… a major change of plan. And so I’m turning round and going back the way that I came – about 275 miles in fact.

Despite the rather primitive motel and fittings last night, I had the best night’s sleep that I have had yet. And had it not been for a bad attack of cramp in the right calf at round about 05:20 I would probably be still asleep now, so good was it.

But anyway I made a good start to the day with the medication, a shower, breakfast (there was coffee in the room) and uploading all of yesterday’s files from the 2 cameras, the dashcam and the dictaphone.

With no freezer compartment in the fridge, the landlady had very kindly put into her freezer my bottles of water that I use as coolpacks, and she also gave me a small polystyrene frozen food carrier for my lunch stuff. That was really nice of her and I appreciated it.

Off down the road as far as Safeway where I did another pile of shopping. Mainly lunch stuff but they had some good nourishing soups on sale. I’m living on soup, pasta and bread for tea right now and it’s doing me good.

Back on the road and there were several delays, mainly to do with tracking down the possible route of the Oregon and California Trail and also to identify the livery of a railway locomotive that I did not recognise (it’s an old blue-and-grey Burlington Northern and Santa Fe livery).

A quick perusal of a map identified a possible crossing of the Oregon and California Trail down a dirt track some 10 miles out of Guernsey, so I headed that way. And much to my surprise (and delight) it was withing 5 yards of where I estimated it to be. The old trail was quite visible.

Pushing along the dirt road (now that I knew that I was on the right road) I surprised a sleeping locomotive crew and was able to finally photograph the elusive Kansas City Southern train that I had seen a few days ago.

But that wasn’t why I was here. Crossing the railway line I came to what I guess is Bitter Creek. Known to travellers on the trail for many years as totally unpalatable water.

Yet it was the favourite stop of many of the teams, mentioned in particular by many emigrants but, curiously, not by Edwin Bryant in his “What I Saw In California”, because of the cottonwood trees everywhere, and the dried-up sandy creek (that they called Cottonwood Creek) that they dug into to find pure fresh water.

The cottonwood is still there – tons of it, some growing and the rest lying scattered about, brought down by floodwaters from upstream. No wonder that the travellers loved this place.

In fact, I had my lunch there, sharing with the spirits of the hundreds of thousands of emigrant who passed that way in the 20 years between 1841 and 1861

This afternoon I went to see the grave of Lucindy Rollins and some other unknown people, the trail ruts carved through the sandstone, the remains of the Pony Express station on the North Platte River and Register Cliff, where thousands of emigrants carved their names on the rock as they passed by.

We’ve seen all of this before so I shan’t repeat myself, even though things have changed considerably since 2002.

After this I shot off down the road to see the famous iron bridge over the North Platte River and then to Fort Laramie, but here I decided on a change of plan.

The original plan had been to go on tomorrow down towards Chugwater and look for the ranch of “Portugee Phillips”, but then looking through my notes I had other ideas.

Where I am now is within 2 days driving of Denver. And if I want to do the eastern part I can fly there in the future.

The western part has always been accessible from Seattle or San Francisco if ever I plan to be that way, but the bit that is really difficult to reach is that from Casper (where I was yesterday) to South Pass in the Rockies.

That’s about 460 miles from here to South Pass, and then about 1400 miles to Winnipeg – and I have 7 days before I need to hand back the car. With a day or two for looking around, that works out at about 350 miles per day, much of it on the Interstate.

Consequently I headed back to Guernsey.

The first motel, I and several other people tried to raise the owners but it was like the mary Celeste back there. Place all locked up and gone leaving the guests behind.

Down the road though was a better (and more expensive of course although breakfast is included) place where the delights included having a hoverboard lesson from a 9 year-old girl (not a success).

So in the words of Marechal MacMahon – “j’y suis – j’y reste” or crudely (and if you want anything doing crudely then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man!”) translated into the vernacular by Yours Truly as “here I am and here I’ll stay”. I’vr had a shower and had tea and now I’m off to bed.

Or I was, but a huge thunderstorm has erupted and it’s pouring with rain outside. So much so that the racket is astonishing. If I can sleep though this I’ll sleep through anything.