August 18th, 2024
Mile Marker: 1381.5
Miles Hiked: 33
We woke up a little before 6 since we wanted to beat the heat. Accumulating days in the heat gets hard. We weren’t sure how many miles we would do today but there was a chance we would do 33 to get into the town of Rawlins.
I made my oats and coffee as the sun was passing up behind the mountains, a beautiful orange and pink lining the clouds, expanding as the sun came up.
We rolled out around 7 and kept a good pace. The terrain was, as it has been for days, flat.
It is beautiful no doubt but this was day 4 and I was ready for a change, ready for town, ready for AC, and an iced coffee.
We made it to our first water source after 5 miles. This was a solar electric well that had a spigot to turn on gushing cold water. Nothing better than ice cold spring water.
Journey and I didn’t linger here too long, we wanted to keep moving as much as we could before it got really hot. We filled up 2.75 liters, enough to travel 16 miles and headed out.
Then we walked in what felt like a circle. It sometimes is rewarding to see the road so far away and get closer and closer to it, and sometimes it’s painful. So many miles and you can still see the road forever away.
After around 12 more miles we started to have a few climbs and came out near highway 287 where there was a junkyard. Journey and I found a piece of shade here and decided to sit and have lunch. This was the first shade we had seen all day.
We let the wind and shade cool us off as we ate, not staying too long since we still had a little over 3 miles to get to water. Neither of us had too much water left.
This is when the day got frustrating. We hiked along the highway for about a mile and turned off to a side road and then the trail disappeared.
We were now walking on rocks, sage bushes, and plains prickly pear cactus. We took out our phones to try and navigate where we thought we should go, but at the same time we are trying not to stub our toe or slide into a cactus.
This made me frustrated with the CDT, when you have a long water stretch like this and people need to get to water, not having a trail slows us down tremendously causing us to drink more water and take longer to get to the water source. GAH.
Eventually after a couple miles we saw trail reappear again and made it to the next water source.
It was a spot for all the cows no doubt, all staring at us as we walked right down the middle and into a fenced area with a spring.
We filled up another 2.75 liters because we had 13 miles to go and weren’t sure if we would get to town or not.
We set out and found ourselves having to go under a fence as we were entering private lands.
The trail continued with its open spaces and after an hour or so we noticed a bundle of trees. How beautiful a big nice tree looks after being in such a desolate area for so long.
We decided to stop and eat an early dinner in the shade of the trees, it was too nice to pass up. Here we decided we would make it into town tonight even though it would be late, it would be worth it.
So we ate, dumped some water, and took off. This is where the day got hard for both of us. Our legs were swelling, our feet and knees hurt, and we were mentally getting fatigued by the monotonous trail. I plugged my headphones in to listen to music, I knew we would make it, it just felt so slow going.
Eventually we made it back out to highway 287 as the trail led us straight through the town of Rawlins, Wyoming. It was a little bit shocking to round a bend and suddenly a town appears.
We were so thankful to be here. We walked through town to get to our hotel and as we were walking through the grocery store parking lot a women in a white truck pulls up and asked if we were thru hiking the CDT and if she could give us a ride somewhere. We were right next to our hotel so we didn’t need a ride but stood here talking with the lady for about 25 minutes.
Her trail name is Firecracker and has thru hiked the PCT and AT. We talked about the CDT and the other trails going back and forth with our stories. She then hands us 25 dollars in cash and says to get dinner on her, it was her way of being a trail angel since she couldn’t give us a ride or help out in another way.
Journey and I were shocked and so grateful, how kind! Firecracker was a joy to our very long day. I wished we could have had more time to talk trail but by this point it was around 8:00 PM and we were exhausted.
We grabbed a hotel and then walked across the street to the Pizza Hut and devoured a large pizza within minutes. I will always love a stuffed crust pizza. 😁
During dinner we both decided we wanted to get our town chores done so that tomorrow we could be extra lazy. So we went to the grocery store to resupply, which 9 PM is a great time to shop since no one is there.
We then got back to the hotel, started laundry, and did chores until close to midnight before we called it.
My joints hurt and my feet hurt worse, I’m so thankful to be in a hotel for tonight and tomorrow to recover. A glorious and difficult last 4 days!
So tired, night night.
Iz and Oz
Izzy + Ozzy 