With only ~9 miles to hike today, we took our time this morning.  We both especially enjoyed not having to dig cat holes and not having to worry about running out of toilet paper - what a luxury a well-maintained pit toilet is!

The most difficult part of the day was a 300ft climb to the top of the plateau, which wasn’t difficult at all considering we recently left Colorado.  About halfway up, we stopped at the spring where Nick got water yesterday for a little more water.  Once the tiny climb was over, it was flat all the way to Rawlins. Most of it was dirt roads, but the last few miles were highway. 

The walk into town could have been boring, but I had cell service and over 65 messages from friends to listen to.  I listened to them the entire way into town, which was over two hours.  They made me so happy!

I did briefly stop listening to the messages during the highway walk, when the local sheriff stopped me.  He wanted to know if I recently saw hiker named Chany, who has been missing for the past two days.  I think he was talking about a hiker we last saw in Lake City, but it was difficult to tell from the picture he showed me because the picture was of a clean cut guy with no facial hair, obviously taken BEFORE he started the trail.  It’s only been two days since he last checked in so I’m hoping its just a failure of his device or something silly like that.

Once in town, we stopped at the post office to get our resupply packages.  Sadly, only one of them made it.  The bigger one, with most of our snack food in it, has been lost forever somewhere in Texas.  Happily, the box with the letters made it, which is all I really care about (I spotted a letter from Betty in there, can’t wait to read it!).  We can get more food but letters are precious.  That being said, I’ll be very sad if I find out that the big box contained special treats, like Mark’s jerky or Mary’s breakfast bars or some other surprise, like the ginger cookies we received in our last resupply (Mary, those were delicious!)

After quickly sorting through the food we DID receive (so we know what we need to purchase later), we decided to get lunch from Buck’s Sports Grill.  We were just about finished when Thighclops walked in, followed by Steelhead.  They joined us, of course.  After they ordered, Blister came in - he joined us, too.  I loved talking with them.  They (and most other hikers we know, like Mr. Fabulous et al and Master Chef and Fuego) all did the road walk.  Even though it did get them to town a day early, it sounded miserable.  They are all good people and I’m grateful to know them.

After finally getting our check from the busy waitress, we walked another 1.5 miles across town to the Hampton Inn.  You know the drill by now - showers, laundry, filter maintenance, blog uploads.  After all those chores were complete, we walked across the road to Walmart, where we purchased food for tonight (salad, fresh fruit, rotisserie chicken) and food to replace what was in our lost forever resupply package (that’s what the postmaster said, anyway).

Back at the hotel room, I organized my food, forcing myself to get all the hard work done before I did what I really wanted to do, which was read the fantastic letters from Theresa and Betty.  While I was at it, I finally read my Happy Trails Wyoming letter from Ashley, which was superb.  She asked some great questions (I’ll answer them in future blog posts) and included a lot of Wyoming facts.  It’s perfect!

I’m very much looking forward to sleeping in this bed with four pillows!

Along the way: