July 27, 2021, 01:37 PM
92fstechBack to the Bighorns....yet more hiking trip photos.
My parents took the kids for a week, so my wife and I got a week to ourselves and decided to spend it hiking in Wyoming. In order to maximize our time away, we decided to drive straight through. I got off work at 6am, slept till noon, then drove the kids to my parent's house 3.5 hours away, turned around, drove home, loaded the gear and my wife in the car, and we then drove straight to WY....about 18.5 hours. Trading off between the two of us it wasn't too bad a drive, apart from Chicago, but that place is always a hellhole.We got to the Tensleep trailhead area and spent the first night car camping in free dispersed camping by the trailhead. I got to do some fishing (My non-resident annual license from our last trip was still good for 2 weeks, so I just squeaked in), we got a good night's sleep, and hit the trail in the morning.
The first day we hiked up to Mistymoon lake, then on past it up to Florence Lake. Leaving Mistymoon, we met some hikers coming down who told us it was "Hot", "Full of Mosquitos", and "Like Mordor". It wasn't quite that bad, but there were a lot of bugs. We got some use out of the cheap head nets that I'd bought...annoying things, but better than letting the mosquitos eat your face.
Lake Marian on the way up to Mistymoon Lake.
The view back down the valley from Mistymoon. I cought a couple of nice lake trout up here.
The climb up to Florence Lake. I think this is where the "Like Mordor" comment came from.
The top of the climb at Florence Lake
Backtrail view of Gunboat Lake on the climb up to Florence.
We camped on a ridge in the middle of Fortress Lakes. This was the view outside the tent in the morning.
Mistymoon Lake in the morning
We hiked around mistymoon, and encountered these two fellas within 100 yards of the trail. We gave them plenty of space, and they semed pretty content to keep munching.
The area above mistymoon up towards Cloud Peak. Some day I want to climb that, but we didn't undertake it on this trip.
We hiked back down and the next day headed up to Lost Twin Lakes. This is Mirror Lake on the way to Lost Twin.
There's some pretty steep climbing on this hike, but there are lots of great meadows an streams to fish in.
We finally made it to Loast Twin Lakes. We'd planned to stay up there all day and do some fishing, but the weather was coming in, so we ate a quick lunch and I tossed in a line a few times without success and we headed back down. We got rained on a bit on the trip back, but not too bad. I managed to catch a few brook trout in the stream that night.
The next morning we drove down to Thermopolis and took a dip in the mineral pool at the state bath house. 104 degree water right out of the hot spring...felt great after 3 days of hiking!
After that it was a 2 day drive home. I'm eying a hike in the Wind River Range to the Titcomb Basin sometime in the next couple of years...can't wait to go back!
And since this is a gun forum...my 3" SP101 in .357 was my cary piece of choice on this trip. I'd say at least 50% of the other hikers we encountered were carrying...mostly Glocks in chest rigs, although one guy had a 220 Legion. A very different scene than you encounter hiking back east!
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