August 17th
If you’ve suffered through some of the previous blog posts, you have a sense that the day of a town stop is exciting. I got up and moving for the final 8 miles. With a lighter pack and the anticipation of warm, perhaps fatty food, cooked by someone else as an inducement, I cruised along.
I passed through a few cattle operations. One was notable because the rancher had one fenced area with numerous cow/calf sets plus a young bull. He had the shape and equipment of a bull, but not quite the mass of a full grown one. On the other side of the fence, without cows, was a real bull. As I walked through the first group. the young guy was making some noise and acting a little protective of the cows. Certainly nothing intimidating to me. I went through the gate and saw the big bull. He was sauntering my direction. In case you don’t know, I hate bulls. Anyhow, it soon was clear he wasn’t interested in me, but in the cows and the gate. I stopped for a moment to watch. The young bull was clearly talking smack, safe behind the barbed wire fence. The older bull had some choice resonses. He started kicking up some dust with his fron hooves and increased the volume and lowered the bass on his comments to the young fella. Interesting to watch, but I thought I caught a whiff of bacon on the wind and resumed my push to town.
I did get to town early and checked in to my motel. In fact, their continental breakfast was open for another 15 minutes. I shamelessly set some informal food eating record in that 15 minutes. Even more exciting were my packages. It was like Christmas. I had three packages. The first was my resupply package. The second was a new pair of shoes. Lastly, my replacement backpack was there.
I did the usual town chores and ate and cleared out my old pack. I had planned a zero here so ther was no pressure and I was glad to be off trail and able to catch some of the Olympics.
backpacking over the hill 