Day 29 Lander Creek to Sweet Water Creek (Wild Camp)

- July 23, 2026

We rode 42.75 miles and had 2398 ft of elevation gain. The plan for the day was to ride about 54 miles to the Diagnus well. We knew it would be a flat sagebrush campsite for the night, but we would have water. The road varied from gravel to hard packed dirt most of the day. We had rolling hills and a tremendous headwind to add to our slow progress. We went through South Pass City and stopped and had a Root Beer. South Pass City is a well preserved gold mine ghost town. We stopped at Atlantic City and had lunch at the local bar. Both of them had huge climbs to leave town. A local in Atlantic City called our climb out Walker road because most of the riders have to walk up it. We started meeting Continental Divide Trail hikers along our ride. You have to be pretty tough to be hiking through the Great Divide Basin. We crossed a bridge over Sweetwater Creek and stopped to pump water. We both thought wow, nice flowing creek, lots of shade, and green grass to camp on. We choose to stop short of the Diagnus Well for a much more pleasant campsite for the night. We both agreed to get up earlier in the morning to beat some of the heat for the 68 miles the next day. We settled in pitched our tents and made dinner. Soon a side by side drove up a trail close to us and dropped off two boys. The boys began fishing the creek and slowly moving closer to us. One of the boys saw us, asked if we minded if he fished there and we told him we did not mind at all. Soon after we heard a "Hello" and two adults entered our campsite. The woman stated we were trespassing on their land. We said we did not see any No Trespassing signs and we apologized. She then said no problem we came to make friends, pushed a bottle of red wine at me and said, "Take a Pull". We ended up taking hits off the bottle and chatted with Jess and Michael until dark. The boys were having fun fishing and swimming in the creek. They also had a sweet 6 week old Australian Shephard named Ringo. They have over 1200 head of cattle that they split between the land we were on and land close to Casper. They said Ringo will join the 7 other working dogs to help control the cows. They wanted us to come back to their cabin to sleep for the night but we declined. It was a really welcome evening, they were so interesting to talk to.