I mailed my stuff out this morning to South Pass City, for my resupply at the end of this 170 mile stretch and got my new shoes from the post office. Learning from last time, I tied them extremely loose until I can break them in. Then I stuck out my thumb to get back to the trail. It took two separate rides to get back to where I left off, but finally at 10am I was hiking again. The stress was finally over. Whatever I have in my pack is what i will have for the coming days. I was dragging all day, walking the roads and rough trails of Shoshone National Forest. It’s easy to find the source of this lack of energy. I had too much to do during the few hours I was in town and didn’t sleep well in the extremely cheap motel. A motel with slow WiFi, 70s shag carpet and a broken bed. But it did the job and I accomplished nearly all my pressing tasks. So I fought through the day, much like the end of a marathon or a long trail run, I just kept the legs churning. Maybe not always fast, but efficient and moving. The three things I pride myself on are efficiency, progress and avoiding laziness. In fact, I have gotten up in the middle of the night to take care or even repair somethings with my gear purely because of a promise I made myself earlier in the day I would get it done that evening. Well overall today was nothing spectacular. The clouds pissed rain off and on, with a few claps of thunder, my feet were constantly wet with muddy fields and stream crossings, but the sad part was there were not even cows to talk to. This weather actually drives me crazy. I carry my rain outfit on the outside of my pack and it is not uncommon to put it on and take it off half a dozen times a day. One second I can be sweating profusely, only to hear a clap of thunder and have the sweat quickly washed away with a ten minute downpour. It is not necessarily a bad thing, it keeps me on my toes, but it does require meticulous packing to ensure sensitive items are packed in a way to keep them dry. The terrain was a mix of lodge pole pines and rolling grassy hills. Small shrugs and burrs dot the grasslands. Dead trees litter the forest, killed by the pine Beatles of recent years. It’s a shame. Sometimes an entire acre is littered with dead trees.
Miles 32
Total miles 4291
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