(June 4, 2008)—Bosque County News Managing Editor La Dawn Garland, 42, was on her way back Wednesday to her home in Hamilton County, two days after she was found parked at a rest stop outside of Lander, Wyo, about 1,300 miles away from the Waco Best Buy Store where she said she was going last week to buy a cell phone battery.

Garland’s husband and granddaughter are accompanying her on the drive back to Hamilton County.

Garland left the Fremont County, Wyo. Detention Center Tuesday in the company of family members after an unauthorized use of a motor vehicle charge was dropped.

Garland told the deputy who found her Monday that she had been parked at the rest stop since Friday and that she hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink since pulling off the highway.

She was in the Dodge pickup truck in which she left Meridian Wednesday.

The truck is registered to the newspaper’s publisher.

Still unanswered, at least publicly, is the question of why she ended up in Wyoming after setting off a week ago ostensibly to buy a battery.

Investigators in Wyoming asked her about the reason for the disappearance, but would not comment on what she told them except to say, “That’s best left to the family to discuss.”

Garland lived in Wyoming for two years between 1979 and 1982 and graduated from high school in Evanston, which is in the southwest corner of the state near the Utah-Wyoming state line.

Lander, a community of about 7,000 residents is in the foothills of Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains in the center of the state.

(Dallas Cook contributed to this story)