We got up early, broke down camp, shook out our wet stuff, made oatmeal and set off for a 75 mile day.
The morning was pretty uneventful, although we did get a biker to stop, Clint, who ended up being the most chatty chap we've met on the trip and had numerous tales of biking adventures and advice that we should take. After pulling away, we stopping in Walcott for a quick OJ break, and then got onto the interstate for 15 miles (not too bad considering the wide shoulder, but still not our favorite experience.) That ended in Sinclair, home of Sinclair gas and the finest oil refinery in the west. What a contraption it was! Just the largest mess of piping I have ever beheld and so fragrant. Andy was afraid to take a close up picture thinking they might come and take our camera away (such a conspiracy theorist). In any case, we pedaled our way through there pretty quick, mailed a Kansas postcard to Andy's bro Dennis (sorry Den), and got off to Rawlins pretty quick. The water we had from our campsite had tasted just digusting, so we were pretty dehydrated by the time we got there.
Not the most majestic of towns, Rawlins has the state penitentary and the gas and some other things, but not a real pretty place. The library was great though and we set up there for an hour (trying to ignore the masochistic teenager who was talking on her cellphone to about 8 different people about her various boy problems, including jail time). Then we got kicked off (although the teenager didn't) and went to eat at the historic Rawlins house buffet (just a dirty stucco house, but the inside was fancy.) Two tiny Asian women were our hosts (not another soul in the joint) and their food, from lo mein to mac n cheese to macaroons, was actually excellent and we filled up.
While we were sitting their the wind picked up quite a bit and when we went outside it picked up even more, throwing sand in our faces and rain, so we ran back to the library, where we parked ourselves for another couple of hours waiting for it to pass and getting our blog stuff done.
When we left, my bike, surprise surprise, had a flat. So we fixed that, and then got a move on to the discount Mennonite grocery store where we stocked up on dry goods for a few days for $8. Sweet. Then we committed ourselves to making it the 33 miles to Lamont where we could camp at Grandma's cafe.
The ride seemed pretty easy with our head and hearts in it and we got breathtaking pictures, saw some antelope (oh we saw a coyote the day before), and made our way into real desert.
Grandma's cafe was the only thing in Lamont, and a real big truck stop.
The pictures are worth a thousand words, but it was just a big oil rig town and all this equipment was piled up, next to trash, dilapadated buildings, the cafe, a house and some trailers.
Grandson came over to us on his ATV as we were cooking our food on some ground up asphalt, and talked our ear off until we went to bed. He was a 14 yr old red headed kid with a flat top buzz and hankering for ATV racing and killing coyotes. We had a lot in common.
We set up camp on the sidwalk (the flatest place) and went to bed.
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