and I even went by it yesterday on my way to the prison museum. I didn't mind walking then since it was only a couple of miles and I liked to stretch my legs, but today I had real miles to do! No sense wasting them by walking to the post office! And I didn't have to, because I had the number for a service that could give rides to hikers around town for something like 50 cents.

I tried calling the number a couple of time but never got anyone to answer. *sigh*

So I wound up walking to the post office. If I realized I'd be walking, I would have left earlier and got there right when the post office opened. As it was, I wound up arriving about a half hour after that.

Anyhow, I got my packages mailed off, then jumped back on the trail and followed it out of town.

The first few miles were awful, following alongside a busy, paved highway, so I was happy when the trail veered off onto gravel roads. Yes, beautiful gravel roads!

And the rest of the day's hike was more of the same terrain that I had before: flat, easy walking along gravel roads.

Temperatures were still miserably hot, even in the morning. I did, however, get to drink ice cold water all morning long because I had thought to freeze my water bottles in the mini-fridge of my hotel room during the night. By 1:00pm, however, the last of the frozen water had melted and the cool, tasty water started warming up into something less pleasant. I knew it wouldn't last forever, but it was a still a sad moment when I checked my water bottle and couldn't spot ice floating it in anymore.

Early in the afternoon, I came across a few trees along the trail. I'm not sure how they got there, or why they were there, but it had been the only shade I saw all day so I couldn't just walk past it! Nope, I had to stop for a rest. After checking the surrounding ground for cow poop, of course, because that was absolutely everywhere, I stopped for a break. 

I don't know how these trees got here, but I wasn't going to walk past the only shade I saw all day without taking a good, long break! =)

 

While resting in the shade, I saw a couple of figures coming up the trail behind me. When I first spotted them, I couldn't tell who they were. They were too far away to identify, but I wasn't in any particular rush either and was happy to wait around under the tree to find out who they were. My goal for the day had been to cover at least 10 to 15 miles out of town, and I'd been making very good time along the easy terrain. Despite my late start out of town, I was still on schedule.

And about 15 or 20 minutes later, Bugs and Sweet Tooth arrived at the trees. They took a short break there, but wouldn't linger anywhere near as long as I did in the shade. Remembering how excited they were about the temporary tattoos I provided back in New Mexico, I offered them some new ones which they were happy to take. These turned out much better than the ones before. The transfer process from those New Mexico tats just didn't turn out well.

They continued onward, and I eventually followed not far behind.

We caught up with each other again a few miles later at Fish Spring Pond, the only reliable water source we'd be passing for the day according to Guthook. That was where I discovered I had lost a water bottle. Noooo! It wasn't the end of the world--I had plenty of other receptacles to carry water--but I did like that bottle. It must have fallen out when the trail passed through a barbed-wire fence and I crawled under it. It's the only place I could think of where it might have come out of my pack, and I knew I had it back at the shade trees so it had to have fallen out somewhere within those last few miles.

I was not, however, going to go back to retrieve it. Nope. It was too far back.

Fish Spring Pond was the only reliable water source we'd pass all day.

While filling up with water, Captain Jack and Twain caught up with us. Twain had found a water bottle along the way... Yes! Trail mail! I got my water bottle back! =) To thank him, I pulled out my temporary tats and offered him one. I also gave one to Captain Jack since they were out. Seemed kind of rude not to share with everyone.

They all had stopped for a break, but I was inclined to keep pushing on. I'd already had a long break under the shade trees. I didn't need another long break in the sun. I had little doubt that they'd catch up with me later anyhow. They definitely hiked faster than I did.

The trail went cross-country for a bit before veering back onto the paved highway for another mile or so. It was the same highway that I followed out of Rawlins, and in hindsight, I wondered why I didn't just hitch a ride back into town for the night. That would have been brilliant! *slapping self* I could have slackpacked this whole section! Had an extra day of real food in town. And an extra evening to watch YouTube videos online. Then just hitch back again in the morning. I really wished I had thought of that sooner.

I could still hitch back into town, but it seemed pointless now. I already carried my fully-loaded pack here, so I already missed the slackpacking opportunity. And I already mailed my laptop ahead so that wasn't around to use anymore either. And if I went into town and bought food at a restaurant, that would just leave more unused food in my pack to carry. Nope. I missed my opportunity. That would have been the smart thing to do. (Although, I suppose, I did save money by not spending an extra day in town.)

Late in the afternoon, dark and ugly clouds rolled in, and I could hear thunder rolling around in them. I found that a little disturbing since I was walking around on a highly exposed flat area with absolutely nowhere to go for protection. When Bugs and Sweet Tooth caught up with me, I tried to keep up with them, at least for a little bit. At least if lightning struck one of us, there would be someone around to help. As long as we weren't hiking too close together!

Thunderstorms are approaching. That's Bugs and Sweet Tooth ahead on the trail, and just seconds after taking this photo I saw a flash of lightning reach out of the clouds ahead and strike the mountains in the distance. Very dramatic!

 

I pushed onward, much further than I originally planned, wanting to take advantage of the cooler evening temperatures, so it wasn't until about 8:30pm that I finally stopped for the day after covering nearly 25 miles! I definitely flew way past my goal for the day!

With the dark, angry clouds still looming, I set up my tarp the best I could. There wasn't really much to attach it to, however. I typically liked to attach at least one end to a tree, but that was impossible out here. A solid attachment point was even more important when it was windy, and it was definitely super windy.

So I wound up setting the foot-end of the tarp directly on the ground and propping up the head-end with my trekking pole, just letting the tarp sag over my bottom half. It wasn't ideal, but I'd live. Well, at least so long as the lightning didn't strike me. But at least I had a pretty low profile to the ground! The highest point was where my trekking pole held up the tarp, and I deliberately kept it low due to the high winds and threat of lightning so it only poked up about two feet from the ground.

But like I said, it wasn't a great setup. There just wasn't much to work with out here. A thick forest would have been particularly welcome at the moment!

I skipped making dinner since I set up camp so late, and it would have been difficult to cook under such a low-hanging tarp anyhow. That's okay, though, since I wasn't feeling particularly hungry either. I ate a few snacks for dinner and that was plenty.

Behind me, I could see a couple of other hikers setting up their tents maybe a half-mile away. I assumed it must be Bugs and Sweet Tooth since they had been right behind me, but I wouldn't find out later that it was actually Captain Jack and Twain. Bugs and Sweet Tooth actually stopped to camp even before that.

Anyhow... thus ended my 100th day since starting the trail. Progress was still being made!

The trail followed this busy highway out of Rawlins for a few miles. Bleh!

This is what most of the terrain today consisted of.

I was already excited about seeing the trail heading toward those trees in the distance. Could there be shade? I hoped for shade! I prayed for shade!

And yes! There was shade! Beautiful, glorious shade! =)

Sweet Tooth follows the waymarkers that marked the cross-country section of today's hike.

That's Fish Spring Pond in the distance. The hiker in the lower corner of the photo is either Sweet Tooth or Bugs, but I don't remember which and I can't tell by looking at the photo.

At this point, I was mentally kicking myself for not having thought to slackpack the whole day and hitch back into Rawlins for the night there!

I did see one rattlesnake today!

Storm clouds can sure look dramatic from a distance! But the lightning was a big concern along this very exposed terrain with nowhere to hide!