Stop 45, Pinedale, WY, Bridger Teton NF

At the end of the road, overlooking the Wind River range.

We stayed in a small campground aptly named, Trail's End.  There was construction on the last 3 miles of the road, so making it in and out of Pinedale, which we didn't do very often, was a bit of a pain.  Like most of our time in Wyoming, we dodged thunderstorms.  Our campsite was in a low spot, and the host, Barb, warned us to watch out for flooding.  Fortunately, we didn't get enough rain to flood us out.  

The highlight of the trip was a 9-10 mile hike to Photographers' Point in the Bridger Wilderness area in the Wind River Mountain Range.  The campsite was at 9000 feet, so it was only another 1000 feet to the view from the point.  We arrived mid day and the lighting on the Wind River range was beautiful.   As we have found almost all of Wyoming this year, the wildflowers were abundant and the mountains and high desert were unusually green.  Barb told us that long time locals were calming to see flowers blooming that they had not seen in years due the the abundance of rain.

Many backpackers use the parking lot at Trail's end to start backpacking trips into the Wind River range.  It is good to see them go, but sad for me to realize that my days for such trips are probably mostly behind me.  The knees, and surprisingly the toes do not do well with long, multi-day hikes.  Then there's the back.

Pinedale is cute little town, with a good brewery, the Wind River Brewery.  We saw several people come in for dinner and drinks that we had seen on the trail during our hike to Photographer's point.  The Mountain Man museum is here, and it is near a Rendezvous site on the Green River, where beaver trappers gathered once a year to trade pelts, doing whiskey, gamble and do that other thing than men spending a year in the mountains want to do.  It's quite amazing to learn about how much of Wyoming's history is tied up with the beaver felted top hat craze that struck Europe in the 1800s.