Day: 082
Date: Saturday, 27 July 2024
Start: Sweetwater River
Finish: Atlantic City, WY
Daily Kilometres: 17.3
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 2409.7
Weather: Cold to cool and mostly overcast with strong winds and occasional showers and thunderstorms.
Accommodation: Cabin at B&B
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts/Muesli
Lunch: Cheeseburgers & fries
Dinner: Cheeseburgers & fries (the menu wasn't that big!), strawberry & rhubarb pie & icecream.
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: It was satisfying to complete our crossing of the Great Divide Basin without the terrifying thunderstorms, debilitatingly heat or gale force winds other hikers have dealt with. Although we had a taste of all three, they were quite manageable. There was an awful lot of nothing out there, and we saw very few people, but that in itself made it interesting and an experience to remember.
Lowlight: Nothing in particular.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We had a good night's sleep and were hiking by soon after 6am, hoping to reach Atlantic City, where we had a B&B cabin booked, in time for lunch.
It was a much colder morning than for the last week and we both had frozen hands after the tent packup for the first hour of hiking. Although we had a beautiful sunrise, the weather gradually deteriorated as we walked and soon it was very grey and dull with an increasingly strong cold wind blowing. Usually, we remove some clothing layers after the first hour or two of hiking but not this morning. The landscape was bare and treeless with a few scattered cows. It was bleak and worsening, with a few light showers coming through and some distant thunder.
For most of the way we were hiking along a gravel road with almost no traffic and making good time. After climbing gradually most of the morning, we descended quite sharply into the old mining village of Atlantic City, which boasts a 150 year history and has metal plaques outside many properties describing what the building had previously been, or what had previously occupied the site.
The housing is now mostly wooden cabins or mobile homes plus two bars/cafes, next to each other, and a tiny general store. It's the kind of place where people come to live off the grid and we doubt there are many Democrats in town.
We found our B&B on the way into town, arriving around 11am, and left our packs on their verandah before walking a kilometre to one of the cafes and having a very welcome and tasty early lunch. In the early afternoon, we returned to the B&B, met “Wild Bill”, our very friendly and accommodating host and were given access to our cabin. Apart from operating the B&B with his partner, “Wild Bill” is also a gunsmith, selling guns and ammo, a knifesmith, and operates a septic tank cleaning business. Truly a jack of all trades, and a very nice one at that.
Disappointingly, there is no electric power in the cabin to charge our devices, a critical function for thruhikers, but there is a power board on the verandah of the main house we can use.
During the afternoon, Julie managed to do our laundry and we sorted out our food, which we had mailed ahead to “Wild Bill”, for the next five days to Pinedale, our next stop. We are looking forward to this next leg which takes us into the renowned Wind River Range and the start of grizzly bear territory (which stretches from here to Canada).
In late afternoon we walked back to the same cafe where we had lunch for an early dinner. Later, back at the B&B, we enjoyed a cake and ice cream supper on the verandah with "Wild Bill" who told us about his very interesting life.
After breakfast tomorrow we will be back on the trail.