July 23, Day 26: I came down out of Wyoming’s Wind River range, heading west towards Utah. Approaching Farson, I found a badlands-ish area which is runnable for flying (unlike the surrounding sagebrush terrain), so I stopped here in hopes of flying tomorrow.

This location has a surface called Desert Pavement. It looks like rocks in sand, but actually the surface is hard enough that you can drive on it and you won’t sink in at all.

What is unusual relative to other desert pavements I’ve been before is the variety of rocks that can be found.

I have a multitude of smartphone applications that show public land boundaries, which allows me to park almost wherever I want in the American West, where the vast majority of the land is owned by the federal government and administered either by the Bureau of Land Management or the US Forest service, both of which allow dispersed camping, also called boondocking, which is overnighting on public land in the absence of a campground. Typically, one is allowed to stay in a particular location for 14 to 16 days and then one has to move a certain number of miles to a new location. The only other factor determining how long I stay is how long my food and water last or how long it will be until the sewer tanks fill up and need to be dumped.

It’s simply amazing to be miles and miles from pavement and another human being. It’s very quiet, and the night sky can be stunning when camped 50 miles from the nearest town, which may only have 15 families.

I wish everyone could have this experience.

See the trip map for today’s drive.

Some farewell photos of the local badlands:

I had hoped to do some flying from my dispersed camping location near Castle Gardens in Wyoming, but the winds just didn’t cooperate, so I packed up and drove west to the Johnny Behind The Rocks trail network near Lander Wyoming:

Some of the trails were really tough, and there was evidence along the trail of what the penalty for failure might look like:

I continued West to the southern end of the Wind River range, dispersed camping in the Shoshone national forest for Shabbos:

Good Shabbos!  See the trip map for today’s drive.

Another 100% work day while dispersed camping near Castle Gardens in Wyoming. I did take a break to reinforce my new solar installation.

Every year, I put the angle grinder in the toolbox and think to myself that it’s kind of ridiculous to bring it along, but I’m pretty sure I’ve used it every year:

I woke up before sunrise for a 100% work day:

I did take a 15 minute walk, and spotted this Horned Toad:

I am parked a few hundred yards from a watering hole, and several times as I walked along, and American avocet would fly over and around me, and then fly back to the watering hole.

I flew my drone again to the local badlands: