Friday, Aug 14 - Return to Worthen Meadows, on to Green Mountain, WY

It was another beautiful morning, and Gary borrowed me one of his fishing poles (my pole sucked) to try my luck again at fishing. The trout were biting that morning, but again they were very small, and we really didn’t have any plans (or time) to fry up these little trout. It was nice to have some success fishing though! We were up and out of camp by 10 am this day, with 6 miles to go to Worthen Meadows. The scouts were VERY interested in the topography between here and our destination – were there hills? Would it be flat? Both. The first 3 miles paralleled the Middle Fork of the Popo Agie River on a somewhat gentle downhill slope (to 8200 ft), crossing the river at Sheep Bridge, but the final 3 miles would have 2 steep ascents up to Worthen Meadow Reservior (9200 feet). So, there would be hills, but we found that we all felt much stronger at these lower altitudes compared to our hikes at 10-12,000 feet.

We reached Sheep Bridge around noon – a beautiful spot for lunch, with cascading water in an alpine forest setting. Gary used this as a final opportunity for photographs with the llamas. They were getting restless since they knew the trailhead was not far away. Paintbrush, the youngest, was normally always humming/grunting, simply a sign of being interested and mildly excited, but at Sheep Bridge even America and Sheep were joining in the llama vocalizing. Sheep was without a saddle this day, a victim of ever worse saddle sores. Poor guy. Poor us too, but we all seemed to be doing OK with the added weight (OK, I didn't ask Chuck).

After lunch at Sheep Bridge, we began the final 3 miles "up" to our destination, arriving at the trailhead at 2:10 pm, with 2 hours to kill before the llama outfitters would arrive. The day was sunny and humid, and swimming was on our minds, but after removing the saddles from the llamas, opening the cars and the trailer, and digging into our backpacks, we all had gear strewn everywhere! Nora and Susan did manage a swim, and after an hour or so we saw the types of clouds that had chased us all across South Dakota and Wyoming 5 days earlier. We corralled our gear into the cars and trailer just before the rain hit, and we sat out a couple of rainstorms before the outfitters arrived at 4:30.

Earlier, the Chuck Wagon left down into Lander (5,500 ft) for supplies. The Gear Daddy Caddy arrived in town about 5 pm after saying farewell to our 3 llama friends, where we all made a quick McDonald’s run, then headed East to our overnight destination in the middle of Wyoming - the Green Mountains and its Cottonwood campground(8000 ft). The area is well-known to hunters - we had deer-hanging apparatus already set up in our campsite! (This inspired Kayla to tell her deer-slaying/dressing out story to the utter amazement of scout and adult alike!!) There we set up camp (we had to chase a herd of deer out of our campsite), Kayla and Nora made a supper of chicken soup and dumplings, and finished with a superb blueberry cobbler with whipped cream. After that, we had a nice campfire, and a great deal of guitar, songs, singing, etc. This night, we didn’t get to bed until around midnight we were having so much fun. The scouts were particularly keen on a handful of songs over the course of this trip: Bottomless Lake, American Pie, City of New Orleans, Country Road, Camp Grenada to name a few. We all knew the tough part of the trip was behind us, and the next two days would require a great deal of driving, so we all made the most of it!


Llama Trek to Worthen Meadows photos - click for more

After completing our 5-day llama trek through the Popo Agie Wilderness, we attempted a "Bad Hair Contest", but we were all pretty good at managing a decent level of personal hygiene, so the results were not as impressive as past trips with younger Boy Scouts. Why, some of the girls looked downright ready to hit the town!


Bad Hair Contest photos - click for more