Friday, September 03, 2004
287
09/03/04
I'm camped 100 yards from highway 287, my gateway to Rawlins, Wyoming. From my home in the sage, the lights of the cars brush the top of the brush. From a noise perspective, I'm probably too close, but Mineral Exploration Road was so straight, and so long, that I couldn't find a natural place to stop. No home for the night stood out in the monotony of the unchanging roadside.
Sleeping near a US highway was a big change my place in the world. Tonight, I'm sleeping like a vagabond on the side of the road. This place, my home for the night, is really no different than other places I might choose to sleep, other than the intersection of Hwy 287 and Mineral Exploration Road seems like the type of side road where people dispose of dead bodies.
Maybe it's just me, but the penitentiary aspect of Rawlins has me a little freaked out. I'm headed into a town with a state penitentiary on a 3-day weekend. Will everyone with a loved one in the slammer be in town? Are they trustworthy?
I'm sure it will be a normal town stop, perhaps with a little extra smoking.
The night is mixed. The sun set with some rain, enough that I got out my rain jacket. Now after dark, silent lightning flashes in the distance in all directions. Do I have my tarp up? No. I am in my bivy though. I can't wait to get my tent in Rawlins.
Never bounce important gear.
Bounce back to this morning:
No sign of the mare and her foal this morning. I awoke to moderate winds tearing at my tarp and making it noisy. Dawn brought the stake-by-stake collapse at the persistent presence of the moving air. Nothing tragic. It had to come down anyway.
I made an error this morning in determining where I was as I was looking for the solar well, my main source of good water for the day. I thought I was too far west, perhaps on the OTHER N/S road that went from horizon to horizon with barely a bend. So, I headed east and uphill cross-country. I was eventually able to tell that I had been on the correct road. I even figured out my error. And while off-trail, I saw a fox, my first of the trip.
The solar well was a water oasis with plentiful, clear water.
Later in the day, I started seeing some great rocks, amazing small rocks that I could pick up and inspect.
At an important junction, I saw a badger. I followed the badger onto an alternate route, but missed a turn. I could see the highway in the distance, and though I'd just walk to it on the road I was on. Luckily, I decided not to.
Although the highway was my eventual destination, I would have been on it for many more miles than necessary. I backtracked to the more obscure road, and started a long walk through some interesting geology. Halfway through that segment, I came across a wild horse that had died giving birth. The dead foal's bones were part of the mess out of the back of the mare. Walking away, I got a lung full of dead horse smell that stayed with me for a few hours. Ugh. A rock outcrop provided the variation in the landscape to prompt me to have dinner. I could see my next long, straight walk from my dinner location. Mineral Exploration Road headed, without turning, to highway 287, the road to Rawlins.
The rain started just as I finished my dinner break, timing for which I was thankful. It never amounted to much. In my mind Mineral Exploration Road was the end of the Basin, and I let out a sigh of relief when I stepped onto the pavement. I later read that the Continental Divide crosses the road somewhere in the flat part I walked. And I walked a long, flat stretch.
