First grizzly footprints encountering

Day 96

Date: 05.08.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 1'888.2

Miles hiked: 25.5 miles / 40.8 km

Elevation: 3'025 feet ascent (923 m Aufstieg) / 3'652 feet descent (Abstieg 1'114 m)

Camping at: Motel in Dubois

I had a good night sleep and we were back on trail as usual around 6.45am. I nearly left my phone at the campsite, but luckily remembered a few feet away! It's a cloudy morning which is very unusual. Normally in Wyoming it rained in the afternoon but in the mornings we had clear blue sky. It as a rather borning stretch to hike this morning. Over some blowdowns and gras fields and when we stopped around 5 miles in for a break a few feet away from a ridge line, the weather changed. We were just finished with our second breakfast, as within seconds the wind picked up and it started to rain. We just managed to all get our raingear on in time, because our packs were open already! Well I guess the break is over then! Hiking in the rain has advantages though. One hikes faster, you don't drink as much water as it is rather cold, and you do not make breaks, unless there is a nice group of trees for a rainbreak (which is hard to find in a burned area). I picked up a rain umbrella on trail, which Blizzard must have lost there. Only a mile or two later we run into Blizzard. He has also left his rain jacket in town and now re-designed his tyvek as a rain poncho! He is super happy to have his umbrella back! Together we hike on and soon later encounter the first grizzly bear foot prints! They look pretty fresh to me, we most likely only missed the grizzled by an hour or two. Also the footprints lead the other direction, I am not mad at this! I would love to see a grizzly on trail, but from a safe distance! And I do still have plenty of time, about 1'100 miles till the canadian border, to meet a grizzly!

We eat lunch under some small trees, as the rain stopped for a while. It started to rain as soon as we took off again. My shoes and socks are drained. Not the best for my blisters! But we made good progress so far. The spot where we aimed to camp tonight is only about 9 miles away, and we only had lunch. Being wet all day and cold, and the road into Dubois only being 12 miles away, I speak out the idea to hitch into town today already. Getting a hot shower, a hot meal and a bed sounds amazing now. Also Cheetah, Mouse and Captain start to like the idea, as it continues to rain on us. Cheetah is meeting a friend tomorrow in town and if we go into town today already, we will do a zero instead of a nero. But I am totally fine with that. The trail changes into a dirt road, but because of all the rain it turned into a muddy path and we keep on slipp and sliding along the path. Not much fun and much harder to hike on. My shoes have huge mud clumbs at the bottom and they are super heavy and slippery. As we reach our potential campspot for tonight -

A yurt - , we dont like it at all. It looks super filthy. Blizzard is here too. And it only being less than 3 miles from the highway, we decide to hike on and get a hotel room for tonight. We made it to the highway shortly after 5pm, having hiked a little over 25 miles today, it has been a good day. However, it takes us a while to finally get a hitch. The highway is well travelled, but mostly by tourists which may visit yellowstone, which is not that far away, and hence they are not that familiar with the CDT and picking up hikers. I keep on dancing and Blizzard is holding up a sign saying 'please', when finally a car pullied over going the other direction. But he has seen us, me dancing and Blizzard's 'please' sign, thought this is funny, passed us but the turned around to pick us up! Amazing. We all squeezed into the back of his truck, only Captain sits in the front to give directions where we need to go. And finally we made it into town and into a nice Hotel room about 1.5 miles out of Dubois (but being cheaper than all the other places) at around 7pm. We are hungry, cold, tired and wet. Town is too far away to hike and get dinner. While Captain is taking a shower I ask the owners of the Motel if they have loaner bikes to get to town and pick up food. Much better, they offer us a ride to pick up our food if we preorder it! And I get all the menu's from all the restaurants, which I bring to our room. 4 hungry hikers trying to figure out what to eat from different menus, can be quite a mess. Finally we have choosen which restaurant we want to order from, and everyone has decided what to get, we call the place but the kitchen is already closed, at 7.30pm! We have to hurry up! We pick another place and are able to place our order. While captain is picking up our food, we are rotation with showering. We have a small kitchen in our room and being fed and showered a little later we all fall into our beds, super tired but feeling wonderful warm, clean and satisfied.

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