Wyoming

Sidney, NE - Hillsdale WY (91 miles)
Gorgeous blue-sky day. Still head and side-winds but probably 15 mph less than yesterday. Kimball Park was the first publically available shade in 35 miles since Sidney, and in its shade the wind gentles to a delightful breeze. The shade is provided by several varieties of trees: pine, spruce, poplar... okay, that's too general. Let me start again... If I'm not mistaken there were Kentucky Coffeetrees, Red Sunset Maples, Swamp White Oak, Ohio Buckeye, Newport Ash, Burr Oak, and Sycomore... If I'm not mistaken and I read the little wood labels at the feet of the trees correctly.

Winds continually abated. I entered Wyoming around five in the afternoon. The road map given at the Visitor's Center is not highly detailed and the directions I had typed out for myself assumed that backroads would have signs indicating their name or number. After a couple hours of guesswork, back-tracking and some progress , I flagged down Jack and Melodie. Telling them where I wanted to go, Jack asked "Want me take you there in my pick-up?" I declined but their directing me to the service road paralleling the interstate saved me time and energy.  I still ended up biking an hour-and-a-half after sunset, glad for my good set of lights.

Just at sunset, coming up over a rise, I had my first glimpse of the Rockies: snow-capped peaks.

Just a few minutes after fixing a flat tire, in the late afternoon, I was delighted to get a call from my cousin-in-law and friend Daryl. He told me of reading "Born to Run," which tells of a tribe of runners in Mexico and observes that a 64-year-old (of any ethnic background) can be in as good a shape as a nineteen-year-old.

Hillsdale - Curt Gowdy State Park (40 miles)It was my first long climb since Alabama, at the foot of the Appalachians. Other places, especially MO, had plenty of ups and downs, but rarely did any one climb take more than 10-15 minutes before a refreshing descent. To get to the park from Cheyenne was pretty much a continual climb for more than two hours. Wonderful views of grass fields and rocky cliffs contrasting so greatly with the Nebraska plains made the exertion hardly noticeable. Saw antelope for the first time since being in Africa.

If I'd known a national forest area was just a few miles beyond the park, I would have continued. Still, I had a nice place to stay. I followed a gulley away from the tenting areas on the edge of the lake, into a stand of pines. I sat comfortably under my slung hammock during a light rain, leaning against my gear, reading and writing... A doe circles the rim of my slope, coming within twenty yards, senses me but is not spooked. A four-point buck follows.

Curt Gowdy State Park - Hanna (106 mi.)
That ascent of yesterday? Today a nine-mile descent, starting where 210 intersects the highest point of Interstate 80 with its towering statue of Abraham Lincoln, after whom this part of the highway is named, down into Laramie: three miles of steep-sit-up-straight-for-an-air-brake, then six more gradual miles, scarecely needing to pump the pedals. All this on 80, Wyoming being one of the few states where one can bike on the shoulder of the interstate. Then out of Laramie, about forty miles of mostly flat road giving way to hillier ascents and descents to Hanna (and on back to 80).

Across Nebraska, there was a settlement every ten miles, from the minimal silo to a few houses and shops,  to maybe a bar and a bank. You know you've left the south when the towns have more bars than churches; you know you've entered the north (I would later find) when there are more RV parks than bars. In between these settlements, farms are spread every couple miles. In Wyoming, it is often 18 miles or more that separate settlements, with no houses in between. From Laramie to Rock River was 39 miles. In between, the state sign of white letters against green background posted at the border of a former settlement seemed to officially designate Bolser as a ghost town: its name and elevation were given but no population figure. As I rode through, the weeds around the store that once sold used furniture, then liquour, then storage space--to guess the chronological relationship of its various signs--and the two broken down houses and one rusting trailor indicated that there was indeed no population to report.

Park anywhere!  Westbound lanes of US Route 287.

At Rock River, pop. 235, I stopped at "Wieners and Things", a slouching, green wooden structure added onto a former fair concession stand. A young man biking from San Francisco to Washington came out as I was entering and recommended the root beer float. Miki, a former Californian, moved with her husband to Rock River 15 years ago and started this little eatery five years ago, boasting that her food is the real deal--none of the warm-it-up-in-the-microwave stuff.

Medicine Bow, with a population in the 200's, was celebrating its 100th anniversary, resulting in what on this route was a jarring sight of several cars parked along the road. I stopped only to wait out the rain from a thunder burst, under the overhang of a small motel.

By sunset the headwind was back up to 25-30 mph and the hills increasing in size. While climbing one, I saw on the other side  of the valley to my right the largest assembly of buildings since Laramie. They appeared laid out neatly in whites and browns against the now dark green valley wall, with a clear beginning and end--but no movement of any kind within. The state sign at the turnoff indicating that lodging was there, the cool air--it would get down into the low 40's, and thunder clouds encouraged me to look for the lodging.

There were some houses on the near side of the entry road and an antelope was enjoying the fine bush planted next to one resident's house. A town hall was near the entry of the main part of town. I stopped there to ask two people about to get into their cars for directions to the motel. They laughed and said the sign had been a source of amusement to the townspeople ever since it had been put up by the state. There once was a motel in Hanna, a lot of other businesses as well, when this was a town of more than 2,000. But the motel had burnt down and other businesses closed with the last of the mining in the area... Tthe population was now down to about 800, many of the wage earners commuting to the state prison in Rawlins, 30 miles away.

The man said that since I had camping equipment I could sleep in the park. "It's okay to do it?" I asked, not wanting to get a "Move along, buddy" from the local police officer. He replied, "If the sheriff comes by, you can tell him that Judy said it's okay." She laughed. She is the town treasurer, he would let me know at the end of our conversation, and he the mayor. He said that if I wanted to take a shower I might be able to do so for a small fee at the rec center next to the park. A town of 800 with a rec center?

After parking my bike in one of the park's table areas, a brick wall to shelter nicely from the prevailing wind, I went to the center and told the clerk, Alisha, what the mayor had said. "No problem. Just go on in." She also offered a towel which I gladly accepted so that I would not have to pack a wet one. No charge at all: kindly helping a stranger on his way.

Since the cafe closed at 8, I went to Puolo's, one of the town's bars, for dinner. Tony came to greet me and offered me a drink. He was the bar's owner and his wife the server. After eating, I talked with him and two other residents at the bar. Tony's grandparents came to Hanna as Greek immigrants to work as miners alongside Chinese, Italian and German immigrants, each living in their own section of the town. Union Pacific owned the mine--and the town. It would allow no other businesses in except for a movie house and a soda shop. Other businesses developed in Elmo right next to it. Wyoming's road map indicates that Elmo is a separate town but Tony says it's just a part of Hanna now.

Tony had to go but I talked with with the two others for some time. One moved here from Las Vegas, the other from New Jersey--and a bunch of other states. Both are retired. At this point in the evening--and this point in town--the former was as care-ful-ly e-nun-ci-a-ting as e-lab-or-ate-ly exp-lain-ing the good life in this area; his friend would nod and patiently wait for a break to nuance or concisely suggest an alternative perspective. They like the quiet and the outdoors: "The downside is winter but it keeps the crud out of here."

I went back to my little camp site thinking I was among friends. The sheriff did indeed come by, turned his searchlight beam off after I turned my little flashlight off while coming toward his black SUV and shielding my eyes from the glare, returned my "Hi!" in friendly fashion, and asked if he could come and see my bike and equipment--not as an investigating police officer but as a biking enthusiast.

I slept well.

Hanna - past Table Rock (104 miles)
The least enjoyable stretch of the trip since 17 miles after Hanna it was interstate 80 for the rest of the way. After Rawlins (I suspect "the crud" sinks down to the largest towns in the bottom of the state), I crossed the Continental Divide for the first time; over the next couple hundred miles I would see signs announcing that I was doing it again...and again.  I slept in a walled-in rest area picnic shelter. The sign said "No Camping"; I figured I wasn't really camping, just sleeping as were truck drivers in their cabs and others in smaller vehicles. 

Table Rock - Rock Springs (35 miles)
A short biking day, with stay in a motel. Did laundry, grocery shopping and bought Lonesome Dove, the novel Vic of Pawnee City had brought to my attention. Its 950 pages will keep me for a while. I had read about half of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad but left all of it in the motel's trash can. It won the National Book Award last year but seemed so superficial, filled with worked over cliches: I could imagine reviewers who voted for the book tittering at certain passages, having their frames of references comfortably confirmed. I gave up on it when I got to her scene in Africa: wow, she had been on a safari--or at least seen documentaries about the bush, and with the help of Hemingway's "Short Happy Life..." used the material for her novel. Wow.

Rock Springs - Boulder (88 mi.)
One of the trip's easiest days of biking. A tail wind for the first 50 miles or so and the afternoon's head or side winds were gentle. High desert with, once out of Rock Springs, one snow-capped mountain visible to the west, then to the east a snowy peak eventually seen to be one of many between Eden and Boulder, the very beginning of its range later appearing as a small dark step from the plains to the mountains.

Boulder is where I had asked Marlo to mail my sleeping bag.  I had bought a cheapo one in Sidney's Walmart since the nights were getting too cold for the thin blanket that had been more than warm enough for the first part of the trip but the cheapo bag was bulky and would not be warm enough if the temps dropped any further.  I arrived at the post office about ten minutes after it had closed so spent the night in a campground within a mile of it. A guy checking his mail at the post office told me that that morning he scraped ice off his car window.

One positive note about the Walmart sleeping bag. It helped me to realize that I have grown about six inches on this trip:  the bag specs say that it is good for people up to 6'2'' tall yet my toes stick out the bottom with the top of my head against its upper edge. Good thing my biking shorts are of a stretchy material. 

Boulder - Gros Ventre Campground, Lower Tetons (102 mi.)
My sleeping bag was at the post office! Just in time. I spent much of the night in a near fetal position, trying to keep warm. When I gave my name to the clerk, she said before going to the shelf "Yes, you have a package."
She frowned when I told her what it was: "It seems too light to keep you warm in Wyoming." Well, that's the beauty of this (L.L. Bean) bag: a third the weight of the cheapo, less bulky, with a zipper that actually works, and good at least down to 20 degrees--twenty degrees lower than the cheapo (left next to the laundromat's garbage can) claimed to function at.

The transition from the high desert to the Tetons is spectacular. From the relatively flat, though steadily climbing expanses of sage brush, pines--oh, beautiful stretches of pine--appear during the steepest, though not grueling, climb of the day. Then at the peak, what?!? miles and miles of forest against startlingly close snow-capped mountain peaks. Not to mention  the coast down of a few miles into the valley of Bondurant.

A little log cabin cafe was in this valley. Having hit several very poor cafes and diners, I hesitated but its view of the mountains and pleasing appearance--and my desire for carbs--encouraged me to try. I was well rewarded: homemade apple crumble topped with ice cream and carrot cake topped with icing for $3.50!

In Jackson, I bought a K-Mart sweatshirt. Like the Walmart sleeping bag, the zipper doesn't work (I would find out later), but it can be safety-pinned together for some insulation in the cool evenings and mornings to come.

I arrived after sunset at the southernmost campground of the Tetons National Forest. I slept about ten hours, perhaps the first time on this trip to not get up before 7. Warm sleeping bags--oye!


Gros Ventre - Grant Village, Yellowstone (75 mi.)
"Sometimes fullness of soul overflows into utter vapidity of language." (Flaubert; sorry to say that I can't name the translator). "Fullness of soul": exuberance, alertness, freshness, praise, sustained throughout the day as I biked first through the Teton Valley with its herds of buffalo, then up into the snow-capped mountains of Yellowstone.

Tetons

"Utter vapidity of language." Any notes about my time in Yellowstone should be brief, matter-of-fact since I do not have the gifts for expressing what I see and what my tiny soul feels when in this land that has drawn so  many pilgrims.  I cannot, however, refrain from telling of my delight at what I experienced while entering through the gates of this temple.

Mountains are a locus of spiritual peaks in religious history:  Moses' receiving the 10 commandments, Elijah hearing the still small voice, the disciples seeing the divine united with the human, Mohammed receiving his call, Joseph Smith finding his scriptures. (Hmm, put a hold on that last one; I need to check the elevation of Palmyra.) So it might not be surprising that on this pilgrimage starting at the ocean--ancient symbol of chaos, reaching the highest elevations of the journey should be accompanied by a personal sense of fullness of soul, of a spiritual peak.

My spiritual high was accompanied not by a new revelation, some of you will be relieved to know, but it was accompanied by--and please accept this claim as one of delight, not wanting to boast any more than the apostle Paul wanted to boast, no matter how many times he ended up doing so (he just couldn't help it)--my spiritual high was accompanied by a miracle. I walked on water!

But check any impulse to contact the pope and nominate me for sainthood. For one thing, that process cannot be started until after the nominee's death. For another, to recall Paul, again:  it would quickly be found that "I am the worst of all sinners." And for yet another, investigation of the miracle would result in dealing with its circumstance, which could be as embarrassing as the end to Peter's walk on water. I did not sink at all (another part of the miracle) but, I will confess, the reason for my walk on water was to pass water. Parking my bike on the side of the road, I walked into the woods across an expanse of water to hide myself, for a reason akin to the first couple's hiding in the woods.

Scoffers might say, "Well, who can't walk across frozen water?" They might even refer to it as snow. But I say that considering my degree of baseness, the ability to walk on that degree of water is a miracle. And what other miracles have we participated in? The ability to move one's legs, to hear a thrush, to feel cold in the morning and heat in the afternoon, to taste spring water... So many miracles. May we all become saints!

Grant Village - Canyon Village, Yellowstone (37 mi.)
A cow moose with her calf, early in the morning. an elk peacefully grazing while cameras snap (Male voice, Brooklyn accent: "Hey, get out of the way! You're blocking our angles." Young German tourist with long-nosed camera, a few feet from the elk: "Come down here yourself then."), mud springs and vents steaming with sulphur smell, a bike path to a "natural bridge" over a narrow stream, a view of the Yellowstone River's falls through the deep canyon's walls of yellow stone.

I don't think the temperature went  beyond the 60's and the biking is easy. The road shoulder is not as bad as I thought it might be and the huge percentage of drivers are considerate.

Bicyclists and hikers are treated well here. We are guaranteed a spot in any campground even if it is "closed" to others (as all three I stayed in were) and we pay only $6 a night, less than a third what other tenters need to pay.

Canyon Village - Mammoth Springs, Yellowstone (37 mi.)
I slept snug as a bug then had a relaxed breakfast in a corner of the large cafeteria, sipping coffee while updating my journal. I did not start off on the bike until a little after 11. A steady climb for seven miles, stopping on the way to hike up one inviting hillside and enjoy the views, both close ones into the woods and the expansive ones over the lake to the mountains beyond. Back on the road, at a turnoff near the top, a young father asked about my trip, grinned appreciatively at my answers, then summarized for his two children and wife who had been in the little 4X6 building.  Then I talked for quite a while with Mike from Cleveland, OH who is biking a Montana - Yellowstone loop. He was thinking of doing a coast-to-coast in yearly segments and did Arcadia to Cleveland last year but "said to hell with the plains" and drove out to start this year's loop. My pleasant tail winds of the last few days have been his grueling head winds.

Shortly afterwards, I reached this stretch's highest peak, almost 9,000' and watched kids play in the snow. Then a 2,500' descent stretched over ten miles. Near the beginning of it, I stopped to join a herd of cars and watch a grizzly amble across the road and up the grassy hillside. A ranger said it was unusual for grizzlies to be so high up this time of year but this one seems to like it because she's not in competition  with others lower down. Several miles later, we could watch a black bear with her two cubs, who climbed to the top of a 30', whitened dead tree. Had a supper of sardines, bread and fritos, planning on a big breakfast in the center's restaurant.

Mammoth Springs - Island Park, Idaho (79 mi.)
Early on, going up out of Mammoth Springs, stopped to walk into the woods and watch elk graze. Towards the end, watched a crow worry an eagle away from its perch on a whitened log to a pine a few hundred yards away. A couple miles later,  I took a side road that I guessed would come back to the main one but stopped to ask a woman taking pictures of flowers, her husband fly-fishing a bit down river, to be sure that it would. When I told her about the eagle, she smiled brightly and said "I'm so glad to hear that. For years, we have enjoyed watching a pair of eagles and their eaglets, whose nest is just back there a ways, but we have not seen them this year. I am so glad you told me about that!"

Towns like West Yellowstone (and Jackson on the other side of the Tetons) that feed on tourists give me the heebie-jeebies (or is it the tourists, and the knowledge that I am one of them). So, after a service-station supper of a  banana, "apple pie" with enough chemicals to give it taste, coffee, and ice cream--it's important to eat well on a long trip--I crossed the ten-mile strip of Montana and continued on several miles into Idaho, staying in a campground with a view of the area's 4th of July fireworks being done on the 2nd of July.