Day Fifty, Denver, CO: Water, Hops, Yeast, and Barley

AWESOME Day Fifty, which was Saturday, the 8th of August.

Boulder, CO has a lot of microbreweries, for some reason or another. It started with the clean, mountain-run-off water supply, and then it became a chicken and the egg scenario; as the beer culture became more and more prevalent, more microbreweries popped up.

So, on Saturday I visited three breweries; Avery, Oskar Blues, and Left Hand.

I really enjoyed the Avery brew tour. As the tour guide – who doubled as the tap room manager as well as one of the brewers – said, each of the brewers are “handpicked”. They’re smart, loud, and competitive people. Their beers reflect this personality. Like most of the Colorado-brewed beers, they’re very hoppy and bold. Very loud beers.

Next was the Oskar Blues Brewery. They can their beer there, and it’s kind of funny. They are great people, and they do have a full batting cage in the brewery. I tried to trade the two free beers that I had won by answering trivia questions for a few pitches in the cage, but they were not interested in this exchange. (For the record, the only reason I was trying to ditch the free beers is because, having to drive on my own, and on top of other samples… otherwise, you should never turn down a free beer, kids.) Oskar Blues cans their beers mainly because it is cheaper, the beer stays fresh longer (light and dissolved O2 stay out of the can,) and, as modern cans do not impart any taste to the beer, it tastes the same. Everybody wins. Oskar Blues was the first microbrewery to can their beer (Dale’s Pale Ale being the flagship,) seven years ago. According to the brewery, 50 other microbreweries have now picked up the trend.

Unfortunately by the time I got to Left Hand it was well beyond brew tour time, (after 5pm at least.) But I picked up a pint glass for the bar back home for my troubles and headed back to my uncle’s. (I end the trip with 7 new pint glasses to add to the collection).

Beer!

Day Forty Eight, Moab UT/Denver CO: Delicate Arch Hike

Day Forty Eight refers to Thursday, August 6th. Early in the morning, I woke up and hiked to Delicate Arch, which is the unofficial state symbol. I hiked early to avoid the crowds, the heat, and get better lighting for pictures. After I hiked to Delicate Arch, which was a total 3 mile hike, I set out on the 6  hour drive back to Denver, where I stayed with my Uncle Ben once more. I’ve got a bunch of great pictures from this one. Make sure to check the Picasa album, linked below, to see more pictures.

I’ve recently uploaded many more pictures on the Picasa albums at http://picasaweb.google.com/reidksmith. Check them out!

Day Forty Seven, Moab, UT: Arching

Day Forty Seven refers to Wednesday, August 5th, during which I drove from Salt Lake City to Moab, which is the gateway to Arches National Park. Arches is a relatively small park, so it was a quick drive through. Here are some pictures:

The reason I only spent one night in Southern Utah is because of the heat. Not only is it so incredibly hot during the day, but it stays pretty warm at night. I plan on coming back around April to see the rest of Southern Utah when it’s cooler.

I’ve recently uploaded many more pictures on the Picasa albums at http://picasaweb.google.com/reidksmith. Check them out!

Day Forty Five and Forty Six, Salt Lake City, UT: The Parks

Day Forty Five refers to Monday, August 3rd, which I spent touring the Browning Firearms Museum, the Utah State Railroad Museum, the Classic Car Museum, and the Hill Air Force Base Aviation Museum. This was good, cheap fun, costing me a grand total of $5, (at this point, I have been running low on funds for some time now).

Day Forty Six, Tuesday, was spent at the Fort Douglas Military Museum and in two of Salt Lake City’s Parks.

I want to focus now on my experience within the parks on Sunday and Tuesday, both internally – through the books I read – and externally, through what I saw. Salt Lake City, while it is (to me, at least) a generally wealthy city, is not without its share of transient homeless men and women. And they are disproportionally represented within the city parks. It is not the mere existence of this demographic that interests me; certainly I was previously aware of it. I had not, however, spent entire days observing the culture and engaging in conversations with its members prior to this experience. I had originally included in this post a (still growing) discourse of sorts on the society and culture that I observed within the homeless community, but as it grew larger and larger I realized it was unfit for this forum. (If, for some reason, anyone is interested in my humble thoughts on the subject, I’d be glad to supply them.)

I’ve done a lot of reading on this trip, and I had intended to talk about the books I’d read here. But as with many of the experiences I have had, there has simply not been enough time for me to write what I wanted to on the subject, which, at least for me, has been unfortunate. I have been keeping a bare-bones, shorthand journal and am hoping to expand it into something one might refer to as a book in the coming year. I can’t make any promises as to its quality or interest to anyone, however, but I thought I would let the idea out into the open and see what comes of it.

Of the several books I’ve read, The Iron Heel, by Jack London – which I read on Sunday – was one of the more interesting. It is an astonishingly whimsical novel of a future in which an entirely utopian communist state has come into existence and discovered a manuscript written 800 years prior – back in the early 1900s's – in which the rise of  The Oligarchy forcefully and remorselessly eliminates socialists. Despite the painful socialist rhetoric unleashed by London’s hero – his not-so-cleverly-disguised alter ego – against an array of straw man arguments, The Iron Heel still stands on it its own as an example of the results realized when idealism clashes with power.

This theme continues in Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. Machiavelli, in his how-to guide for princes, had not undertaken an entirely unique endeavor. Others had attempted to codify the rules of power that must be present in an effectively-ruled kingdom. Machiavelli, however, explained that these ideals were impracticable and could not maintain power. For example, generosity, while considered the ideal, would eventually lead to the prince’s bankruptcy and subsequent unfair taxation of his subjects, ultimately leading to his downfall. “Machiavellianism” has come to represent a pattern of dishonest and anti-social dealings with others. In The Prince, however, Machiavelli does not advocate brutal and anti-social tactics, merely those which are effective, if very occasionally duplicitous. Of course, many of his observations on society and government still hold true, especially if one modernizes them a little bit.

So I’m catching up on posts right now. It is currently Sunday, Day Fifty One, and I’m outside Ogallah, Kansas, once more – the same site that I stopped at on my way out, back in Day Thirteen. I am tracing the same path home as I took out here, and expect to make it back on Saturday, the 15th.

Day Forty Three and Forty Four, Salt Lake City, UT: A Place to Stay?

When I first reached Salt Lake City – Saturday, August 1st – I had hoped to find a nice place to stay through couchsurfing.com, which I have mentioned before. I had sent out a few emails on the road down (Friday) and was hoping to hear back by Saturday night. Interestingly, my primary reason for couchsurfing had changed; when I reached Jackson, WY, I felt as though I needed a place to stay. I longed to sleep inside, get a shower, and enjoy at least a few of the goods provided by a culture and society. This was after only eight days of camping; upon reaching Salt Lake City, I had been camping for 10 straight days and felt no such need to get indoors. My primary motivation, then, for finding someone to stay with was the desire to experience the city with an additional person. Throughout my trip I’ve made extensive use of local information; in fact, I think I have relied entirely on this verbal guidebook.

(Above is a view from the road up the mountains in which I camped.)

In any case, my couchsurfing attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. Having arrived at the city relatively late in the day on Saturday, I drove to the Great Salt Lake just to have a look before I headed up into the mountains to find a campsite. This was a little more difficult to do outside of a larger city than it is anywhere in Montana or Wyoming. But, nonetheless, I was able to find a spur to spend the night. I spent the majority of the next day – Sunday – simply reading in a park within the city. This was an interesting experience, as I’ll talk about in my next update, because I was able to see another aspect of life that I had previously been spared.

Day Forty Two, outside Ashton, ID: Travel Day

I'll include Day Forty Two – Friday, July 31st – simply for the sake of continuity. But I didn’t do anything this day other than wake up and drive, for a very long time. It’s about 10 hours from Glacier National Park to Salt Lake City so I had to split the drive up; I planned to stop about halfway there wherever I found a decent National Forest Access.

And thus ended another day. I had driven most of the day and so was pretty happy to get into my tent and go to bed.

Day Forty One, Glacier National Park, MT: On Canada

Sorry it’s been awhile since the last update. I’ve been too busy getting in my last bit of adventuring to write much.

Day Forty One brings us back to last Thursday, July 30th. Having hiked some 28 miles in the last three days, I had only 8 more to go. I was starting from just south of the Canadian border and would hike across that, emerging in the town of Waterton. From there, it is an 18 mile walk back to the border, so I would likely have to find a ride of some sort. I hadn’t really figured out this stage of the trip yet. (The picture is of me on Waterton Lake, along which the trail ran).

Again, there isn’t a whole lot to say about the hike. There was, surprisingly, no rain the night before; a welcome change. However, the dew on the plants was just as horrendous. As had been the case the previous day, I was soaked through before I had really started the hike. This leg was generally flat for the first several miles, until I reached the Canadian Border, (picture to your left). The Canadians, however, had a different take on the trail. Their version continued to wind up steep inclines and was actually fairly exhausting. It wasn’t until I got about a mile from the town that I started to run into anyone else; all day hikers who were just taking a short walk from the town.

Once you cross the border, Glacier National Park becomes Waterton Lakes National Park. Canada, apparently, does not take National Parks as seriously as the United States. In the U.S., parks are viewed as pristine, untouched wilderness. In Canada, it seems, the parks are typically regarded as we regard National Forests – as land set aside for any use. The town of Waterton did not seem to reside in a National Park.

When I finally exited the trail, a genuine grin spread over my face. I was faced with an interesting problem, as my GPS did not extend into Canada; I had no idea what direction to go next. While I was at the trailhead, even that was still a bit outside. I had already hiked 8.2 miles that day, but it was another mile before I reached a place to stop and eat in the town. I was hungry enough that I quickly devoured a 1/2lb Bacon Cheeseburger and a Grilled Cheese, (which I had gotten a strange craving for about two days into the hike.) It was now about noon and I had to find a way back to the States.

I had hoped that I would be able to hitchhike my way back to the border. When the backcountry ranger gave me my permit, she said that the people frequently did this trail. I’m not sure what the basis for this comment was; I was the only person I met on the trail who was taking that route. In any case, I soon found that the townspeople were not very interested in helping me, even with verbal directions. I finally stumbled across the Prince of Wales Hotel, an old Scottish-style hotel which doubled as a shuttle stop to the border, the cost of which was $10. I had hoped not to have to spend so much money for an 18-mile ride, but I think it was probably the best choice; I had already walked over a mile through the city, not seen much traffic, and certainly not met anyone willing to give me a ride to the border.

The one problem with this plan was that, because the shuttle didn’t take me into Canada, they couldn’t take me out. (I don’t understand this logic myself, to be honest.) So the driver dropped me off a mile from the border, from which point I hiked across. This experience was a lot like walking through a drive-thru at McDonalds. There is no “hiker access” to the country, just a road for normal people in cars. I got behind a line of cars and waited patiently in line before an officer told me to come on up.

I was asked what I brought into the country - “just a tent, a sleeping bag, and some clothes, I guess,” – what I was bringing into the US – “just what I brought in with me,” – and where my vehicle was parked – “down the road, in the parking lot,” – and waived across. I’d never been so relieved to find my car intact, and all my belongings still inside.

My first order of business was to shower, as it had been 8 nights since I had enjoyed one of those. (In fact, by the second night of the hike, I smelled to bad to get all the way into my sleeping bag. Tragic. I decided to spend the night at the same site that I had picked when I first arrived at Glacier that Saturday; an old semi-formal campground on the Indian Reservation outside the park. I spent some time looking at a map and deciding upon my next destination, which I determined would be Salt Lake City. After that, it was a big dinner and quickly to the tent, as the rain was already starting to come down – again.

Day Forty, Glacier National Park Backcountry, MT: The Consequences of the Weather

As I mentioned before, it rained all night during my second night in the backcountry. This was merely a minor annoyance at night, as I had to sleep in my only change of clothes, which were wet.

But by this point everything I own is wet and dirty. Although I had only spent two nights in the backcountry, I had been camping the previous five before that, and it had rained nearly every one of those nights. My tent was getting the worst of it, being completely soaked. Dirt that had been dragged in through the course of the last 2.5 weeks had also turned to mud. Shoes, clothes, hat, and socks were also wet, as was the sleeping bag. In addition to being wet all the time, things were now starting to get heavier simply by the weight of the water.

The third leg of the hike was one of the easiest, at about eight almost entirely downhill miles. The only problem with this was that the first several miles were almost all through shoulder-height ferns (to your left, that is the ‘trail’) meaning that I was literally soaked through and dripping wet within minutes. It’s a pretty depressing feeling to be squishing in your shoes and socks with 7.9 miles to go. My spare pair of socks was hanging on my backpack in an attempt to dry out from the previous day, while I was wearing the socks I had gotten soaked with mud in day one. That was miserable. But the hike itself was still another spectacular experience. The chance to hike through virtually untouched wilderness was priceless. Furthermore, at least my feet – which had been coated with mud and dirt – got a good washing.

Soon, however, people starting coming from everywhere, it seemed; at least 40 people passed me. Finally, exasperated with, “Hi. Hi. Hi.” I asked someone where everyone was coming from. It turns out, the Waterton Lake sightseeing tour had just landed at the American side of the dock. This boat runs from the Waterton townsite, at the opposite, Canadian side of the like, to Goat Haunt, the American port at my present side of the lake. The idea is that you pay about $38 for a boat ride 8 miles down the day, a 2-mile day hike to another lake, and then the 8 miles back up to Canada. Kind of a crappy deal. Shortly after crossing this exodus, I arrived at Goat Haunt Ranger Station (a one-room shack) where I passed through Customs. I was not yet across the border, but I was free to leave the country whenever I wanted.

After Customs, I ran into a ranger who asked me if I had seen any bear activity lately. I told him about a track I had seen across the trail on the way down, but that was it. He said there had been a lot of bears in the area recently, to stay on top of my game, and that he would be checking out my camp in about an hour. When the ranger did come into the camp, he told me that they had seen a large black bear near the station that day, and fresh scat and tracks up the trail where I was heading the next day.

I spent a few hours in camp relaxing in what little sun there was while attempting to dry out and do some reading. Soon some other camp members arrived in camp. Again, it was really great to have people to talk to. These three guys were from Wisconsin and were doing about a week-long backcountry trip similar to the people I had met the night before.

Finally it was a dry night. So we headed back down to the Waterton Lake, (about a mile away from camp down the trail I had come in on, right where the Goat Haunt RS was), to skip some stones and enjoy the water. It was a great night in good company.

Day Thirty Nine, Glacier National Park Backcountry, MT: The Time When You Beat Nature

On Tuesday, I set 0ut for the second of four legs on my backcountry trip. While the first leg was a long, 13.8-mile hike, it was over mostly flat terrain. The second leg was much shorter – only about 5.6 miles – but climbed about 2,400 feet and descended about 1,200 feet. It’s important to remember here that what is true in normal walking is about 40lbs more true in backpacking – that is, going downhill is only slightly better than going uphill.

The other thing about going uphill is that, inevitably, you reach the top. And when you do, you are usually a good target for lightening strikes. This goes without saying and is fairly obvious. What complicates matters is that oftentimes weather within the mountains is impossible to predict, and lightening storms typically present themselves in the afternoon. And when I left camp at 9.30am, the sky looked great, as you can see to your left. This picture was taken at 10.00am, during what I will refer to as the “easy and relaxed” portion of the hike.

This next picture was taken a scant 45 minutes later. As you can see, the weather has now become decidedly less friendly and inviting. In those intervening minutes, I had gone from an almost cloudless sky to nearly being in a cloud – and the nearly wouldn’t last for long.

So at this point I had several less-than-ideal options. I had already hiked the first two miles of the hike, but these had been largely flat. I still had 1,900 vertical feet to go, which, fit into just the next couple miles, would be a little challenging, and it was definitely going to rain.  I decided that the best course of action was to keep going, as fast as I could. Which transformed the slow and relaxing hike into the race hike, and races uphill are almost never fun.

And, unfortunately, things were not getting better. As I ascended, the wind started to pick up immensely, the temperature plummeted, the trail got much thinner, and rain started falling. At this point, it couldn’t get any worse – save for a lightening strike. I reckoned that the peaks around me were taller than the high point of my hike – about 6,900 feet – and therefore decided that I could reasonably expect not to get hit by lightening. It was a dubious rationalization, but it worked. I continued to huff and puff up the switchbacks at an exhausting yet staggeringly slow rate of speed. And, following with this day’s theme, things did actually manage to get worse.

Well, at first glance this is a beautiful river. But there are a few things in the picture that you may not notice upon initial inspection. First, the stream is made of glacial runoff. It feeds the chalky blue lake you saw earlier, (Atsina). Glacial water tends to be cold. Second, you can (almost!) see the trail continue on the opposite side of the Mokowanis River. I was able to make it safely across in flip flops, but my feet have never been colder. Interestingly, they would, on multiple occasions this hike, get even wetter. I kept the flip flops on as I was too fed up to stop and put my shoes back on. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision, as I had to cross yet another water obstacle shortly.

Soon the weather began to improve; in fact, the rain had presented very few problems at all. It had never really progressed to full-blown torrential downpour, and the lightening had never materialized. After climbing some 2,000 feet in 2 miles, the trail leveled off (to your right), and finally began to descend at a rapid pace. It then wrapped around a glacial lake and stopped right in the middle of the camp. Fortunately, there were some other campers at this site with whom I could pass the time, as it was not even 1pm when I reached camp.

And this was certainly an interesting night. I met three hikers who were boyhood friends and taking a 7-night backpacking trip as a “vacation.” And, they told me that they had decided to carry extra weight in order to enjoy the hike as said vacation. They had coffee, freeze dried foods, etc. Of course, when all that weight – they still needed only one tent, one stove, etc – is divided into three packs, it comes out about even. Again, this is a good time to emphasize that this trip has been as much about people as it has been about places. (The picture above and to the left might give you a good context for the camp, especially if you click on it to enlarge it. This particular area was the path between the path to the food prep area and the path that led to the tent sites.)

Now back to the deer that I discussed briefly yesterday. Deer love sweat and other human excretions. These three guys were forced to leave most of their stuff out to dry outside their tent in the early part of the afternoon. And to their increasing consternation, Linda – the camp deer – would repeatedly come around to mess with their site. From the food prep area, it was a good 200 yards to their tent site, up some steep boulders and even a smooth rock face. Every few minutes, Linda would come around to check out the site, and one of them would be dispatched to deal with her. It got to the point where they were forced to throw rocks at her just to chase her away. Soon, we could watch one of them make his way up the rock face to their site while Linda would peer over the ledge, see him coming, and run away – only to return as soon as the person left.

But around 3.30pm it began to rain. And rain. And rain. The rain did not stop – straight, torrential downpour – until 5.30pm. At that time, everyone went to make their dinner – only for the rain to start up again around 6.30. And this time, it literally did not stop. I fell asleep around 10.00pm, and the rain was still tumbling  down from the sky and onto the sides of the tent in prodigious amounts. This would make for some crappy conditions on the next day’s hike. Also, at this point, I had experienced rain in five of my last six nights. Already, everything I owned was wet and dirty; remember, I had no towel or anything with which to dry off, other than a maddeningly hidden sun.

So that was Tuesday, Day Thirty Nine. It is currently Saturday night, Day Forty Three. I’m camping in another forest outside Salt Lake City. This was one of my more poorly planned days as I left Idaho and headed to Salt Lake City with no clear direction of what I would do when I arrived, much less where I would stay. I think I half-expected a solution to this “sleeping” problem to drop out of the sky. I ended up exploring the city by car for a couple hours before retreating back into the mountains, as is my custom.

And just because I don’t want to confuse everyone with a LOST-type timeline, let me just recap the past week really quick. Monday through Thursday I spent in the backcountry, Friday I drove a long way through Montana and into Idaho and camped outside Ashton, and Saturday I drove from there into Salt Lake City. Less confused? (And how many days till LOST comes back, by the way?)

Day Thirty Eight, Glacier National Park Backcountry, MT: Off to the Backcountry

I’m already very far behind, so it doesn’t look as though I am going to get to elaborate on my last post, which outlined my activities in Yellowstone. I didn’t care much for Yellowstone anyway; it was essentially a giant Disneyland with real bison. I now have (literally) thousands of pictures which I have to sort through from the last week and a half – but it looks like these are going to have to wait until I get home to get uploaded, as I simply don’t have the time (or place) to sit down and do it here. I haven’t posted lately because I haven’t had time to sit down and write and no cell phone signal with which to send them in.

On Monday, I began a backpacking trip that would take me from Montana into Alberta, Canada. I spent four days and three nights in the backcountry and it was an incredible experience. In the course of these four days, I hiked nearly 40 miles with everything that I would need on my back. Best of all, I emerged in a small town in Canada without a plan or a means with which to get back to the border, which ended up being a fun mini-adventure in itself.

So back to the first day. On Monday, I had to hike nearly 14 miles to reach my campsite. Luckily, the hike was mostly flat, with only moderate elevation gains of a few hundred feet at a time. It also helped that the entire 40 mile hike was between 4,500 and 6,500 feet – where the air was much thicker than on some of my other hikes, which peaked at 10,000 or even 14,000 feet.

Unfortunately, all of these benefits were drastically counterbalanced by a few extra cinderblocks of weight strapped to my back. Because my pack had to carry everything I would be unable to do without for four days, it became commensurably enormous and heavy. Just to give a brief outline; first aid kit, extra socks, tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, soft shell, hard shell, heavy fleece, books, food (keeping in mind that you burn far more calories walking all day than you do normally), stove, water, rope, camera and lenses, and on and on. My rough guess is that the pack weighed at least 40 lbs. But it wouldn’t be exciting if it was easy. (There is an ultra-light movement among backpackers, for obvious reasons. I ran into one such follower on the Continental Divide Trail in Grand Lake, CO. The CDT is a 3,300 mile hike. This backpacker had his base pack weight – everything but food and water – down to 12 lbs. They accomplish this by removing all their extra straps, the handles on their toothbrush, tags on clothes, etc, and by buying very, very light specialty gear.)

So the first day, as I mentioned, was a 13.8 mile hike. It was enjoyable, but it would have been even more so had the trail not been washed away by the previous week’s monsoon-type weather – which, as we will see, continued on through my trip as well. (I have spent the last 10 nights outside,  and of those, six have culminated in thunderstorms.) The trail was a vile, devilish mixture of mud, rocks,and vegetation, trampled by a few humans and several horses, and topped off with the occasional green gift from said livestock. And intermixed with the more thrilling sight of bear scat and tracks.  The hike itself was surprisingly uneventful. The only highlight was a brief run-in with a whitetail deer, which seemed more interested in finding out what I was from an uncomfortably close distance than in running away. Overall, deer in the Parks know that they are in the Parks; that is, they know you cannot shoot them. Therefore, they do not care what you do. Their chief objective is, actually, to annoy the hell out of you. You’ll see what I mean.

The National Park Service has a weird way of handling the backcountry that doesn’t seem obvious, so I’ll go into it a bit. You apply for a permit, (the specifics are different at every park,) and they work out an itinerary for you along your chosen trail that places you at a given campsite on each night. In other words, they reserve a site for you, and you handle the rest. The theory is that if no one reports having seen you at these sites after your family reports you missing, they can mount a rescue operation along your supposed route, within at least a few days.

These campgrounds are unlike any other campground. Even though I knew they were coming, I typically didn’t realize I was there until I walked into the post to which the map was stapled. They usually contain about 3-4 campsites, a food prep area well away from the sites, and a pit toilet. It’s all dispersed over a very large area, (say, 300 yards end-to-end,) so you are essentially still camping in the woods.  In tonight’s case, there were no other campers, and hence, I have no fun stories to tell.

But still, there is no escaping the thrilling reality of a trip in the backcountry. Especially a solo hike; while not necessarily intrinsically dangerous, bad decisions when far away from help can easily escalate to form a chain reaction with catastrophic consequences. Typically, these situations are preventable, but the opportunity to truncate the disaster is missed by those who are usually too stubborn to back down in the face of Nature’s superior firepower. A well known example of this sort of self-destructive behavior is the 1996 Everest Expedition, which is recounted in Jon Kroukour’s (his name is hard enough to spell, chances are one in a million I could do it without looking it up,) Into Thin Air. When I entered the backcountry office to get my permit, I was greeted by a poster for a missing person, the subheading of which was “please report any scattered or dispersed parts of"…” followed by a general description of the man and his equipment.

So there is risk, but there is also a substantial reward. The culmination of a day’s hike, while significant in and of itself, is amplified each day as you close in to the ultimate goal; that final step off that last trailhead. Those first 13.8 miles were a good accomplishment; after completing 38 miles, a genuine and uncontrollable grin came over my face. Upon re-crossing the border – and I’ll leave that story for its own day – and returning to find my car… that was a euphoric moment.

Again, following the now established tradition, I’ll leave you with pictures rather than a minute by minute account of every step I took. Unfortunately, I can only include one now, as when I do get a cell signal with which to send this in, anything more than that would get dicey. Again, I’ll post many, many more picture up on the Picasa albums when I get home, because I took hundreds on this hike alone.

 

A couple quick notes:

As you may have gathered, I have been essentially without an internet connection for the last 10 days, and my cell phone signals have been very spotty at best. I have (hopefully) gotten all of the emails many of you have sent and I appreciate your thoughts, even if I haven’t responded yet.

Finally, this trip is, amazingly, drawing to a close. I am currently about, say, 25 miles north of Ashton, Idaho. I plan on passing through Salt Lake City tomorrow, ( which would be Saturday, maybe spending the night?) and then heading to Arches National Park and Canyonlands. After this I will be swinging back towards home and expect to be back there around August 15th.

Thanks again for following along.