Sunday, September 1st

Sunday, September 1st. Day 75

Today's miles = 16.6 Total CDT miles = 1,113.3

I did not want to get out of the bed this morning...so I didn't for a while. It was 10 or so by the time I walked over to The Oxbow Cafe. It was 11:45 before I started hitching out of town back to the trail. Panama and Bethany were already at the road trying to hitch so Baboon and I sat in the grass out of the view of the street as to not interrupt their attempts at hitching. It was about 5 minutes later that a man in a beat up old pick up with no tailgate stopped for them. They signaled for us to come over and the four of us and the two dogs crammed into the back of this truck. We were all hanging on for dear life as the driver drove 80 down the highway.

There is a town called South Path City which is an old mining town that never really had it's time to flourish, even when it was in it's so called prime. The town is one street with about 20 buildings (including homes). In the 60's the State of Wyoming began to buy the land and turn it into a historic site; restoring the buildings and keeping them furnished with all the original stuff. They now open to town for tourists allowing them to walk around the city and go into all the buildings. I didn't want to pass it up so I spent a few hours exploring the town and watching the informational video's in some of the buildings and reading all about the history of the Wyoming mining rush.

Around 4pm I started hiking for the day. It was mostly road walk. The sky was cloudy which was amazing being that this whole section from Lander to Rawlings is the desert basin. It's suppose to be the hottest section of the entire CDT and the driest outside of New Mexico; and to have natural shade is unheard of. I had to night hike for a mile or so to make it to the first water source out of town. I don't like to dry camp and I didn't have enough water to even if I had wanted to. Panama and Bethany were suppose to make it to the water tonight as well but they never arrived. There is an alternate you can take that is longer than the CDT but offers more water and shade that they were thinking of taking on account of the dogs. Hopefully they took that and are alright. I may run into them tomorrow.

I'm camped next to the water in a grassy area covered almost completely with cow shit. There is no escaping it and I can hear them mooing in the distance. My new dislike of cows makes this a very unfortunate situation for me.