One truck. Then another. And another, and another. On and on went the 4am procession, racing past our tent that wasn't 20 feet from the shoulder of the highway we'd followed since leaving Rawlins yesterday. Hunting season had apparently followed us all the way from north of the Wind River Range to here, where midnight had marked the beginning of the local rifle season.
So Long, September
The last day of September. Somewhere along the way, summer slipped into the distance without us hardly noticing. The cold nights of the past few weeks heralded the start of autumn, but with the return of cloudless sunshine and 70-degree weather it feels like the perfect time to be out hiking.
Red Desert
The Red Desert of Wyoming is not a place you easily miss. At better than 9,000 square miles, you'd need only a pair of eyes to see it readily from space. And zooming down from space to ground level, you might have seen two specks ambling slowly across it.
The Checkerboard
The massive expanse we've been walking through these past three days since Atlantic City is an unusual one. Neither forested wilderness nor arable farmland, but an arid and windswept region that pries apart the Continental Divide from nearly the border of Colorado to the foot of the Wind River Range.
The Folly of FKTs
The 100-meter dash is not for the slow-footed. It is the domain of the rocket ships of the human race and the winners are bestowed the title of world’s fastest man or woman. One simple question though: Why?
Southeastern
Pancakes, coffee, sausage, eggs, pancakes, hashed browns, and more pancakes. That's the way you kickstart a day of hiking, and our breakfast at Wild Bill’s certainly delivered. I can already picture my own look of ambivalence when faced with tomorrow morning’s breakfast protein bar.
Wind of Change
As if bemused by the accelerating pace of our hectic lives, the natural rhythm of the world moves ever onward, inexorably slowly, one season slipping into another almost without our notice. It's one of the many small joys of trail life—the rare attentiveness to even subtle changes in the world around us that might otherwise go unnoticed.