slow glowing

windy wyoming to colorful colorado

yesterday we made up a team chant:

me:
i am slow and he’s unsteady!

a.:
she’s unsteady, and i’m slow!

tutti:
together we’re team slow and unsteady
for mountain passes, we’re sure not ready
most of the time, we’d rather go to beddy
but look out! ’cause team slow and unsteady
will make it someday…

and eventually we did make it over willow creek pass, which actually was not too bad at all and took us through our first forest since grand teton national park… very nice to be back in the trees!

but i’m getting ahead of myself. we’re in colorado! which has a great big satisfying welcome sign at the border:

before all that, though, we rode south from lander. TWO storms our first day out–we sat out the first one at a little rv park with a nice inside area with a couch they let us hang out on, and the second one didn’t hit until we’d made it to our campsite. we fought the wind all day. anyway, you wouldn’t know it from these photos:

we spent the night in sweetwater station, which is not much of anything, but is home to a historic mormon handcart site, complete with camping and a little missionary establishment. definitely takes the cake for most bizarre place we’ve camped so far. they get mormon kids to come out in the summer and camp and actually pull handcarts on, i guess, part of the historic mormon trail. plus, all the kids wear pioneer clothes, sort of. it was great; i shared the women’s restroom with teenage girls with braces wearing flannel pj pants underneath their long skirts and aprons. everyone was very nice and they mostly left us to ourselves.

(home sweet tent)

the next day was a long one (85+ miles) to rawlins.

jeffrey city is about 20 miles past sweetwater station. we’d been hearing for weeks about jeffrey city… mostly, “avoid it.” it used to be a booming uranium mining town, but when that boom went bust in the early 80’s, it went from being a town of 4000 people to a town of not very many at all. everyone told us the owner of the cafe (the only game in town) was pretty hostile. we mostly just rode on through, but it was interesting to see a different kind of ghost town.

then…

(split rock)

somewhere in here when we stopped for a snack near muddy gap, we met westbound cyclists stephen and erica, who, like (i swear) at least half the young westbounders we’ve met, are moving to portland (from virginia in this case).

another continental divide crossing–

in lamont, home of not much other than “grandma’s cafe” (we got a milkshake), we met rita, badass solo female cyclist who left yorktown, virginia, on july freakin’ 7th. impressive! and check out her homemade rear panniers…

yet another continental divide crossing–

in rawlins, we met a few other bike tourists, including a guy who is biking to palo alto with, apparently, all his earthly possessions (he had four panniers and a huge trailer). also aidan and amanda. aidan is from ireland and is on an epic around-the-world journey; he’s been all kinds of amazing places. his blog is at acousticmotorbike.com (i love it)… check out his photo of the storm that hovered near our campground at sunset (scroll down on that page).

the next day we went to saratoga. we had to ride on the interstate for about thirteen miles from a little outside of rawlins, but it wasn’t too bad–big, wide shoulders with rumble strips between us and the huge trucks that rushed past at 80 mph. a lot of getting over fears seems to be desensitization. a couple more thunderstorms and i’ll be totally over ‘em.

(instead of “next 5 miles,” it should say “throughout wyoming”)

saratoga was wonderful, as mentioned. sorry no photos of the hot springs. you’ll have to take my word for it that they are WONDERFUL. did i mention that they are totally free and open 24 hours a day?

ahem. wyoming, where even the grocery stores are full of taxidermy:

it really was a perfectly ordinary grocery store otherwise.

in the morning we pedaled off towards the border. in riverside, wyoming, we met another eastbounder(!) who seemed to have very little interest in chatting with us. our first unfriendly transam-er! oh well. he passed us not too far out of town and we haven’t seen him since.

unfortunately the wind did not cease abruptly at the state line, but the scenery did change pretty quickly…

and the mountains!!

met another epic bike adventurer, ben, not too far from walden, where we camped in the city park for the night. his blog: ben voyage… like bon voyage, get it? i love puns. actually, there have been some pretty great puns on this trip. they don’t shy away from them in small towns. one of my favorites: wildflour bakery, in lander.

walden has seen better days but manages to support not one but two thriving liquor stores. and, of course, a cafe with an antler chandelier:

i’m gonna leave it at that for now ’cause we ought to head on to grand lake pretty soon. here’s what you have to look forward to in the next installment of our big bike adventure: wildflowers galore, our eighth crossing of the continental divide, hot sulphur springs (oh la la), a cafe called the glory hole, and a chain of convenience stores called kum-and-go (you can’t make this stuff up).

we’re off route today and for the rest of a.’s trip–we’re riding up to grand lake today and then tomorrow we’re taking trail ridge road through rocky mountain national park, over a pass that’s over 12,000 feet (highest paved pass in north america, or so we hear). we have been psyching ourselves up for it for weeks, since we got the idea to bike to boulder (rather than put a. on a bus to denver in some tiny town somewhere). we’ll stop either in estes park or lyons tomorrow night and go to boulder the next day. we’ll hang out there until a. goes home, and then i’m going to bike up to loveland to visit my friend k. on the farm where she lives and works. from there, i’m not sure how i’m getting back to the transamerica trail… i’ll figure it out. seems like forever from now! but we’re almost to boulder, really. dang.