July 18
Mileage: 16
1317.5 miles hiked

All night the semis rumble by on the interstate and the streetlights shine a watery yellow. How’s a person supposed to sleep around here? When I wake up I’m tired, but just regular tired. Yay!

Big greasy breakfast at the diner. Then the three of us sit in the cold sunlight for many hours, drinking coffee and doing things on our phones. At one p.m. the kindly proprietor of the motel behind which we camped loads us into his truck for a ride to the trail.

My dizziness is gone. It’s gone! I still feel pretty rough, but I imagine that will pass. Won’t it? We climb a long slow jeep road back up onto the divide. We’re in the Targhee wilderness now- iridescent brown meadows going to seed, waving in the wind, full of flowers. Views to forever on either side. There are some climbs but I take it slow. Listen to Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It hails for a little while, just enough to make us cold, and then blows over and we dry again.

We reach camp before seven- a peaceful meadow next to a stream, quiet except for a little birdsong. The boys play magic and I set up my tarp- there are no mosquitoes! And I forgot what a palace this thing is without the bug net. We never had mosquito hell, the sort of bug weather in which I am magically able to hike 4mph, and by August they’ll begin to wane. Will we make it through the whole trail without mosquito hell? What a merciful world that would be.

Photos on instagram