I had a big breakfast at Rock Rabbit with Megan Ross and Mike Goss, two school teachers from Albuquerque who were doing some regional touring, then got my MSR water filter serviced at The Great Outdoor Shop, went shopping for four days worth of food, and spend two hours touring the Museum of the Mountain Man http://www.museumofthemountainman.com before heading south towards the Great Divide Basin.
Didn’t leave Pinedale until 4:00pm, which was very late, but I had another sexy tailwind and made very good speed on the mostly flat smooth gravel roads. Scenery was moonscapy…sun going down in the west and moon coming up in the east. Crystal clear sky and not many folks around.
As I neared the creek where the campsite was supposed to be (I was monitoring the mileage closely on my cyclometer) I unexpectedly hit this washboard section which almost threw me down. It’s hard to tell someone what this is like – since I don’t have front or rear suspension every bump in the road gets transmitted to your body, and if the ridges in the road are deep it’s really a wild ride! Right after that a bat flew right at me from some roadside bushes.
I found a small creek which I thought was Little Sandy Creek but I couldn’t find the campsite, which I thought would at least have a fire ring. So I “commando camped” near some rocks just off the road, took a bucket bath with some water I heated up, fixed supper, and bedded down to a sparkling Wyoming sky.
