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49.15 miles. Maximum 39 mph, rating: 5 Map
Got up and saw thousands of stars. Packed up stuff after eating bagels and OJ in tent. We left before 6 AM without waking our hosts. I took a pain pill for my sore butt. Laketown is right at the foot of a grade as steep as anything we’ve yet encountered. At least 7% for two miles, with another two miles of easier grades. I think we did six miles in two hours. Then to Sage Junction and into Wyoming. I’m riding ahead four miles on the flats – a chance to rest the butt, and it feels good to ride at my own pace.
10:20 AM: Headwinds of 30 mph, using the criterion that 30 mph is strong enough to move branches on the trees. My idea of four miles between regroupings hasn’t happened yet. There is always some reason to stop sooner than that. The longest has been about three miles.
Wildlife: two deer, two rabbits, lots of cows outside their fences (does that make them wildlife?). We saw what we think are flycatchers [we checked a bird book later – definitely not flycatchers, don’t know what they were]. Jacky saw a two-foot snake crossing the road. First woodchuck of the trip.
We stopped at Fossil Butte monument, about fifteen miles west of Kemmerer. The visitor center has a number of good specimens, gar fish and such, aged about fifty million years. My favorite was the fossil crocodile turd! (Polite term: coprolite.) There must have been lots of material around – how does any particular one get selected to become a fossil?
Up another hill and into a very strong headwind. Crawled along. Dave was really down. No café at Sage – ate groceries till we finally reached Kemmerer at 2 after starting to feel really yuch. Very frustrating ride.
We met a westbound solo cyclist a few miles out of Kemmerer. How different from home, that it’s worth mentioning when you see a cyclist! Logan was at 4000', Bear lake at 6000', Kemmerer at 7000'. Wyoming is also desert, but the soil is gray rather than white, and grass dominates rather than sage. The sleaze factor in Wyoming is a little worse than Utah, but far better than Nevada.
The reason I never think of Rocky mountains in Wyoming is that all you see in southern Wyoming are hills. Of course, that’s precisely why it was a good route for the Oregon trail, Mormon trail, California trail, Emigrant trail, and bicycle tourists.
We decided to stay at Kemmerer. Not many miles today, but the next stop was a long way, and we were both tired from the headwind and the altitude.
Kemmerer’s claim to fame is the First Ever JC Penney store. There is a (small) mother store on JC Penney Drive in the heart of town.
The cross-country bike tourists came here yesterday, with a tailwind. They are still here with a broken-down sag. They said they’ll not ride tomorrow (respect for Sunday?), so we may see them again later, since they’re faster and ride further than we do. [But they didn’t catch us, and we didn’t see them again.]
They invited us to sleep at the Catholic church, where they were staying. We declined and grabbed a second-rate motel room after pastrami subs for lunch.
We walked to Diamondville and did laundry. Oh, for a million dollars to renovate its historical but boarded-up downtown. Back to motel to eat cold canned food we had carried as emergency rations through the desert.
We tried to schedule a reasonable objective for next weekend, with the idea of meeting Mike. It looked as if we might be running fairly short days through Wyoming.
Topics for a photo-journalism essay
(should have taken pictures, but didn’t):
- Lariat motel in Fallon: cowboy neon sign and marquee “God bless America.”
- Logan: a dry cleaner offering free cleaning of American flags
- the cop in Diamondville who didn’t get his paper from the newsbox, beating on the box just like any other ordinary citizen.
People look at our bald tires, unable to believe that’s the way they're supposed to be.
91.07 miles, 10:04. Maximum 32 mph, rating: 5 Map
Easy riding – seemed to be mostly downhill with a tailwind. The first 45 miles were on Highway 30 – good road. Lots of trucks for a Sunday, but a wide shoulder.
The deer story
East of Kemmerer, I came upon a deer, grazing by the road. It didn’t run, so I stopped to try for a picture. Fumbling for my camera scared it off, over by the fence. It turned out to be a fawn, inexperienced and unable to jump the fence.
There were a doe and a buck a little further along. The doe was also on my side of the fence. The fawn crossed the road, then came back, causing a truck to brake to avoid it. This left all three at the fence, right side.
As we rode along, they ran in front of us for maybe half a mile. Finally, we came to a gully with a culvert under the road. The deer disappeared down the edge, the doe jumped the fence, and she and the buck ran off down the valley.
The fawn had disappeared from sight down the embankment. I heard thrashing and put down my bike and walked over to see what had happened. It had its head caught in the square mesh fence, had gone frantic.
Not eager to get down with the deer and get kicked, I flagged the first vehicle that came along, thinking a CB radio might get a game warden out there with a tranquilizer gun, or at least someone who knew what the hell he was doing. It was a Bronco-style car, with four men who looked as if they might be oil-rig roughnecks.
They didn’t have a radio, but one of the men had a tool box with a heavy wire cutter. He climbed down in front of the fawn and cut it loose. With each cut wire, it jerked and thrashed and made a loud braying sound – I always thought deer were mute.
As he cut the last wire, the deer bounded through and disappeared down the valley.
One of the men commented that the culverts were supposed to be unfenced, explicitly as deer highways, but the cattlemen fenced them over.
At the same site were the bare bones of another deer, caught in the same way, with no Samaritan to rescue it.
Great ride from Kemmerer. 72 miles from 7:00 to 12:15, to Green River for lunch. Vastly improved from yesterday’s headwind.
Rode through the shadow of an airplane contrail. As well as the shadow on the ground, there was a visible plane of black in the sky. I didn’t know there could be shadows in the sky!
Our return to I-80 was worth a picture of the badlands.
Little America has 10,000 road signs, 150 motel rooms, 65 gas pumps – so we skipped it. At Green River, the road goes through some beautiful cuts. Green River was great. The river really is green, and the Flaming Gorge comes right into town – spectacular. We ate bad Mexican food, napped on the lawn of a bank, then rode on to Rock Springs.
6 PM: Rock Springs is a small town devoid of charm and interest. Bare rock may be beautiful in a rural setting, but towns built in the middle of bare rock are phenomenally ugly. Oh, well. Big disappointment. We passed through the usual motel and shopping center area and went on to the blighted downtown area – sad. Went on out Business 80 against the wind, and stayed at the Nomad inn, whose restaurant’s pretentious name Kasbah was just a front for more good-ole-boy middle America.
At the beginning of the trip, we tried to find motels near downtowns. But our no-backtracking policy made it difficult, because by the time we found the downtown, we had sometimes passed all the motels! Finally it occurred to us that in towns of up to five or ten thousand, everything was within walking distance anyway, so it didn’t matter where we stayed. That simplified matters greatly.
110.80 miles, 9:02. Maximum 45 mph, rating: 9
8:00 AM: Since 6 AM, we rode 26 miles with a tailwind into breakfast at Point of Rocks. It’s starting off to be a great day.
6:00 PM: Today was even easier than yesterday. Strong tailwind, and it seemed like downhill most of the time – especially after we crossed the western continental divide (6930').
The nine hour time included a 40-minute second breakfast at a truck stop. We passed the time people-watching: eight CFI truck drivers on the Cheyenne-Salt Lake City route – all but one wore baseball-style caps. Most of them had mustaches, the fad of the land. They told us to just wait a while: the tailwind would become a headwind. There was also a family, parents and two boys, that I speculated were from California or New York. Also a hippie, and a couple very much in love.
A strong tailwind all day: 100 miles at 8:13. Crossed both continental divides (I never knew there was a basin in Wyoming). Not the fastest, but certainly the easiest century I’ve ever ridden.
In the basin is the town (such as it is) of Red Desert, and the desert itself. Pretty desolate, but at least more colorful than Nevada and Utah.
After the second continental divide, we rolled into Rawlins, which was much better than Rock Springs.
Went to the Carbon county museum, which was good. It had pictures of the blizzard of 1949. We left after only a few minutes to catch the tour of the ‘Frontier’ prison: 1901 – 1981. Took two hours for George to show us the cell blocks, hanging room, gas chamber, and the changes made when the (bad) movie Prison was filmed there. Grim! The picture that looks like a gas chamber, is.
Downtown Rawlins is full of empty businesses, with no foot traffic – same old story. Some nice residential areas, including Victorians. We dared Chinese food once again (not Szechuan this time).
We’ve been seeing posters for a traveling Chautauqua for several days. Turns out it’s here tonight. We’d been hoping to intersect its route. Because of the wind, they moved from the originally scheduled tent into St Joseph’s school gymnasium. It turned out to be excellent. The evening consisted of a couple of local folk singers as a warm-up act, and monologues by Jim Bridger and Aunt Patty Sessions.
Bridger was a mountain man and explorer in these hyar parts (1822 – 68?). As he put it, he came west when Laramie peak was still a hole in the ground. He made some very negative comments about the Mormons screwing him out of his fort, which is well inside Wyoming; yet Utah calls the northeast corner of their state Bridgerland. Maybe because the Mormons won, there’s no bitterness on their part. A story it might be worth hunting out.
Bridger also had distinctly uncomplimentary words about Frémont’s abilities as an explorer, mapmaker and guide. I have heard similar comments elsewhere, perhaps in a book on the California trail. Or they may have been Kit Carson’s opinions.
Patty Sessions was a Mormon midwife, who emigrated in 1848 at age 52. She was her husband’s only wife originally, then had to learn how to deal with sister wives when the Mormons adopted polygamy and her husband married two more women.
She delivered 4000 babies in her lifetime. An orchardist, she developed the Sessions plum. She was a shrewd investor, and became rich. She learned to dance at 59 and could party all night with her grandchildren in her 70s.
She entered into a second marriage, also polygamous, “to have someone to chop my wood.”
Very interesting evening. We talked with the organizers/performers afterward – they were as interested in our story as we were in theirs. Too bad we didn’t have time to stay for the rest of the workshops and performances Tuesday and Wednesday.
102.68 miles, 12:04. Maximum 33 mph, rating: 8
Railroads are alive and well in the west. Lots of long trains, each with three or four locomotives.
We agreed to ride all the way to Laramie, thinking we’d get a third easy day. Wrong! A very hard day. It seemed to be mostly uphill, with no help from the wind until late in the day.
We rode a couple of miles from Rawlins and found a good chain restaurant called Country Kitchen. Then we crawled along for 11½ hours. Few clouds. Interstate the whole way.
We rode the closed half of I-80 during several construction sequences today. Most of the closed parts have no construction activity at any given time. You just have to keep in mind that there can be sudden lips, holes, or transitions in otherwise new, perfect pavement. The construction people tolerated us, didn’t kick us out. I suppose they can imagine the liability (or at least publicity) if we got damaged riding over there in the middle of the concentrated traffic. Or maybe they’re just humane. It happens!
This must be play –
It’s much too difficult to be work!
We had a bad lunch at a Conoco truck stop, and good ice cream at a Chevron stop twenty miles out of Laramie. From then on it was flat with a tailwind, but we were both tired and sore. Laramie is a nice little town, but no Lincoln – glad I didn’t go to the U of Wyoming. The nice town perception was reinforced because we were on our last legs when we finally got here. The architecture of the Presbyterian church is unusual in the west.
Staying at a Rodeway – expensive for the outback ($45), but nice and clean after poor motels Saturday and Monday nights. No time for naps. Showers and Tour de France results from TV (Lemond and Delgado), then off to the laundromat and Safeway.
I called the Logan pathologist to get an okay report on the cyst.
We ate at Grand Avenue Pizza. Excellent, but we should have ordered a smaller size. We could eat less than half of it. Should also have skipped the jalapeños. Laramie is definitely more sophisticated and prosperous than Rock Springs or Rawlins. Nice Safeway (what an observation!).
78.74 miles. Maximum 33 mph, rating: 7
We ate breakfast at the Village Inn pancake house, came back to the motel and packed up, then stopped at the Safeway super store and pharmacy for an elastic bandage for my ankle. That, plus icing it last night, worked great. We left at 8:30. Fast going, the first twenty miles, then we got into the hills.
10:30 AM: We got a late start, but it’s easy going. I think we should have taken highway 30 from Rawlins yesterday, instead of I-80. 30 goes around the hills, has an adequate surface, and low traffic. One reason we didn’t was our policy against backtracking, which served us poorly this time. We crossed Morton pass (7300') about 11 AM after several rollers.
Wildlife count: first cactus of the trip, little pods low to the ground. Four antelope – they limbo under the fence, rather than jumping over! I read later that they are really pronghorns, not related to true antelope, which are African.
Tamelife count: five elk in an experimental farm. Big racks. We chatted with two motorcycle tourists who were trying to photograph them.
We came through a beautiful canyon, rollers with a few short grunts. Stopped on a rocky little knoll for a picnic. Although we allegedly lost 2400' of elevation today, we had no real downhills. As far as I can tell, the gradual loss on the rollers merely made the headwind less onerous. A harder day than expected.
I had begun to think it was a serious error not to have filled the spare water bottles, when we came on a lounge/café out in the middle of nowhere. The woman was friendly, said she had never met transcontinental bike tourists before. Too bad – it’s a beautiful route.
The country here is rolling hills, grassland, with trees along stream beds. At the top of each hill is an outcropping of white rock. Sometimes the outcropping is a cliff, and there’s a butte. Truly headwind country by now.
Headwinds on rollers aren’t too bad – we're slow on uphills anyway, and on downhills, the grade partially offsets the wind. Headwinds in flat country will be the worst. Maybe the northern route in Nebraska will have some hills (listen to this: he’s actually hoping for hills!).
We arrived in Wheatland about 4:30 after fighting a headwind. I sought out a clinic, across from the hospital, and got my stitches removed. No charge. The doctor and his nurse were impressed by our venture. I sent a postcard to the doctor at Logan, thanking him and assuring him I was doing well.
We ate at Gringo’s, a Mexican restaurant run by a Korean couple. The menu also listed Chinese food. Then we went out to an RV campground and pitched the tent. After showering, we walked back downtown for a drink. The bartender was asleep – no customers. Insight: Christian Brothers has the brandy concession for all of middle America.
He knew who we were – we were the bicylists who rode into town late that afternoon. No secrets in a small town. He knew the people running the campground where we were staying, said he hoped they would make a go of it. There was also a free municipal campground; the city fathers had promised to shut it down when this guy opened his, but hadn’t done so.
Our bodies are falling apart. Me: cold sore, cold, cough; Jacky: swollen ankle, sore knee. Getting to be time for a rest day.
63.91 miles. Maximum 23 mph, rating: 8
9:40 AM: I am losing something from the midsection. Cinched up my belt pack a long way today, and it’s still loose. Or maybe the strap has just slipped.
According to a historical marker, Laramie was named for Jacques La Ramie, a French fur trapper.
We missed our intended road out of Wheatland, and ended up riding thirteen miles on I-25. There was no sign of the little town alleged by the map to exist at the exit. We ate granny bars and dried pears and rode on to Guernsey, about thirty miles, for breakfast. Omelettes, toast, hash browns.
The elevation here is 4300'; Torrington is 4100'. The North Platte river below the dam is really full – will it be the same in Scottsbluff? The woman and the cowboy at the boondocks lounge yesterday said there was very little snow last winter.
We stopped at a historic point with half a dozen arrows pointing to places of interest, each with a description. The North Platte river itself, of course, was a major factor in the westward migration, with water and grass for livestock and wild animals that provided meat for the settlers. In the distance was Register cliff, where the migrants carved their names in the rock. Another arrow pointed to an area of exposed rock where the ruts worn by the wagon wheels are visible (though they couldn’t be seen from where we were).
Someone should do a horror movie called Invasion of the Irrigation Monsters! The walking pipes look like giant centipedes.
Fort Laramie fort was three miles out of our way, so we snacked, napped and stretched in Ft Laramie town instead, and skipped the historical fort. We figured we could talk Mike into taking us there the next day. Ten miles further on was Lingle, whose big attraction was the city park pool and bandshell. We had lunch at the Stagecoach Inn.
Ten more miles to Torrington. Most of this was against a headwind, so we went 7-8 mph unless I drafted at 12-13. Drafting is mentally exhausting, but cuts the riding time.
Torrington is pleasant and prosperous. Stayed at King’s Inn, one of about five motels in town, the only one with an indoors pool. The motel’s restaurant did a moderately good imitation of yuppie cuisine. Even with its deficiencies (too much fat, waitress didn’t know how to serve wine), it was a welcome change from good-ole-boy cuisine. Still too many smokers.
Rating: 8
Slept in – got our promised free cinnamon roll and coffee from a surly waitress. Strolled around town. Played at both playgrounds – one at the pool with the draglines, and on the merry-go-round and swings near the Chamber of Commerce. Bought broccoli, grapefruit, and things at Jack and Jill, ate cereal for a second breakfast. Sunbathed, waiting for Mike.
Mike was late. At 2, we gave up and went across the street to Deacon’s for lunch. He joined us there, then got a room near ours. Because it was so late, we didn’t get to go to Fort Laramie. We should have detoured there yesterday.
We walked to the fairgrounds to see the antique gas and steam tractor show. The second steam tractor really is knee-high! Saw tractors dating from 1910 to 1955, two or three old cars, and an old hay baler in action. The baler was eating hay as it was manually pitchforked into its hopper, packing it and squaring it up, and spitting out the bale. A separate conveyer picked up the bales and lifted them to a flatbed where a boy stacked them. The total crew was four or five people! (Later I saw a modern one doing the baling part automatically, as the farmer drove it through the field.)
The tractor pull was a measure of how far a tractor could drag a sled, with more people stepping onto it every few feet. My bets were on the tracked rigs, but we didn’t stay around to see them (probably a different class).
We ate at José Paizano’s Mexican-Italian-American restaurant. It was okay, but Jacky and I shouldn’t have had the cherry pie – too much. Back at the motel, Mike had brought a coffee-table book of Galen Rowell’s mountain photography – California, Alaska, Nepal, China... Spectacular.
