Day 87 – 7/18/13 – 17.7 mi (1538.5)

Ninja, Rockin, Silly Chili and I got up early and started hiking at 5:30am, both to beat the heat and get to town earlier. After 10 miles of road waking, Rockin and Silly Chili split off to go to Atlantic City, 1.3 miles off trail where they had resupply packages waiting.

Ninja and I continued on to South Pass City, which isn’t really a city at all, just a dirt road on the edge of the middle of nowhere (I’ve determined the exact center of the middle of nowhere was about 25 miles back) with restored historic buildings lining it that seems to be strangely popular with tourists. We were both to receive resupply boxes at the gift shop/post office there. Despite both boxes being mailed on July 9 from PA, only my box made it. A call to my parents and a tracking number check showed the box never got out of Blandon, PA. Oh well, we decided back in Rawlins that we’d be going into Lander from the highway 4 miles down the road anyway, so it’s not the end of the world, but a total waste of postage since we can’t get a refund.

After a couple hours sorting out the box situation, we continued on toward highway 28 to hitch to Lander. Of course this is the CDT and we couldn’t find the trail leading out of South Pass City. There was a really nice CDT trailhead sign and a cute little bridge immediately outside the town, but 25′ down the “trail”, a wooden fence blocked the path. We figured the bridge and sign were too nice to be the CDT, and turned around. We ended up bushwhacking through willows over private property until we got back to where the trail was once again on a dirt road. We later found out from LoveNote and Stryder we should’ve just hopped that fence. That was the trail after all.

Eventually all of us got to Lander. We were considering camping in town to be cheap, but it’s so hot we all want AC, and we fit all 7 of us into one motel room.

Sweetfish of course had an adventure between leaving us and getting to Lander. He ran into a group of 200 Mormons in the desert, dressed in 1800s garb, reenacting a pull cart journey from the move westward. He camped with them, they served him dinner and breakfast, and they gave him an event t shirt and the Book of Mormon. How does this stuff always happen to him??

We’ve decided to zero tomorrow in Lander. We are not leaving until Stryder gets new shoes!