18 miles, 6.5 hours

The sky cleared last night in time to provide a freezing night, complete with nearly solid water bottles. This morning we had a few glorious minutes of sun before the clouds and wind returned.

The route was all on dirt roads today, so the miles went by quickly and easily. I love walking fast and covering miles. We got to our buried cache near Grovsners Arch in the late afternoon and enjoyed a good snack (a hearty feed) and then Dave walked the half mile off route to where the book mentions a well and stock tank where we could get some water. Soon Dave returned saying we had a problem: no water. The valve was shut off and padlocked, possibly because the cattle weren’t brought up here yet. This is public land, a national monument even, and the water was padlocked.

The next water source was 13 miles away, and we had wasted plenty of daylight digging up the cache and eating (you cannot imagine the hunger we have walking these rugged miles each day). So we packed up and headed down the quiet dirt road, hoping to flag down a motorist, most likely a tourist out here.

It only took about a half hour and some nice folks from Wyoming stopped and gave us all the water we wanted. Wonderfully friendly people! Then we found a clump of juniper trees to shield us a bit from the wind and we set up camp.

TRAIL NOTES:
The water tank a mile off-route from mile 78 was dry, though may get turned on later in the season.