Day 178

I woke up way too early. I couldn’t go back to sleep and finally gave in and woke up. It was cold. The sun wasn’t really up yet. People were out though. I packed up and goodbye to people who came over. As I was heading out of the park, I stopped inside the house again and grabbed a cinnamon rolls. They didn’t charge me. The clerk had a personal story with my cause. She didn’t share it with me but I could tell she was happy that I was doing this. 
I went up to the visitors center because I wanted to get a souvenir from this place because of the amazing experience. I grabbed a magnet and one of those super awesome mosquito nets that goes over your hat and face. Haha. I can’t wait to rock that bad boy on the side of the road. 
As I was finishing up my cinnamon roll, the Ranger from last night came over and gave me a Ranger badge that said “wilderness explorer”. I don’t know why but I was extremely thrilled about it. I felt special. I will always cherish that silly little thing. I laughed little at myself about it but I didn’t care. I really really liked that badge and it made me happy that she gave it to me. 
I set off for the hills. Literally. A freaking mountain to start off the day. I took my time with it though. It was hard but I was feeling great so nothing could stop me. Traffic was really bad too. Must be going home from labor day traffic. I didn’t let that get to me either. Just went about my business, resting when I needed to. 
Around lunch time, I saw a Mexican restaurant up ahead. Oh yeah. I stopped in and grabbed an amazing lunch from a server who made Shakira look like Mama June. Maybe I’ve just been on the road too long. It was a great lunch though. 
A few miles later, I pull into the town of Torrey. I stopped in the visitors center to get the local paper’s phone number and to simply announce my presence to see where it went. The lady was nice but there was no paper. Hard to get the word out in the middle of nowhere. 
I stopped by a bike shop because I wanted to get some patches for my sleeping pad that keeps going flat. The owner was very moved by my cause and gave me tea, some muffins, some money, and tried to give me more but I insisted that he’d done enough. Very nice people in that place. They didn’t have the patches I needed though. But he told me to go to the other store up ahead and try there.
So I get to the other store and they had some patches. As I was walking out, a few people were asking questions when they saw my stroller. They invited me to sit with them and we talked about it all for quite a while. I enjoyed the company. People were very friendly in this town. 
I made it to the campground that I had set out for and checked into a tent site. As I was setting up my tent, I got a notification on my phone saying that my fantasy football draft was in one hour. No one told me. They know I’ll beat em that’s why. Anyone who has done it before knows that the draft is very important. I made sure the WiFi was good and got ready for the draft. I set up my tent and everything while waiting and talked to a few of the other people at the campground.
I found a great place with a wonderful view and some shade and sat down to do the draft. I did ok. We were chatting and talking trash the whole time to make it more fun. 
After the draft I headed across the street for dinner. They had lobster Mac and cheese with green chile. Yeah. That happened. 
I came back and met some more nice people at the campground just before the sun went down. Got ready for blog and bed just as it got dark..