Coronaroadtrip

I’m still running about half a night ahead of my original itinerary since the accidental push to St. Louis, so I figured I could get from Lincoln to Cheyenne by the end of the night.

But first I spent far too long at the gas station airing back up with my pipsqueak tire inflator. Then, to mark Nebraska as my thirty-second state, I made a quick stop for an actual dinner (rare on solo trips) on the University of Nebraska Lincoln campus, so I could say I actually did something here.

Then I started the 445 mile drive out of here, late enough that I would have arrived around 1am MDT.

But about 200 miles into it, I remembered I owe one client a staffing plan, one client a product development plan, and one team a sprint planning agenda. Oh right and every other Thursday, I have an 8:45 department call. Guess which week this is?

So I’m in North Platte, just across I-80 from the Fort Cody Trading Post, whatever that is.

When I left Austin, it was 106°. I dreamed of coffee in morning mountains air before work, somewhere that I needed a hoodie. This is the first sunshine since Kentucky, and while there might not be mountains yet, at least it’s in the 50s. A subtle breeze of interstate fumes and cow manure, but I’ll take it. Tonight I will actually make it to Wyoming.

Friday afternoon and all the stands between me and my next national park is writing a presentation I have to give on Monday.

This is the second time in as many days that my only actual meal of the day came from a Subway inside a gas station. I’ve got another couple pages to write and proof for this product development plan, but my saint of a Director has offered to handle turning the document into a presentation deck for Monday, so I am finally closing in on the end of this week.

Almost three thousand miles of straight interstate behind me, I took the scenic route out of Rock Springs up to Pilot Butte on Wild Horse Canyon Road.

I drove to the base of the butte but opted not to try and drive up it because, though I thought I could make it to the top, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to turn around. And there was an in-progress ruckus anyway, a pickup trying to make the turn managed to twist sideways enough to lose its whole toolbox and a bed full of bags of concrete.

On the way back to pavement, I found this road’s namesake.

The drive from Rock Springs to Grand Teton put me up here after dark, and the National Park campgrounds were already full. So I drove east over the meadow to the edge of the National Forest where roadside and dispersed camping is allowed. But it meant that I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I woke up the next morning.

As the sun rose and illuminated my covered wagon, I looked over my shoulder and saw this. If I’d set out to find my video game in real life, pretty sure I just stumbled into it in the dark.

If I only have one day in Grand Teton, I figured I’d link what appear to be the two most popular hikes in the park. It was more crowded than I’d expected, but a lot of folks wore masks as they passed each other on the trail. And at the far end of Cascade Canyon and the long-way-’round Jenny Lake, I had the trail to myself again.

That’s a new personal record for single longest hike, overtaking Big Bend’s Emory Peak on the Laidoffroadtrip. In celebration and attempt to wash off some of the sweat and sunscreen before camping in the Xterra again, I took the arctic plunge.

It was outrageously cold. On the way out, still shivering, I passed by the T. A. Moulton barn, what may be the most photographed barn in North America and got stuck in a traffic jam of buffalo.

After dinner in Jackson, I went about half way back to Pinedale before calling it a night along another forest road along Granite Creek in Bridger-Teton National Forest. Another sight-unseen selection but I could hear the river nearby.

I woke up in the morning an unwilling participant in a cattle drive.

But as I rolled out of bed trunk, I was again thoroughly pleased with my choices.