17 Miles
Side Trail Road Past Hog Creek
After a restless night crammed into a creaky cabin with Panama, Beth, and the dogs, we all went out to grab breakfast around 8. Breakfast was quite tasty given the fact we were in a town with a population under 100. Spins and I got packs and went out to hitch back up to the trail with a sign this time so hopefully no over three hours of hitching bull. When we started hitching we flagged down a police truck and unfortunately he wasn't headed up to Battle Pass and let us know hitching was illegal in Wyoming. I kindly let him know that hitchhiking was just legalized as of July 1st this year. He wasn't aware of the change and said he'd look into that but was super nice regardless and went along his way wishing us luck with our hike. Soon after we got a ride from a really nice local named Jerry who went out of his way to drive us up to the pass after passing us earlier and turning around to pick us up!
Once we got to the trailhead the rain had ceased for a bit but it was quite chilly. We followed a dirt road as per usual up for quite a ways which was actually really nice gradual hiking that led out to open foggy meadows with loads of water. 
We traveled on off and around trail for a while but mostly followed posts in the distance sometimes hidden by the fog. It started raining soon after and we hiked uphill into the cloud with thunder and lightning cracking all above and around us. It was a good time to take a snack break. The rain calmed down and we continued up and the clouds sort of parted. We were hiked g along some pretty exposed pink granite and rose quartz all over. Some of the cairns were even all huge chunks of quartz which I thought was pretty neat. 
The rain started up again almost cyclically. There was little wind so the umbrella kept me nice and dry all day today. We descended following cairns and posts with quartz rocks on top of them which made them really stand out and find easily. Eventually we hit a road which is a tad shorter and has water along it as opposed to the high waterless trail so we hiked the road in the pouring rain to Hog Creek with anticipation of camping there. No water could be found...All this rain and the creek was dry. We kept hiking hoping to find water which we did about a mile further down the road and set up camp alongside of it in the rain. The rain stopped long enough for dinner but the forecast has it raining all week so it looks like this'll be a wet stretch. Oh and we are only four miles from the Colorado border!!!!!!!!!
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