Day 19 (7/11): outskirts of Lander, WY --> Rawlins, WY (120 miles)

Days mileage: 120 miles

Hmmmm.
What is there to say about this day that is, luckily, behind my back.
120 miles through Wyoming desert country sounds good enough to me.

A desolate, desolate area Stephen and I rode through with no shelter from the sun.
It was hot enough that the tar filling in the pavement was melted and gone to mush and sank beneath the pressure of our bikes rolling over.

Should I continue to beat the issue of a headwind? 'Cause we should did have another lovely day of headwinds and a few crosswinds...neither of which bettered our moods for the 120 miles which we wished to cover.

The morning started off with a 25 mile, slight climb and then a 6 mile climb at 6% grade that put us up and over Beaver Rim. We took a breather and stretched out our legs and enjoyed the panoramic view of....Wyoming desert at it's finest.

Perhaps the low-light of the day was more construction after we passed through Sweetwater Junction. This was the king of constuction zones which we've met in Wyoming and is a good one to add to our list of "top worst and poorly controlled construction zones of Wyoming." Once again the rode was being torn up, quite literally, and put piled high into those big, orange construction trucks. So we had to bike for 6 miles on saw-toothed pavement with loose gravel and pavement chunks scattered throughout. Longest 6 miles of my life...for I feard falling into passing cars or breaking a wheel, etc, etc. Luckily, none of the dreaded occured and Stephen and I found ourselves at the end of the construction zone and the beginning of what would end up being a very hot and sticky remainder of a day.

We stopped for lunch in Jeffrey City and were surprised to learn that the only thing still in existance was a small cafe (Split Rock Cafe I think) and the waiter was none other than a 8 year old boy who acted like he'd been waitering for 30 some years of his life so far.

We read the signs posted around the place and learned that 50 people lived in the town (which i think is a load of B.S. seein it was only store open) and there were 150 people who lived within 20 miles of the town (which I also think is B.S. seein the only living things we'd seen all day were antelopes that didn't seem to know how to jump over a fence...and so would crawl underneath it).

I opted not to educate the young waiter of my observations in fear that I wouldn't be served food at all.

I might as well not have been served anything seeing the sandwhich they brought out was no bigger than the palm of my hand.

But was I really expecting anything more in the desert?

Who knows.

I'm just glad those miles are behind us.

We pulled into Rawlins, ordered three medium sized pizzas from Dominos, ate all of them except two slices, found our way to the city park, and were forced to retreat to sleep beneath a pavillio-like thing due to lightning and thunder.

I feel asleep in 4 minutes and wasn't awakened again until 330am when more automatic sprinklers went off. Basically, if there was not a thunderstorm and we weren't forced to retreat to a shelter, we would have been soaked by the sprinklers seein we laid right where they sprayed.

I was looking forward to gettin out of Wyoming the next day and somewhere on the Colorado side of things...but that progress would have to wait til the next day...