Day 25 – 9/18/19

11 miles / 515.4 total

The rain started just after I got into my tent last night and a steady drizzle fell all night.

I set the alarm later than usual, wanting it to be fully light out before I started walking since I didn’t have far to go. I got lucky and by the time I was walking the rain was down to a just an intermittent dripping. A mile more of forest road and then I cut through the forest back down to the designated trail, which is part of the Fremont National Recreation trail. Oh sweet glorious trail!! I’d forgotten how nice it is to walk on a single track through the forest.

My elation was short lived, however, when the trail got lower and the cows took over. They had completely torn up the trail, turning it into a big sloppy mud pit. They were at least good about moving along when seeing me, except they did that classic cow move of just trotting along down the trail ahead of me instead of moving off to the side. I nervously herded them for about 2 miles, and as the valley continued to narrow, there ended up being no side for them to go to, only forward down the trail.

Finally I got to a point where there were 20+ cows in front of me, blocking the path, and no longer moving. I realized they had come to a gate and were cornered. There was a great deal of mooing. I was frazzled.

I climbed up the steep hillside, keeping as much distance from the cows as possible, then scrambled across a steep rocky slab high up where the barbed wire fence stopped. Looking back at them from the other side of the fence, finally free, I felt a great satisfaction. Take that cows!!

It was a nice enough walk from there to highway 395, where I would hitch into Lakeview. The ODT follows the highway for 3 miles, and the rain was still holding off so I decided to hike at least some of it before sticking my thumb out.

When I got to the last mile, which was also really the first suitable stretch to hitch, I tried my luck. It didn’t take long until a good hippie/adventure van pulled over. I asked if they were going to Lakeview. They asked if I was a PCT hiker. This is the 4th or 5th time this hike I (or we when Dan was along) have been asked that. I’m so confused by this. The PCT is nowhere near here!

Anyway, they were a very cool retired couple who had hiked the PCT with the husband dropping off the wife to hike north, then driving ~100 miles up trail, parking and hiking south until he met her and walking back to the car together. I had not heard of anyone doing it like this before. Very sweet, but sounds like a lot of work.

In town I discovered something amazing: I had LTE cell service. I called a motel and booked a room, but couldn’t check in for another 4 hours. Damn. I got lunch, visited a gear shop and hardware store and then hung out at the very nice (and warm and dry) library.

I was exhausted by the time I did get to the hotel, and ended up just eating a hodgepodge of snack foods from the grocery store for supper while waiting for the guest laundry to be available, HGTV running a marathon of a renovation shows in the background.