Distance: 59.5 miles
Elevation: +2,760ft
Temperature: 90s by midday
Another early day today, starting out at 6am to beat the heat. We really didn’t because it was already hot at 9:30am, but we still made it all the way to Ten Sleep, Wyoming, a cute town with saloons, a nice bar and grill, and a great general store called Dirty Sally’s. That’s where we picked up provisions for the rest of the day and tomorrow, given that there is nothing ahead of us but Big Sky until we roll into Buffalo, Wyoming.
We‘ve realized why Wyoming only has one House Representative in Congress. It is SPARCE out here, folks. We rode for miles and miles without seeing one ranch, one person, even one cow. Katherine commented on the many colors of dirt here in Wyoming, since that’s all we saw for so long. But it’s impressive dirt (and rocks); we’re looking at uplifts from the Ordovician period (400-500 million years ago) in colors of yellow, rust, white, red. This is such a beautiful country.
We’re staying at the Ten Sleep Rock Ranch, a small group of cyclists surrounded by rock climbers. Everyone is so darn fit here! It’s really funky and fun, even if you have to pay $2 for a shower. This is not RV territory....just lots of tents and conversion vans. We’re staying in comfy cabins and listening to the constant rushing of the Ten Sleep River as it runs through the camp. And there is GREAT WiFi so we can upload today’s blog as well as yesterday’s...we’re officially caught up now!
Tomorrow we head into the Big Horn Mountains proper, which means a climb of over 5000 ft and then a long downhill into Buffalo, Wyoming, where we sure hope we can do some laundry after a week of washing things out in the shower. My clothes are standing up all by themselves these days!
Highlights:
Discovering that the bike rack could substitute as a laundry rack.
Running through the Splash Park in Ten Sleep...the kids who were actually supposed to be playing there were a bit surprised!
Asking a driver what the bumper sticker “Trump Don’t Surf” meant on his truck. (It means Trump isn’t cool...good to know.)
Lowlights:
Paying for showers...really??
Our new motto, taken from a card at a shop in Ten Sleep!