Day 2: big horns bound

Woke up in spearfish to pancakes and coffee from brad, our Airbnb host. The guy couldn’t have been nicer. Super personable, full of stories, and not a negative vibe. We shoved off around 8:30 bound for the bighorns.

More rain on the drive, intermittent up until the lunch stop even. We grabbed a few supplies in Buffalo, which looks nice. Another year perhaps. The up seemed to last forever as we wound through he bighorns on 16, rain the entire way. Finally hit forest road #27 and continue the trek up a dirt road. The scenery is gorgeous in the bighorns. It doesn’t seem insanely touristy either. Would absolutely come back for a backpacking trip in the future.

We got to the trailhead and it became quickly apparent that we would not be backpacking into the lake. Rain still threatened, and cold temps combined with Kate not bringing a hat or gloves made it a rather easy decision. We instead threw on day packs and hiked up the trail a little. Almost a mile in, you had to cross a stream, likely high due to all the rain. We trekked up a while looking for a better stop to cross with rocks but came up empty handed. Chalk up another fortunate reason to have not backpacked.

Headed back to the trailhead and did another short out and back on a different trail. Stumbled upon the coolest waterfall and just soaked up the scenery for a while. Made you wonder why this isn’t a national park,  but I guess they and we are lucky as there’s hardly anyone here.

We are sharing the campground with one other group. There were a few others on the road up, and a number of cars parked in the backpacking lot, so what people are here are quite dispersed. The site is right on west tensleep lake with views on the snow dotted mountains in the distance. Quite phenomenal. The plan as it stands not is to get up early, and give it a shot to day hike up to misty moon lake where we had originally hoped to camp. It’s chilly, so we’ll see what tomorrow brings. On the grand scheme of things, I should be happy to have temps 40-50 degrees cooler than what we left behind in the cities. And I am. It’s pretty great.