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Foggy Desert Start

Published September 4, 2019

I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.

A few mornings ago, the mules and I woke to a heavy fog. I saddled the damp mules and we headed in to the foggy desert landscape.

Bernie Harberts and mules saddled up in heavy morning fog in the eastern Wyoming desert during cross-country mule ride.
Fogged in
First tracks on a foggy dirt road in eastern Wyoming where Bernie Harberts camped during cross-country mule ride.
First tracks: we followed this dirt road, where we’d camped, to the highway.
Windmill silently pumping water through the fog on a quiet desert morning in eastern Wyoming during Bernie Harberts cross-country mule ride.
Usually, when a windmill is turning, you can hear the clank of the sucker rod, the rod that pulls the water from the ground. On this foggy morning, muted by fog, the wind mill silently pumped water to the desert surface.
Abandoned railroad trestle disappearing into the fog in eastern Wyoming seen by Bernie Harberts on cross-country mule ride.
Abandoned: a railroad trestle, once use to haul cattle cars to eastern markets.

I’m not a fan of road riding in the fog. Out here, though, the highway shoulders are wide, That means in less than perfect conditions I can ride the grassy shoulder’s edge (sorta) far away from oncoming traffic.

Semi truck emerging from heavy fog on a Wyoming highway shoulder where Bernie Harberts rides mules during cross-country mule ride.
You don’t hear trucks roaring out of the fog until the last moment. They whoosh by and….
Semi truck disappearing back into the fog on a Wyoming highway during Bernie Harberts cross-country mule ride.
….disappear in to the gloom.

Walking up the road in the fog doesn’t mean you can’t find anything interesting…maybe even to eat.

Bernie Harberts stopping his mules to investigate a blue packet on the side of a foggy Wyoming highway during cross-country mule ride.
I stop the mules to investigate a blue packet on the side of the highway.
Energy bar found on the side of a Wyoming highway by Bernie Harberts during cross-country mule ride.
It’s an energy bar.
Bernie Harberts eating a roadside energy bar as a second breakfast during foggy morning on cross-country mule ride through Wyoming.
It’s a second breakfast.

Around 9am, the fog lifted. The land went back to looking like the desert landscape we’ve been traveling these past weeks.

Fog lifting over a greener than usual eastern Wyoming desert landscape at mile marker 2 during Bernie Harberts cross-country mule ride.
Mile marker 2: the desert is greener than usual this year because of all the rain the region has gotten this year. The tall grass in the bar ditch is brome grass.

More about the Two Mules to Triumph journey.

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