It’s so nice to sleep in a real bed in a private room. With my friends planning on waking up early to walk the highway back to trail, I was on my own for the morning.
After sleeping in a little, I went to the grocery store to get food for the next few days. Of course I bought too much. It’s 100 miles to Old Faithful Village, so I bought food for 100 miles. What I failed to consider was that I would be eating a big breakfast in town and I would be stopping in Grant Village before Old Faithful because I don’t have a camping permit in the park. Oh well, it’ll save me some money later.
After getting a nice big breakfast and taking full advantage of the free refills of Pepsi, it was time to make my way back to the trail. I called my dad as I walked to the other end of town where I thought hitching would be easier. Literally as soon as I was done on the phone, I put my thumb out and the next car pulled over! Easiest hitch ever. It was a young couple from Montana heading to Jackson to climb the Grand Teton. They had already picked up another hiker too!
The trail today started off a little rough, but quickly became beautiful. The mountains have changed dramatically and they remind me much more of the northern Rockies in Glacier and Canada.
I passed a cool little resort that had a ton of horses. I saw a few snow cats parked behind a barn too, so maybe they do some fun winter stuff like cat skiing. My winter road trip plans keep getting longer.
I’ve only heard of one difficult river crossing so far and I guess today was the day for it. There was a comment from a month ago about how it was too deep to cross. A lot changes in a month and it was barely knee deep. Unfortunately it did mean I’d have wet shoes for the next day or so.
When I got to the campsite I was planning on I found one person there. I’ve met him once or twice but never really talked. I was much earlier than normal and we had a lot of time to chat while we ate dinner.
Eventually a few other hikers showed up and we found out that Feel Good and Caddyshack were pretty far behind. I didn’t see them on the road walk so I thought they might be ahead of me. Turns out they must have gotten a later start than planned because the other guys saw them and said they were still pretty far away.
I think they should still make it to the park border tomorrow and we’ll finally be hiking together again.