Road Adventures from Wyoming

These adventures frequently center on my ghost town hunting; other times these adventures are just my way of having fun - whichever, they often involve mountain climbing or long distance hikes, sometimes they involve both.

One such recent example was when I hiked to the top of Medicine Bow Peak in northern Wyoming. The hike was a twelve mile round trip and the climb involved a 2,000 feet ascent and descent. Total trip time was 6 ½ hours. The numbers involved on this adventure are ones I consider to be on the easy side. Along the way that day I had a wildlife encounter. The animal involved was a dog, a sheep dog to be more precise, a large white Great Pyrenees to be exact. I’m told large or larger are the only sizes this breed comes in. I was more than a football field length away from the sheep herd when this hunk of fur charged me. You can’t run. First this brings out the attack instinct in a dog. Second, you can’t outrun the dog anyway. Instead I faced the dog, held my hiking stick in both hands above my head and tried doing by best impressions of a bull moose.  It seemed to do the job.  This happened in late June, its August now.

Tomorrow I head for a group of Wilderness areas in Idaho.  They are the Buffalo Hump, the Bitterroot and The Wilderness of No Return. The last one used to be known as Hell’s Half Acre Wilderness. This is for all the people who ever told me to “get lost” or “go to hell” - just trying to be obliging. This is a lot of Wilderness. When you combine the Bitterroot and The Wilderness of No Return, you have an area that is more than twice the size of Rhode Island and Delaware, combined. When Lewis and Clark saw this place from the Nez Pierce Pass, they decided to take a couple of hundred miles detour around the place. Then again, they didn’t have a can opener, I do.  The area is bisected by one dirt road. The road is not maintained and crosses seven mountain ranges. I have driven it before. At the time I was on crutches. I had broken my left leg and it had been reconstructed. Since hiking was out of the question I needed another way to seek out an adventure.  It worked, for two days I sat in front of a snowed-in mountain pass with a forest fire behind me.  Things got a little tense. The area has plenty of hazards like lighting strike zones, wolf packs, and aggressive cougars, even quicksand.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?  I’ll let you know how it went.... hopefully. 

As always, check out my website: www.theghosttownhunter.com

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