So here it was, the wild west of new. I rose to find my open range cowless, yet a few hundred yards off some antelope did indeed play. I packed up and set off aiming for a bridge seven or eight miles up that crossed the Medicine Bow river. I was full on water, but I was just anxious to make a land mark in this uncivilized back country.
My wariness of snakes was at a certain height that day as I’d been told repeatedly that this country was indeed quite snakey. I was used to hearing these things since through out the south and up into the plains everyone made it sound like each step would be on a poison fanged serpent and I saw but one. My sighting of the two rattlers the day Angie and I broke up I attributed to sighting symbols of my dismay and signs from above that I should turn back and correct my ways. Still, I was quite aware that if I spotted an angry rattler back in these roads and was stricken that little help would come to drag me out to safety. I just don’t like the little writhing beasts.
Alas I saw none of them, and trucks did indeed come and go every half an hour or so. As I found out later on people did in fact have ranches down in there. Hence the wild cows. Ultimately, though, the day was uneventful other than the spectacular surroundings of dust and rock and the winding Bow River.
Toward the end of the day I was aiming for a trail to cut across that would shorten my road by about a mile or two. I’d spotted it on my fancy pants $20 back road Wyoming map that’s as thick as my US atlas, but I never found it. I went a total of about 25 miles to my calculations and finally broke out the old stove and cooked myself a dinner of hot cocoa and beefless stroganoff. After dinner I tried foolishly to conserve water doing the dishes by using mostly liquid soap. Only the good Lord knows what I was thinking in the dusty soapy mess, and I’m sure even He is confused about it. I ended up frustrated and gnat ridden, with clusters of suds that spent more water getting rid of than I would have used in the first place.
During this fiasco a local swung by asking about what I was up to looking almost as if he was about to invite me to stay the night at his place. Flustered with the mess I paid little attention to him and after he’d left I kicked myself for not being more friendly. I stomped off another half mile before throwing my bag down and pitching up before sundown. Displeased was I.
I was excited that morning to go into town. I’d just realized that I hadn’t really had a meal since Angie gave me my send off three nights earlier. So far I’d been surviving off of Clif’s, Luna’s, and cold oatmeal. I wandered in to find the restaurants closed but a general store open where coffee was based on donations and the lady sold polish sausages for a buck a piece. That suited me just fine.