Day 2: Where Are We?

The next morning after waking up to spotty sunshine was to dry out the tent and take stock of where we were. We had no map, data, or GPS. The best could do was ping the phone and see the dot of our car moving on an unnamed road.

As I was spreading my rain fly out on the middle of the tiny asphalt forest road a cyclist came by. She lived literally at the boundary of the national forest and knew the roads well. We snapped a pic of her map with our phone and she gave us some advice for that day’s travel. Stay on the paved roads.

Yes, we thought. We can do this. We stopped at Parker Falls for a quick hike and were on our way in search of the illustrious paved road. This again turned out to be a bit of a misnomer. What started out as a 50 mph roadway again narrowed as we climbed higher. And higher, and higher. We crossed rock fields from slides and S-curves with no guard rails on the sides. We heard the soft whoosh wind makes in mountains and the scream of some raptor gliding by. We were high up.

Not a single car passed us all day. Ever. Which was good because one of us would have to back up in order for the other to pass and that would have been difficult.

At some point we figured out where we were on the snapshot map stored on the phone and made it to a BLM campground called Scaredman—not sure why—where again we were the only tent campers. An RV was setting up on the far side. We raided unoccupied campsites for wood in their fire ring and made an excellent fire and finished drying our stuff. Only to have it rain—stay tuned—the next day.