Day Seven: Three Bulls

• August 25: Grace Coolidge Creek, Custer State Park, to Hot Springs, S.D., via Wind Cave National Park; end of Centennial Trail
• Miles: 31 miles
• Elevation gain: 4,000 feet

I woke with a big smile on my face, remembering my nightly visitor, now regretting that I hadn’t taken the chance of turning on my headlamp, if only for one fleeting glimpse. I was off by 6:30, a little later than usual. Ten minutes later, I passed the small brass medallion “collected” by the state park challenge hikers I’d met.

My feet were instantly soaked by dew-heavy foliage bowing. Crossing Grace Coolidge Creek I laughed: Here was excellent, freely-flowing water just minutes away from the muck where I’d tried to fill a bottle. I dumped the floater-contaminated stuff and stocked up before walking on.

The trail climbed to a plateau where the state or some other entity had been thinning trees for fire mitigation. That meant long, lovely views of the surrounding Black Hills, faintly crimson in the light of the rising sun.

Humming along happily an hour later, I came up over a small rise and stopped dead in my tracks. There, perhaps 25 yards off, a hulking bison bull lay in a dust wallow in the middle of the trail. This was, I knew, as close as one was supposed to get to these majestic, powerful and unpredictable creatures, so I slowly stepped off trail to the right and began angling up a steep hillside into a cluster of ponderosa striplings.

As soon as he saw me, the bull stood up, switching his tail and swinging his horns ever so slightly, a fair and decent warning. But he seemed not at all perturbed that I was watching him from up the hill.

Seeming in no hurry to move on, he began slowly working up the trail, breaking his fast on the lush grasses to either side. I scooted along the hillside in the other direction until I had put sufficient distance between us, then dropped back down and continued on my way.

Was this my night-time visitor? Doubtful. I had come some five miles from where I camped, and last I heard, my ghost bull had been headed north. But who knows what lies in the hearts of such noble creatures? It was a great start to what would turn out to be a long day.

When I’m backpacking, I always settle on a “minimum destination” for the day and unless something unusual occurs — illness, injury, side trip — I rarely miss a personal target, and often hike past my daily minimum. On this day, I’d set my sights on French Creek Horse Camp, a roughly 22-mile day.

The CT through Custer State Park features a lot of PUDs — pointless ups and downs, the most wearying kind of hiking — and passes through extensive areas ravaged by recent fires. On top of that, there were a couple short, but surprisingly steep — steeper than I’d ask a horse or mule to carry me up — sections. All this would add up to a hot, sweaty day by the time I was finished.

I spilled out onto Highway 16 quite early, expecting to see Legion Lake Lodge and its eponymous water source, but didn’t even see a sign. Continuing on, I came upon signs pointing north and east back to the lodge. But by then, my faint hopes of scoring a hot breakfast had been overcome by the desire to keep moving.

I found myself mired in regrets for foolish things I’d done in my younger days as I walked along and, as if to prove a point about mindfulness, my preoccupations crowded out any significant impressions I had of the passing terrain. It was a long seven or eight miles before I came to fast-flowing French Creek, where two thigh-high crossings forced me back into the present.

French Creek, like Iron Creek, is designed for horse- or mule-mounted trail users. I stopped to fill water bottles and ate a tortilla with peanut butter before moving on. Most of the campers were out with their mounts on the trail, but as I headed out, I saw a teenage girl reading a book next to a camper trailer.

“Hello,” I called. “This may seem like a weird question, but might you have a soda pop you’d sell me?”

She very kindly said she had plenty to spare, and handed me a cold can of Pepsi. As I rummaged in my hiker wallet (aka Ziploc bag), she waved me off.

“No, no, really,” she said. “We have like, a thousand of these. Just take it.”

I followed the reverse of the NOBO instructions in the guidebook, walking along the dirt road out of camp. When I saw no signs for the CT I bushwhacked across a grassy meadow. I forded the creek, scrambled up a steep embankment, and sure enough, there was the trail, cutting up the hill. Once again, where the trail would be obvious to a NOBO, a clear marker at the horse camp would have been helpful to this dumb SOBO.

Although there was only about 1,300 feet of climbing, the nine miles from French Creek to Highland Creek Trailhead were long and tiring. Huge swaths of the area are naked of trees, thanks to wildfires, and in places the trail is poorly marked and the tread faces to nothing.

The trail is often not a trail at all, fainter than bison tracks. Overgrown. You must look back and around you very often. So easy to get off track, I wrote later in my journal.

The final miles up and over a couple of beautiful, open hillsides and ridges were long and hot, and by the time I staggered across the small plank bridge over Highland Creek, I was hammered. I stripped down to my boxer briefs and parked my butt in the cool water, then cameled up and took on a couple of liters.

I’d already walked 23 miles on a hot day, frequently pounded by full sun. I thought about putting up my tent; at least there was a reliable, clean water source. In the morning, I could cross into Wind Cave National Park and hike six miles to the southern terminus of the CT. Or, I thought as I sat drying in the sun, I could keep going. It was only 3 p.m., after all.

The lack of cover made up my mind, though in hindsight I don’t know why that seemed important. I had imagined I’d find trees or rocks to shield me from prying eyes on the dirt road (not that I’d seen even a single car), and for whatever reason — brain boiled by too much sun, body trashed by too many miles? — I decided to keep walking.

I’m glad I did, though it was a long couple of hours to the end of the trail. End-of-day miles, like town miles, always feel “longer” than regular miles, to me.

Crossing into the park, I followed signs marked CT/#89 and #6, for the park trail system. The sturdy posts were obviously built to be bison resistant, as indeed they appeared to be.

I love walking through wide-open spaces (though I would soon learn it’s not quite as fun in extreme heat), and I drank in the long vistas as I followed the trail up and over gentle hills, spying herds of bison in the distance.

After a few miles, I began eyeing a vast thunderhead that had been piling up to the north all afternoon. It seemed likely that I would have rain, maybe even hail, before my day was through. The bruised and menacing storm clouds were moving a lot faster than I was as I hurried along the edge of Curley Canyon, then turned due west. I pulled up to squint at what appeared to be a large, brown rock off to the right of the trail, ringed by vultures. Curious, I veered cautiously off the trail, spooking the scavengers into flight.

Dead bison, I thought. Big bull.

Then the “dead” bison moved, ever so slightly. He was upright, but unable to stand, and the dark hair had fallen out, or had been pulled out, exposing pink, mottled skin. I grimaced at the huge animal’s ordeal, glancing at the circling buzzards. I backed away, trying not to judge nature’s cruelty. He was dying, this monarch of the plains, and the buzzards were just out to make a living. Maybe I’d call the park rangers’ office when I got to the road….

Sobered by my utter inability to ease his suffering, I turned away and kept walking. The rain finally broke, but the storm saved most of its fury for the hills to my north, spraying me with cool droplets as the sun continued to blaze from blue sky to the west. I crossed Beaver Creek and coming up over a small rise, ran smack into another bison bull, standing in the trail and grazing nonchalantly. I circled far out into the grass, but the bull was utterly indifferent to such a puny intruder. The last couple miles I followed Beaver Creek as cliff walls to the north continually changed color as the sun slipped down like a melting pat of butter in a vast, blue skillet.

After a short climb, I emerged at the southern terminus to find a sign and empty parking area. It was 5 p.m. on a Sunday. I was dead tired and suddenly emotionally drained after nearly 30 miles of tough, hot hiking. I took a couple of lousy selfies at the sign.

I walked a half mile on paved Highway 87 to Highway 385, but even that busy road was all but empty of traffic. It felt like the end of the world and I was the last human alive. I walked south on the road to the sign for park headquarters and Elk Creek Campground, where I thought I would camp. Though exhausted, I yearned for the comfort of real food and a real bed. Just then, I heard the peeling hiss of the first car I’d seen. I put out my thumb, testing the universe. If the car didn’t stop, well, I’d head into the campground….

But it did. The guy, messy, bearded and grinning, rolled down his window, releasing a cloud of pungent marijuana smoke.

“Where you headed, man?”

“Uh,” I said. “I guess Hot Springs.” I would miss about five miles of trail to the park’s southern borders, but also a 10-mile roadwalk into town.

“I’m going that way. Hop in.”

The man was chatty and lubed up, but seemed safe enough behind the wheel. He offered me a can of Coors, but I declined. A minute later, I reconsidered and he handed me the beer.

“Where do you wanna go?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Maybe a cheap motel somewhere in the middle of town?”

“Coo, coo,” he said, laughing. “Drink up, man!”

I popped the beer and took a long swig.

I grew up drinking Coors, but for the most part, I only drink craft beer now. Call me snooty, but that’s what I like, and price isn’t a big deal, because I’m never drinking more than one, two at most. But sitting in that weed-scented, crummy old car, rolling down the empty highway, exhausted but feeling good about my 125-mile walk through the Black Hills, that beer tasted pretty damned good. In fact, I hadn’t had a better one since the Coors a woman gave me on July 4, 2015, the third day of my first thru-hike, on the Colorado Trail.

I got a room at the luxurious America’s Best Value Inn, where my door wouldn’t lock, ate pizza, and fell asleep, the first stage of my journey at an end.

Episode 9

Day Eight: Shortcuts … Aren’t

• August 26: The Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, S.D. to Cottonwood Lake Campground
• Miles: 6 miles
• Elevation gain: 1,500 feet

I woke before 6 a.m. and saw that it had rained overnight. After a first quick breakfast of coffee and Frosted Flakes, I dressed and walked a block to the Heaven Scent Bakery, where I had a much more satisfying second breakfast of eggs, toast, orange juice and coffee.

With many chores to handle, I planned to take a nearo — a short day on which a hiker walks just a few miles, usually so he or she can do laundry, resupply and the like — in this pleasant little town. I had a six-mile road/dirt-road walk to the day’s destination, the U.S. Corps of Engineers campground at Cottonwood Springs Lake, which meant I could spend a leisurely morning in town.

First order of business was to pack up and walk a half mile to the historic Evans Plunge, a 130-year-old pool and spa fed by the consistently 87-degree waters from a local spring. It was well worth the $14 I spent on a day pass.

The main pool is enormous, covered on the bottom with smooth river stones. I flipped and flopped around, enjoying the warm (but somehow still cool) waters for 45 minutes before getting out to spend time in a hot tub and sauna. I took an obligatory selfie of myself in the pool, in front of the enormous sign bearing my surname, and was pleased to see that a large frog fountain appeared to be gobbling my my head as if it were a tasty fly.

After a long shower, I saddled up and walked to a laundromat while talking to Jody. After packing away my clean clothes and charging both phone and solar charger, I still had plenty of time, so I decided to visit The Mammoth Site, an archaeological dig and museum.

I had half suspected it was some kind of cheesy tourist trap. Au contraire! It is a remarkable place, a huge building built over the top of a millennia-old sinkhole that snared scores of mammoths and other paleolithic megafauna, preserving their bones. Discovered in 1974 by a local developer, the site remains an active dig, and the 45-minute tour was riveting. It was not the last cool archaeological site I would see during my walk.

I headed west out of town just after 2 p.m., walking on the shoulder of state Highway 18. The weather was ideal, upper 60s with little wind, as I marched four miles up a long, gradual hill, then down the other side to Memorial Road/County Road 17. I followed the dirt road north about a mile, then west to the paved road into Cottonwood Springs Lake.

And then, inexplicably, I forgot one of the lessons I’ve learned from thousands of miles of hiking: Shortcuts usually aren’t.

I should have stopped to check a map, but instead decided to bushwhack north to a dirt road that descended toward the dam at the eastern end of the lake. I should have turned back at the dam, but feeling lazy, decided I would bushwhack along the southwestern shore of the lake toward what appeared to be the campground on the far shore.

Wearing sandals, I followed a faint game trail for a few hundred yards before it petered out and I was high-stepping through knife-edge weeds. Succumbing to a “sunk-cost fallacy,” I stubbornly slogged on, going slower and slower as I picked my way along. Then, at the western end of the lake, I had to wade through a mucky slough, tormented by mosquitoes. By the time I reached the “campground,” my shins were streaked with blood from my weedy scourging.

Well, I thought, at least I’m here now.

When I emerged from the restroom, a white Corps of Engineers truck was coming toward me. The guy rolled up and asked how it was going.

“Fine, except I just foolishly bushwhacked along the southern shore to get here,” I confessed, realizing he’d probably seen me.

He peered down at my bleeding legs and sandaled feet.

“In sandals?” he said, raising eyebrows. “You are aware that that this is rattlesnake country, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. But I was trying to high-step and … uh …,” I trailed off. “Yeah, well, I ought to know better than to try shortcuts. I do know better. But at least I’m at the campground now.”

“Except this isn’t the campground. It’s up there,” he said, pointing to a bluff about 200 feet above the southern shore.

I groaned. So now my “short” cut was going to consist of a nasty half-mile bushwhack plus a mile or more roadwalk on the paved road back to the actual campground.

“Do you have a reservation? You’ll need that,” he said.

“No, I didn’t know….” I mumbled. Jeez, I thought, this guy must think I’m an idiot. I am an idiot.

“What phone service do you have?”

“Verizon.”

“Well, you’re in luck. You can get service at the campground, and I’ll give you the 800 number to call for a reservation. Or the camp host can help you out.”

I felt utterly deflated. I’d had such a great day, why had ruined it like this? Would I never learn?

“You wouldn’t be able to give me a ride, by any chance, would you?” I asked sheepishly.

He shook his head. Against regulations.

I thanked him for setting me straight and went to fill a water bottle for my walk of shame while he drove slowly off to check something down by the water. I started west, cursing myself silently. After I’d gone a couple of hundred yards, the ranger pulled up beside me.

“Come on,” he said. “Toss your pack in back and I’ll drive you. Just don’t tell anybody.”

“Thank you so much.” (Technically, I’m blowing his cover here. But I’m not naming names, and presumably, the Corps of Engineers isn’t going to read this blog.)

He dropped me at the campground (which I would have reached in about five minutes had I continued on the paved road), where I plopped down on the grass and called to make a reservation and pay $10 to put up my tent. It all went smoothly, and I was relieved to have escaped my dumb-assery with relatively little consequence.

Tons of skeeter bites and nasty shin scratches, but no rattlesnake bite, I wrote in my journal while boiling up a tasty meal of plastic, excuse me, ramen, noodles. DON’T BE DUMB!

Episode 10

Day Ten: In a Sunburned Country

• August 28: Edgemont, S.D. to Forest Service Road 930, Ogalala National Grasslands, Nebraska
• Miles: 27 miles
• Elevation gain: 1,000 feet

What a brutal day! I would write at the end of this day. Brutal, but memorable, I would add now.

I woke in the chilly morning, the ceiling of my tent dripping with condensation. It was still dark when I headed out to begin a 9-mile roadwalk on Highway 471, so I donned my headlamp and was on high alert for oncoming traffic. To my surprise, I saw only a handful of cars and trucks.

I knew that I was starting a very different stage of my walk, one of long, straight roads, little civilization and an almost complete absence of humanity — and water. The road climbed up through a few miles of canyon country before topping out to reveal impossibly open vistas in every direction, endless open fields and pastures leading to distant, shadowy lines of hills.

As I approached the tiny settlement of Provo, I could see the remains of the ordnance depot, aka Fort Igloo, off to the west, looking properly ghostly. The town was occupied, but I never saw a soul as I passed by yards filled with junked vehicles. Turning east, I followed 471 for about a mile before reaching the dusty white track known as Edgemont Road.

Pulling off near the top of the first small hill, I dropped my pack and donned sandals. I had found that my hot, sore feet responded well to switching throughout the day. But, worried at a couple of hotspots on the balls of my feet, I slapped on two strips of Leukotape, the miraculous adhesive tape I swear by when on a long walk.

I knew I’d be following Edgemont Road for 11 or 12 miles as it headed south. What I didn’t know was that it would undulate constantly, rolling up and down over small hills and swales through natural grasslands and cultivated fields with nary a tree for miles around. And after a couple of warm, but not hot, days of walking, by mid-morning it was clear I was in for a blazer.

I’d packed four liters of water, but was soon grateful knowing that Steve had stashed two one-gallon jugs of water for me at my destination over the Nebraska line, because I was sucking it down like crazy as the heat continued to rise under a ruthlessly cloudless sky.

It’s impossible to adequately describe how hot, tired and, at times, despondent, I became that day. I marched and marched, staring at an endless, undulating serpent of waterless, dusty road that threatened to steal my sanity.

Typically, I’m not much of a stopper when hiking. I like to put my head down and just go; that’s even how I got my trail name, Pony. But on this day, when I desperately wanted to stop and rest, there was simply no place to do it. The margins between road and fenceline bristled with prickly growth and there wasn’t enough shade to cool a cricket.

After about 16 miles, trespassing into a field to take shelter in a few meager inches of shade next to a five-foot tall, cylindrical hay bale. I sat heavily on the stubbly ground, puncturing my butt on a sharp haystalk before tossing out my Z Lite pad and huddling next to the bale. I hunched there for a half an hour, eating, guzzling my rapidly dwindling, tepid water supply and dreading the rest of the day.

The Great Plains Trail Alliance designated this pilot trail from Bear Butte to Scottsbluff, and it is doable. But due to the long miles between available public lands or campgrounds, the pilot trail forces you into some pretty hefty miles. Let’s just say it’s not for beginners.

Before packing up, I peeled the Leukotape off the soles of my feet. Because it comes in fairly large rolls, I’ve always wrapped some around a toothbrush or bottle, to save weight. But now, perhaps because of the extreme heat, both sides of the tape were sticky and had collected a layer of grit that was making things worse. I put my shoes on, this time without socks, hoping the switch would calm my sore, hot, swollen feet.

Fueling up in that hayfield had perked me up quite a bit. But a couple miles down the road, I was dragging again. It’s hard to understand why, but my brain — perhaps everybody’s brain — yearns for variety, and staring down that endless white line toward an impossibly distant horizon for so many miles and hours had become a psychological torment.

I found myself thinking, as I often do on long hikes, of Frodo and Sam in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic tale, “The Lord of the Rings.” I summoned up memories of their pain and suffering as they stumbled and staggered through the final brutal miles across the blasted plains of Mordor. Call me silly, childish or whatever, but as always, two fictional hobbits made it easier to keep putting one painful, throbbing foot in front of the other, on down that endless road.

I am truly surprised, looking at the time stamps on my photos, that I reached the end of that southward stretch of Edgemont Road by 12:20. That means I’d hiked some 19 miles in about seven hours; a good push, to be sure, but I’ve done more miles in less time over more challenging terrain. It must have been the heat, deep into the 90s, and the monotony that left me feeling so battered when I reached the junction that turned me west — hallelujah! — on dusty, for a few miles before I headed south into Nebraska.

There was no sign to demarcate the state line as I crossed a small stream at the border, but I took comfort upon seeing a ranch a half mile to the west. I could always go beg for water, if I had to.

But, as it happened, I’d gotten a mild second wind. Crossing borders and other micro-horizons tends to have that effect on me. And while I was still painfully hot and sore, I knew I only had a couple of miles left to go before I could stop for the day. What’s more, I passed several small, milky pools to the side of the road, where to my astonishment I saw many hardy frogs perched on white-gray mud. I filled and treated a bottle of milky, murky water, just to be safe. It tasted, unsurprisingly, like frogs and mud, but it was wet, and I was grateful to have it.

I stepped across a cattle guard past a sign for the Oglala National Grasslands at 2:30 p.m., fretting about whether or not I’d find Steve’s stash, which had become ambrosia in my imagination. Not long after, I literally broke into a jog when I spied two plastic jugs resting in the tall grass atop a hill so small it was barely worth the name. A small sign reading “930” stood just beyond, the number of the Forest Service “road” where I planned to camp.

Atop the swale, all the day’s grim discomfort was instantly neutralized by my exuberance over getting there. But as I swigged mouthfuls of loving water, a hot breeze carried the unmistakable odor of rotting flesh to my nostrils. Turning, I saw a pile of offal heaped in the blazing sun no more than 10 yards away. A riot of flies rose from the stinking mound with each passing breath of wind, then settled back to feed on their delightful bounty and, no doubt, seed it with the next generation.

Disgusted, I scooped up both jugs and headed down the backside of the hill, scouting for the small hollow Steve had described, where a tent would not be visible from the road. Fortunately, I pitched my tent far enough from the hillock that I caught only occasional whiffs from the heap of guts throughout the afternoon and night. After chugging nearly a half-gallon of water, I poured some over my sun-fried head. I stripped off my clothes and hung them on the tent to dry. When I checked the small thermometer I’d attached to my pack it was 98 degrees in the shade.

I was more than a little heat-crazed. I often chat with myself while hiking, but I was carrying on whole conversations, debating how long it would be until the sun slipped below the western horizon and stopped torturing me (many, many hours) and crouching in grouchy paranoia at the approaching dust cloud of a passing truck. When it turned onto Forest Service 930, I scurried and squatted, wearing undershorts, sandals and a bandana tied around my head, a half-mad soldier hiding from the enemy. When the truck backed out and left a few minutes later, I pumped a fist in the air and let loose a triumphant yelp that would have made Tarzan proud.

Then I fell into the tent, knowing I needed to get out of the sun. It was brutally hot, so I zipped up the door facing the sun and draped it with drying clothes, hoping to create some shade. It didn’t work very well, but I was happy to be on my back, dozing here and there for the next couple of hours. When I fully came to, my nether regions were singing with the prickly pain of chafe and even worse, my lips, nose and cheeks were aflame.

Sunburned? Me? I thought. I know it’s foolish, but I almost never use sunscreen, and hadn’t had anything close to sunburn since hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2016. I’d fancied I was almost immune, but I’d never walked nine straight hours beneath a ferocious, late-August sun on an open savannah before, and I was dead wrong.

Over the next week, I would vow to never, ever leave my face, especially my lips, unprotected from sun again. It was painful to talk, eat, drink, smile, or do anything at all with my mouth for many days. I applied Vagisil to the chafe, which helped immediately, and applied A&D diaper-rash ointment to my face and lips, the only treatment I had. It tasted gross, but at least it was something.

I tried to snack, but it was painful, so I mostly lay in the oven of my tent sweating and half-hallucinating. Throughout the night, I woke to the slightest sound, the passing of harmonizing coyotes, the faint crunch of some delicate creature’s feet in the crispy grass, the occasional rumble of a vehicle blasting up the road, some ranch hand returning from the bar in town….

I felt like a lone wanderer in the otherworldly place I now called the Great Nebraska Savannah. Burned, battered and exhausted as I was, I couldn’t help but crack (literally, painfully) a smile in the dark.

Well, I wrote later in my journal, I wanted a different kind of experience, and I got it.

Episode 12

Day Eleven: Strolling the Savannah

• August 29: Forest Service Road 930, Oglala National Grasslands, to Toadstool Geologic Park
• Miles: 27 (including error)
• Elevation gain: 1,000 feet

Well, another death march, I wrote in my journal at the end of the next day, another second consecutive long, hot slog across the sun-blasted plains of northwestern Nebraska.

I woke early, as usual, feeling refreshed, also as usual. I’ve gone to bed on long hikes feeling down and discouraged, but never once awakened feeling anything but renewed and ready to go.

The sky was partly cloudy as I started south on Edgemont Road, and, much to my relief, a substantial breeze was blowing. With luck, this day wouldn’t be as blistering as the day before. I strode along happily, descending a miles-long, gradual hill from my campsite, following the straight, undulating road that led to the small town of Harrison, county seat of Sioux County.

Over the next three-and-a-half miles, just three vehicles blasted past, roiling up clouds of white dust, each one a pickup driven by a mom with kids, presumably on the way to school. At one point, in need of a privy, I dodged down a small incline into some tall weeds. While squatting over my cathole, I watched a pair of pronghorn antelope, a mother and fawn, prance up a hill to the west.

I turned left on dirt Montrose Road after about an hour and a half of easy walking. Not as relentlessly straight as Edgemont, it curved up, over and around slight grassy prominences. As I approached the top of the first small hillock, I noticed a gray pickup creeping slowly across a grassy swale a couple hundred yards south. It came in and out of view as I continued east and I couldn’t stop my mind from spinning over what it could possibly be up to.

It wasn’t a Forest Service vehicle (does everyone have a pretty keen radar for “official” vehicles? I seem to) and, for whatever reason, my imagination kept straying to vaguely nefarious purposes. Who would be out here this early, nosing around? At best, maybe kids smoking weed; at worst, some criminal. I found myself wondering how I’d get away if the truck approached, but there was no place to hide out there.

Thankfully, it never did, though it continued to slowly criss-cross the grasslands as I walked the road. Then, much to my surprise, as I rounded a corner and started down a small hill I saw a lone figure walking toward me on the road, maybe a half mile away. Oddly, my brain didn’t associate the walker with the truck, and I began to wonder if, in this most unexpected of places, here was a fellow hiker.

As we approached one another, the mystery was solved: It was a guy in his 20s, dressed in camo and carrying a hunting bow.

“How’s it going?” he said when we met.

“Pretty good.”

He asked what I was doing and I explained. “Antelope bow season?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. Been out here since dawn, but haven’t taken a shot.”

I asked if he’d seen the pickup meandering around to the south.

“Oh, yeah, that’s my buddy,” he said. “Where was he? He’s probably looking for me.”

Mystery two, solved.

We parted, two lone wanderers, and continued in opposite directions. But I would see him again.

The hunter may not have gotten any shots, but I saw plenty of antelope, in groups large and small. My experience with pronghorn while working as a cowboy has always been, they see you, and they are gone, rocketing away at 70 mph over the next hill, out of sight. But on this windy, increasingly warm morning, antelope that spied me stopped to gawk before running on a bit, gawking, and finally disappearing over a rise.

I wondered if that was due to the fact that, lone hunter notwithstanding, a human on foot was an anomaly in this landscape. Vehicles, cars, trucks, tractors, no doubt a few people on horseback, but nobody was nutty enough to be walking way the hell out here, so far from the town. Supporting my guess was the unusual behavior of cattle and horses I passed.

One bunch of about 20 horses tossed manes and barreled down a hill, where they stood snorting and alert, eyeing the suspicious biped in their midst. Later, some 60 endearingly curious Angus heifers couldn’t make up their mind whether to run away, tails lollipopped, or follow me through their open pasture. In the end, they trailed after me about 20 yards back until I stepped over a cattle guard and left them blinking in puzzlement. Might have been the wind, too; in my experience, moving air often stirs up livestock.

Some 12 miles into my day, I reached the empty, remarkably well-kept Immaculate Conception Catholic church, with its barren, snake-infested (according to a sign) cemetery just after 10 a.m., feeling good about my progress. I dutifully marched a quarter mile north on a faint track to visit the Warbonnet Battlefield and Cody-Yellow Hair Monument, commemorating a battle between the U.S. Fifth Cavalry and Cheyenne Indians on nearby Warbonnet Creek on July 17, 1876.

Steve had kindly stashed two more wet, wonderful gallons of water for me just inside the fence on the monument trail, and I felt like a sultan as I settled onto the cement stoop of the church for an early lunch. There had been stock tanks along Montrose Road, but they were pretty far off, and Warbonnet Creek was muddy, so it was nice knowing I had this bounty of water waiting.

After eating tuna and peanut butter on whole-wheat tortillas (not at the same time; some hikers can do stuff like that, but I can’t) and glugging down nearly half a gallon of water, I signed the church register. It apparently still hosted Masses with visiting celebrants from nearby Harrison. After filling my bottles, I poured out the excess, crushed the gallon jugs and stuffed them into my pack.

The signage at the three-way intersection in front of the church seemed to conflict with the databook instructions, so I initially set out east on Hat Creek Road. When the road took a hard left and headed north, I turned back, grumbling about “sideways miles,” and backtracked.

As I walked along, I saw a couple of signs warning that the U.S. government, in a truly appalling, wasteful use of taxpayers’ money, had set out explosive cyanide in piles of rotting meat in an effort to “control” coyote populations, a lost and foolish cause if there ever was one.

I suddenly realized that might explain for the heap of putrid offal I’d found near my water stash at Forest Service Road 930. I’d considered moving the stinking mess so I wouldn’t have to suffer it all night long — what if it had been a cyanide trap?

Jesus, I wrote later. Talk about dangerous. Go, coyotes, go!

It was 20 degrees cooler than the day before and breezy, but I felt increasingly parched and prickly beneath the relentless sun. I loved this wide-open country, but my feet were hot and sore and my lips were cracked and painful. At Orella Road, I put on sandals and headed east.

This next dusty dirt track also less relentlessly straight than Edgemont Road, and I walked past numerous unfenced stock ponds and tanks where I could have watered up, had I needed to. Four or five miles down the road, the landscape transitioned from rolling grasslands and occasional creeks shaded by cottonwoods into a mix of prairie, shallow canyons and badlands studded with moon-colored humps and teetering toadstools that instantly reminded me of the opening scenes of the 1968 version of “Planet of the Apes.”

Hot, tired and getting antsy to wrap up another long day, this new, varied landscape cheered me up a bit. I’d been to South Dakota’s Badlands National Park years before, and this was pretty much the same thing, on a smaller scale. I was also tickled to see many more hardy leopard frogs sunbathing next to murky puddles.

Desert/badlands frargs in surprisingly small pools — where do they go in winter when it dries? I pondered later in my journal (using a non-traditional spelling we use at our house).

Then I pulled yet another “duh” move. I’d briefly glanced at the databook instructions in the morning and got it into my head that the route followed Orella Road to the BNSF tracks before turning south on Toadstool Road toward Toadstool Geologic Park. So that’s what I did.

Afternoon was a long, hot slog down Orella Road, I wrote in my journal. I don’t believe it’s only six miles. According to Apple maps it’s 7.2 — seems closer, for sure.

It was, I would later learn, closer to seven-and-a-half miles to Toadstool Road, then another two-and-a-half miles to the Toadstool campground. I got there at 2:30 p.m., dumped my pack, and staggered over to the sod house, where Steve had stashed the last two of six very welcome gallons of water for my Great Savannah Crossing. I assumed it was Steve who also had left a Nature’s Valley bar and a banana atop the jugs, but he later said it wasn’t him; thank you, unknown trail angel — you’re the best kind!

I was hot, exhausted and footsore, but couldn’t take even a minute to rest. Despite the seeming lack of open water or even dampness nearby, the campground was swarming with aggressive mosquitoes. I smeared myself with the last of the Deepwoods Off! wipes I had and swiftly put up the tent to escape. As I lay there, glad to be on my back, a gray truck pulled in to the site two spots over and out climbed the antelope hunters I’d seen that morning.

“You beat us here,” the one I talked to said later when I went over to say hello. They’d seen plenty of antelope, he said, but taken no shots. They gave me a couple of Gatorades before packing up and driving back to Omaha.

I hunted when I was younger, and I’m OK with hunting if the hunter uses what he’s taken; trophy-hunting is inexcusable, in my book. Honestly? I’m always secretly thrilled when I learn that animals have outwitted heavily-armed pursuers to live another day.

I emerged from the tent and rummaged around a garbage can in search of a can of discarded bug spray, but had no luck. Donning long-johns and -sleeves, I wandered through the gate leading to the toadstool formations, trying to figure out where I was headed the next morning. In a tenth of a mile or less, I stopped to puzzle over a new Forest Service sign.

With GREAT PLAINS TRAIL on top, I assumed this was the sign referred to in the databook.

“What the hell?” I said aloud. I could see my tent in the campground a few hundred yards away and what the hell was “918 ROAD”? I took a photo and went back to my tent, where I discovered I had cell coverage.

Where is the trail to Hudson-Meng (Education and Research Center, an archaeological site south of Toadstool)? I texted Steve. Is it the same as the guided trail? Signage isn’t clear.

Just head generally southish and you should be fine, he replied. It mostly follows the main wash south from the CG. Be sure to follow the brown posts.

That just confused me more. Maybe I had sunstroke.

Sunburned lips. Shiny, burnt, scabby homeless legs with a million skeeter bites, I wrote in my journal. Guess I should have brought pants.

After eating and cleaning up, I lay motionless as the sun disappeared and the eastern sky turned purple, then black. I was burnt to a crisp in more ways than one after grinding out nearly 50 miles of exposed, sun-blasted savannah in two days. But I was happy, shielded from marauding insects and fat with good, clean water, in a beautiful place. And just one more day to town.

May or may not slog 20+ all the way to Crawford, I wrote before falling asleep. Certainly willing to hitch if I can. I’m absolutely beat.

Episode 13