Day 82 – 7/13/13 – 13 mi (1417.2)

We got up early to beat the heat on the final 13 miles of road walk into town. As we took off, we laughed loudly over Stryder’s sleep talking last night. Out of the deserted sagebrush came a voice. LoveNote!! She walked until 11:30 last night, making a total of 45 miles for the day, and ended up unknowingly camping only 100 ft away from us!

We originally intended to take the trail from this point to town, but there was no trail tread or even cairns or posts to follow and it just paralleled the road anyway, so we opted for the road again. It turned to pavement a couple miles in.
At the edge of town, we found Ninja and Sweetfish trying to hitch south. They’d hitched into town last night and, as is their style, slack packed today.

In town, we walked into a town street festival going on. Talk about culture shock. We are no longer in Colorado mountain towns, full of fit, outdoorsy, tree-hugger types. Wyoming is a very different demographic. I think I’ll leave it at that.

We got a hotel room, something hard to come by in this town due to all the laborers in town for fracking, and had a long afternoon for resupplying and relaxing. Unfortunately, the only outfitter in town is closed on weekends, so Stryder was unable to get new shoes. He did find insoles, which hopefully will do the trick.

Silly Chili has been taking online college classes while on trail, carrying an iPad and doing homework every night. He finished his last paper today and is officially free!