Thursday August 21, 26.6mi/42.8km
Snake River (90.5/2480ft) to Bruneau Desert (63.9/3780ft) (ID)
I was awake at 5:30 and enjoyed a view of the night sky while eating breakfast.
Packing up was faster than I expected and I was hiking just before 6am. I still had another mile and a half of roadwalking, and while I could see just fine in the pre-dawn light, I used my headlamp so cars could see me.
The temperatures were indeed nice and cool, probably 60°F. A short while later I had turned off onto a farming road, and the sun had risen.
The farming road only lasted an hour, and then for the rest of the day I was on brushy 2-track roads.
For part of the morning I was hiking through the Snake River bird sanctuary, and for another part of it, an Air Force bombing range. This sign was in the middle of nowhere, probably at the boundary of those two areas.
At least the trail was well marked.
As I weaved and turned through the desert. I connected and split from various different dirt roads. Some were better than others.
And for some reason part of the desert had been burned in this area, it looked very purposeful since the burn boundaries were very straight and defined.
By mid-afternoon it was starting to get pretty hot, and I arrived at the Bruneau overlook at 3pm, just in time to take advantage of the only shade around for miles.
The views were pretty sweet too, as the Bruneau River carved an 800-ft deep canyon.
It was rather shocking to be hiking across a flat grassy desert all day and then suddenly coming upon a giant gorge. To stay out of the Sun and heat, I sat in the shade of the bathroom for a couple hours and read my book.
By 5pm it had started to cool down slightly, so I hiked for another hour or so.
I made another 4 miles of progress before I decided to call it a day. Finding a campsite was not too difficult, since everything around here is flat. I found a spot where the grass was shorter, and I watched a nice sunset while my dinner was cooking.
Tomorrow will be another early wake up, to hike across more of the desert all day. Kinda feels like Groundhog Day.