Here we are again. Two Australians with a plan.
Hike 250kms to Yellowstone National Park. Do it before the snow closes in. Simple. Clean. Very us-proof, we thought.
One minor problem.
Bailey was flying into the closest airport. I was running early (first time in recorded history, I’d like that noted). And the only place we could actually meet was Lander, a town off the trail entirely. So we met in Lander, looked at the weather rolling in, looked at the mountains looking ominous, looked at each other, and said:
Forget it. Let’s just walk the road.
Now. You need to understand something. Both of us hate road walking. We have done our time on roads. Hard shoulder gravel, traffic noise, the specific existential sadness of watching cars cover in four minutes what took you three hours on foot. It is not why either of us does this.
And yet.
Wyoming, you absolute legend
It turned out to be the best decision we made all week. Maybe all month.
We found camps in places we wouldn’t have found on trail. We moved at a pace that left room for things to happen. And things happened. Constantly. Because the people of Wyoming are, it turns out, extremely invested in the wellbeing of two Australians walking their roads for no obvious reason.
The Wind River Indian Reservation community were the first to find us, asked what we were doing, decided we were worth keeping an eye on. That kind of easy, matter-of-fact generosity. Someone sees you, decides you’re their business, and makes it so.
Then the trail magic opens.
Police check-ins, with the hot chocolates Bailey and I had been loudly manifesting into existence. Surprise cake (no context, just cake, appearing at the side of a road in Wyoming, as it does). And Jolene, from the reservation, who gave me a protection stone. Just handed it over. Here, she said, take this. As she pulled an earring out for me to wear.
For a remote and isolated place inside the least populated state in the country, there were a lot of people finding us.
The zebra. And the man who trains Clydesdales for the Super Bowl.
I have to talk about the zebra.
I sneaked zebra footage onto social media and not one single person asked about it. NOT ONE. I am choosing to believe this says something profound about my audience’s trust in me, and absolutely nothing about their attention spans.
So, for the record: we met a zebra. And here’s how it happened.
Locals heard we were Australian. This information travelled, as information does in small communities, and eventually reached Robin Wiltshire — a charming Australian-turned-Wyoming-cowboy who has trained the Budweiser Clydesdales for the Super Bowl commercials. The ones that are (famously) nearly as anticipated as much as the game itself.
We were dragged to his ranch by a well-intended local. It was, in equal measure, extremely awkward and completely wonderful. There was a zebra on the property. We got to pat it. I filmed it. The internet did not react. Moving on.
Wombat, for his part, took all of this entirely in stride. New smells, new people, Bailey nearby — living the dream. #regularpooch
Dubois, and the front page
Eventually, our feet ran out of goodwill.
Bailey and I made it to Dubois. A journey that, according to every blister and aching muscle, was genuinely awful. Road walking is still road walking, even when the week around it is magic. The body does not forget.
But.
We made the front page of the Dubois Frontier newspaper.
Two Australians who hate road walking, walking a road in Wyoming, ending up in a local paper. As Anne Lamott once wrote, “You own everything that happened to you.” This one’s ours. Front page and everything.
Plans, as it turns out, are just suggestions. The road has other ideas. And sometimes (not always, but sometimes) the road is right.
Lucy + Wombat 👩🌾🐶
–
If you want to follow along properly — protection stones, suspicious juice, and front page newspaper fame — join Entangled. It's my inner circle and it's where a genuine community lives. Or if you just want to shout me a warm-up-coffee or a self-pity-hot-chocolate to keep me moving: same link.
