Day: 092
Date: Tuesday, 06 August 2024
Start: Union Pass Road
Finish: Brooks Lake Road (but staying in Dubois, WY)
Daily Kilometres: 37.1
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 2705.3
Weather: Cool early then warm and mostly sunny with a couple of thunderstorms in the late afternoon.
Accommodation: Motel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts/Muesli
Lunch: Snacks/Trail mix
Dinner: Bacon cheeseburgers & fries, ice-cream
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: Nothing in particular.
Lowlight: With just 2km to go in our day, a thunderstorm rolled through dropping the temperature with gusty winds and rain. Just what we wanted when we were soon to start hitchhiking. (However, it had cleared by the time we did start hitchhiking.)
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We got away at 6am with a dry tent despite some rain periods overnight. We had 35km+ of road walking in front of us to reach Brooks Lake Road from where we planned to hitch-hike back to Dubois where we had a motel booked for two nights.
Our first 15km was to continue along the dirt Union Pass Road through forest and then past guest ranches and holiday cabins before descending steeply to Hwy 26. During the descent a car pulled up and the driver told us he had just seen a black bear on the road not far behind us. We.must have just missed it.
At the busy Hwy 26, which we reached around 9:30am, we could have hitchhiked south to Dubois for an early finish to the day, but the wildfire detour we were taking required us, at some point, to go north on Hwy 26 for 20km. If we didn't do it today, then we would have to do it on Thursday when we left Dubois (with full packs). We did it today.
Although we were climbing much of the way, and the road was very exposed, we made good time. We were following the meandering Wind River upstream through treeless hilly open range country, backed by mountains, with occasional guest ranches and holiday cabins. Ahead were the precipitous rock walls of North Breccia Cliffs and Pinnacle Buttes.
We reached our goal, Brooks Lake Road, around 4:40pm, having endured a brief thunderstorm half an hour earlier (see above). We then began hitchhiking back towards Dubois and got a lift after about twenty minutes with three seasonal workers, two of them native American Indians from Arizona and had a good chat as we retraced our steps for the day. It brought home how far we had walked.
In the busy small town of Dubois, after buying some drinks at the supermarket where we were dropped off, we walked half a mile and checked into our over-priced motel around 6pm (but it is the height of the summer season and the annual Dubois rodeo is on this coming weekend).
Soon after, Julie went to a nearby cafe and bought some welcome takeout for dinner after a long day.
Looking forward to a day off tomorrow.
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