After ejoying a nice tailwind and a pleasant day of riding, I arrived in South Pass City at 5:25 PM. After grabbing a cold lemonade from the vending machine, filling my bottles at the bathroom, and changing to the next map, I set out for Atlantic City and the Great Divide Basin.
At the old mine, I stopped to take pictures and read the sign. That's where I missed the key words that told me to turn right at the mine. I just kept going.
Off course. By the time I figured out I'd gone wrong, I'd taken too many wrong moves to trust my backtracking. I found a biggish dirt road and followed it for quite a few miles before a signpost, my map and compass gave me back my bearings in the world. By the way, this was beautiful country with lots of trees and streams. That was another thing that told me I was way off course.
I did manage to get back to South Pass City four hours later, where I had another cold lemonade and spent the night.
So the lesson is: reading is fundamental. Read ALL the words. And if you do mess up, figure out how to get back to where you went wrong and start again.
That's what I'm doing.
Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Slowly working my way thru the Basin where amazingly my Peek has a signal!
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