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!
4 comments:
yeh, saw the spot track doubling back and thought that looked odd. And today confirmed as the track sets off in the other direction.
This may have happened at an inopportune time-being in a race-but at least you got to enjoy some more beautiful scenery you would have missed =). Besides,who knows? a higher power than ourselves may have sent you on that journey to prevent your being "at the wrong place at the wrong time"...like how one gets stuck behind a truck climbing a mountain very slowly,only to discover later that had they been blissfully driving along at a brisker pace,they would have been at a certain place just when a catastrophic accident had happened...one never knows.
Keep hastening slowly,Brother,yours is an epic journey the rest of us can only enjoy through words and pics =)
Steve
Prudent perhaps to keep only one eye focused on the antelope, and the other on the NanoRaptors?
Tomb
Kent, You rode a great race, a great prologue, and did it all with humor, good sense, and grace. Sounds to me like you are a winner. Ride safely, ride well. Bruce
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