Woo Hoo!  Much to my surprise Pat called and was ready to leave Golden.  He picked me up at the Colorado School of Mines campus in the afternoon. I hung out there on the grass and organized my pack contents for a while.

We drove up to the Great Basin in Wyoming and cached two days of food near Bairoil. This was Pat’s idea. The plan is to put some water and food in a 5 gallon paint bucket and hide it in the bushes here where the CDT crosses the dirt road. That way we have less food to carry. But it’s not clear to me how we are going to dispose of the empty paint bucket later. I certainly don’t want to carry it. Pat thinks he can pay someone in Bairoil to pick it up after we retrieve it’s contents, but I’m skeptical. The CDT is a good 9 miles from Bairoil on a dirt road. One way or another we need to get this picked up.

Bairoil is an odd little town. It has some nice buildings and concrete roads in the midst of oil pumps and dilapidated structures. I suspect the oil business was very lucrative for at least some of the townsfolk.

After caching the food we continued to Lander.  As we drove along the highway I noticed a LOT of ponds, creeks, and wetness in the country along the road.  I’m a bit concerned about mud – the Basin is known to get very muddy with thick clay making it very difficult to put in the long miles necessary to get through this stretch. Lander is a nice town and I’m excited to do the Basin tomorrow.