Day 65: Moose

Thursday, August 20

Today we started our descent out of the mountains and into the great basin. We will be in the flat and treeless great basin for the next week.

Early in the morning we entered a big meadow. About 200 yards away we saw what we thought were two cows. But we noticed they had big ears. They were looking at us so we moved quietly on trail which was going in their direction. As we got closer, we realized they were moose. The trail got within 50 yards of them. We slowly walked and they just stared at us. It was a big cow and a young bull with small antlers.

We walked a little further past them and stopped to watch them as they continued to feed. They didn't seem too bothered by us as long as we weren't moving.

The rest of the day included mostly road walking out in the open. We got to a campground by a river right at lunchtime and it was really nice sitting at a picnic table to eat. We usually are sitting on the ground for all of our meals, so it was really a treat!

We got to South Pass city as it was getting dark. South pass city is a tiny tiny town which is an old mining town turned into a historic site. No restaurants our motels or anything. Our guidebook says we could camp in the grass outside the small gift shop. We found what we thought was the gift shop and set up camp.