CDT mile 1338.5, miles hiked 25.6

Battle Pass our first gateway to a Wyoming town

We roused out of our beds and packed up.  We had arranged a 9 am ride back to the trail from the owner of the Vancher’s Big Horn Lodge.  Cheezy and I rolled up to the coffee shop and had a breakfast of biscuits and gravy and some lattes.  I wrote postcards to home and then we set off back to the trail.

The trail started off by climbing a nice old road up to a peak.  The peak gave us views of few upcoming trail, mesas, desert and rolling hills.  We all got giddy knowing we would be going low and walking through sagebrush and no longer forest of Beatle kill and blowdowns.

Divide Peak

The first ten miles went quick and we finally stopped for lunch at 12:30, we sat in the woods enjoying the shade and chatting about our time apart.  Buttercup told us of his time alone and missing us, we told him about our trail magic and fun adventures.

We all then took off on the trail it wound through the forest and then it started, mass amounts of blowdowns.  We worked our way over them and around them eventually meeting by a creek which was 20 miles for our start.  We drank water, ate snacks and aired out our tired feet.  I just got new altra lone peak 2.5 in Encampment so taking time to rest my feet was good since they are adjusting to the new shoes.

Cheezy goes over a jumblenof blowdowns

We agreed to camp in 5 miles at a creek and as we hiked the next mile we walked out of the forest and into the high desert.  We were in awe by the rolling hills, the sage brush, desert flowers and desert landscape as far as we could see.  We all were giddy as we knew we would not see snow or blowdowns for a couple of hundred miles now.  We reached the creek but the camping was no good so we moved on 1.5 miles to the next one.

An old miners cabin along the trail

Our camp is amongst soft grass and a small spring.  We ate dinner and told jokes laughing and reveling in our new enviornent.  As we turned in for a bed 6 wild horses appread on the rise across from us and are now enjoying water and grass as we watch them.  They all range in color but are magnificent creatures, I just hope no one steps on me as I cowboy camp tonight under the wild Wyoming sky.

Maverick’s tent under a sheltering sky