Right now I'm in Rawlins WY. Interstate 80 passes right through here, meaning that if I wanted to, I could hitch a ride out east and wind up almost next to Basking Ridge. Tempting, but not for today. The scenery in WY is a lot different than that of Colorado. Lots of rolling hills covered with salt brushes and juniper trees. Overall very dull and desolate, not much surface water too which does pose a problem, but a manageable one at that.
Officially half way into the trip! This is my 21st day of riding. So far today I've been putting the pedal to the metal as I was able to cover 42 miles in slightly over 3 hours. Quite an impressive feat. I did have more downhill than uphill, so that definitly helped. Some of those downhills were pretty steep too, I was able to top out at 51 mph on one of them.
Upon leaving Rawlins later today I face a dilema: How to get to south pass city? The suggested route has me going through dirt roads in the great basin. The distance from rawlins to south pass is 140 miles through the great basin. The problem: 140 miles of nothing. No bike shops. No Traffic. No people & No water. In fact on the map they tell you to have at least 3 gallons of water before attempting this long haul (Thats 25 pounds!). The alternate would be to follow paved roads around the basin. Towns are still few and far between along the paved roads, but if something happens, its better to be on a paved road than in the middle of the basin. Decisions decisions...I'll visit the ranger office in town and see if I can get some detailed maps of the basin (the bike one isn't very detailed) If I can get the maps, I'm going through the basin. If I can't gets the maps, I'm going around.
Besides that, some more memorable experiences since Breckenridge.
1. Turns out the Great Divide Trail and the Transamerica trail (it goes ocean to ocean) share parts of the same road in Colorado. I met a few bikers doing the Transamerica. All older and all better equipped than myself. Some were really nice and some were somewhat arrogant and self righteous. I'm saying this because instead of trying to make conversation, they just rode straight on.
2. Had another snow episode in Northern Colorado going over the watershed divide at 9,500' near a town called Clark. I started hitting drifts at 8,500' which was not good since I had to crest at 9,500'. The drifts weren't nearly as high as the ones on Grayback Mtn, however, the snow was softer which meant a lot of times, I would take a step and wind up knee deep in snow. It took a good hour to make it the last mile to the summit and another half hour to make it down to where the road became snow-free again.
3. Yesterday my food was running pretty low, all I had left was a box of pop tarts and half a loaf of bread. Seeing that It would be at least a day and a half before I made it to Rawlins, I went off route to this town called Savery. It was supposed to have a general store; it didn't. Turns out the store closed a year ago (when the population is listed at 25 you wonder why). The town also had a western museum whose motto was "its worth the stop!". I went in the Museum, much more interested by the snacks they sold in the gift shop than by all the antique dolls and cowboy outfits it had on display. When the lady at the counter saw me, all pathetic looking with 2 bags of peanuts (thats all they had besides candy) she said, "you're one of those bikers aren't you?". I was. Then she said "well, don't waste your money on this, come with me I have something better for you. I always keep stuff on hand for you guys, because believe it or not, you're not the first biker to come through here looking for food". So she led me to a kitchen where she gave me some Ice tea, a box of triscuits and a block of cheese and said "you can have as much of this as you want". As tempted as I was to finish the whole box of triscuits, I didn't. I was so thankful for that lady's generosity that; I wound up buying the peanuts anyways.
Happy trails,
clem
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