I didn’t get much sleep at the fire station.  I just bought my bear spray and was warned by everyone I about traveling at night.  I also saw some signage just down the road warning about ferrell dogs and wolves in the area.  It was cold and rained most of the night and I was a little jumpy.  The rain stoppped around five and I was up and around by 6 but didn’t leave until the sun was high enough to warm everything up.  It was 40 degrees when I woke up.  This was the first time I layered up with my leg warmers, arm warmers, scarf, and jacket.  I wanted to make it up the pass into the Tetons before the wind got too strong and planned to camp at a picnic area at the top.

The thirty miles to Dubois was a steady, but easy climb.  Once in Dubois I scouted around for lunch and settled on a BBQ shack on the outskirts of town.  As soon as I pull in my front tire starts hissing.  The old man there told me about the bike shop in town.  The bike shop was a small lean too building off of the Napa Auto store.  The were closed for lunch so I went ahead and fixed my flat and waited for them to open to get a new tube.  Inside, I met John, the local hiker and biker hostile operator.  I call it a hostel because it has that community feel of travelers coming and going and supporting one another.  It is actually an outreach from one of the churches.

John took me in and gave me the tour and introduced me to everyone.  Everyone, being through-hikers on the Continental Divide Trail stretching from Mexico to Canada, or vice-versa.  There were three couples in the house and solo hiker.  It was great to hear each of their stories and to learn about what they were doing.  They travel the same distance with the same amount of gear all on their backs.  Cycling cross country doesn’t seem as hard after talking with them.  One, did tell me that cycling was much more dangerous because of the traffic and that hikers don’t die on the trail but on the road trying to hitch a ride back to town.  

After my education on through-hiking, I dropped one of my spare tires in the hiker/biker box and mailed home my hammock mosquito net.  The hiker community is awesome.  Dubois is one of the resupply hubs and hikers going North and South all meet here to recharge.  There are other hubs like this along the trail and each with a hiker box that people can drop or collect gear or food from.  I also dropped my stakes that I acquired in Douglas and some other items and picked up a piece of foam sleeping pad in place of my small foam pad.  I replaced the stakes with some I found at an outfitter in town.  

In the evening, two cyclists rolled in from the East heading into Jackson.  They stayed the night and I got a chance to compare gear and rides.  I am still convinced that I have a good setup and am traveling much lighter than most.  I am the only one out here traveling without a cookset.  After having a kitchen for a day I momentarily thought about getting a stove, even though what I cooked was my mango salad I call ceviche. 

For dinner, me and two of the couples threw together a bunch of food and made burritos.  I am not the only one that will put anything inside of a tortilla and eat it.  The night went on and eventually we all settled down for bed.  Hiker midnight, as they call it, is 9 PM.  One of the guys had been preparing two loaves of bread and they came out some time after 9, so we all gathered in the kitchen to sample it.  Afterwards, two hikers, two cyclists and I all set up our beds in one of the common areas.  

One of my goals was to do a century on this trip.  The soul soup the day before must have lifted my spirits because I was thinking about attempting it.  I got up early and rode the 50 miles to Shoshoni by lunch time.  I grabbed lunch at a diner and then plotted.  I decided not to do the extra 50 and settled for 23 more to Ocean Lake in the Wind River Reservation.  Highway 26 would take me South to Riverton from Shoshoni and then back North.  County Road 134 cut straight across saving me maybe 40 miles.

After crossing the Boysen Reservoir, entering into Wind River country, and onto Road 134 everything turned green.  I was no longer in the desert, but a rich river valley.  The first thing I noticed was the floral aroma coming off of the vast fields of alfalfa.  The fields were maintained using irrigation canals that ran throughout, fed by the wind river reservoirs.

Not five miles from the lake and another storm hit.  I was watching the lightning from a distance for several miles, hoping I would turn North of it.  At the point of no return I pulled the bike off the road into some ladies yard and asked if I could hide out in her barn.  She was hesitant at first, but agreed.  Once the storm cleared, I thanked her and she told me there was a bar just a mile up the road I could stop at.  I had dinner there and then went to the lake to set up before the next storm hit.  It rained and blew for a couple of hours.  With a little daylight left I explored some and tested the water temperature.  There are not many mosquitos in the desert and this place made up for it.  They were gathered around my tent, just waiting for me to poke a finger out.   

It was a long day.  The wind was strong, again, and my pace suffered for it.  It was also much warmer than the past couple of weeks.  Halfway to Casper was Glenrock.  Glenrock was named after the rock in the glen, which is a large rock formation just outside of town.  I stopped there for lunch at a sign that said brick oven pizza.  Instead, I ordered a burrito.  Waiting for my burrito to come out I saw one of their pizzas and it really was a brick oven pizza and cooked properly, unlike other restaurants with that name… My waiter was a vegan and had the cook make me something special after my first burrito was covered in pork gravy.  

I don’t know how long I have been on the Oregon Trail, but I keep wondering if I am making better time than the settlers.  Hopefully they did not go through Nebraska otherwise they may have gotten lost and partially crazy.     

Once I finally got into Casper the road had a bike lane that turned into a bike trail that ran all through Casper.  My sleeping bag has not been as warm as it is supposed to be, so I hit all of the outdoor stores to get a new one.  All of there bags weighed nearly 5 lbs and packed down to the size of a microwave.  I had called ahead to the local bike shops to get some work done on the bike.  I stopped by both to look around to see if I needed anything, like new shoes.  My shoes had blown out a couple days before.

New shoes would be great, but what I really needed was lower gears to climb the mountains.  The gears I had were good, but I was still struggling up the steeper grade.  The second shop had what I needed.  They installed the new cassette, gave it a tune up and lubed everything.  They then told me about the Qdoba down the street.  That would be my second burrito for the day.  Afterwards, I stopped and got some glue to fix my shoes and then on to the campground.  I was going to camp in the dog park, but decided to pay and camp at a campground with bathrooms, showers, and laundry.  

It seems like I am always heading into storms.  Between Lost Springs and Douglas there was only one truckstop and rest area.  I found nothing I wanted to eat at the truckstop and lucked out at the rest area.  There were two old men sitting under a tent selling snacks.  Not just selling, but taking donations for snacks.  They wanted to give me so much, but I settled for a couple ziplocks of fruit and vegetables and homemade muffin.  As I sat there to eat, the rest area hostess came by and talked to me.  She told me all about what was happening with the eclipse and about where to stop along the way.  The eclipse is a big thing here.  Whe said she was expecting 10,000 people to be at her rest stop to watch it.  My plan was to be in Jackson, WY for the eclipse, but all campsites, hotels, and everything else is booked.  So now, I will try to be on some desolate road in Idaho.  She advised me to stay off of the interstate on my way to Casper (two days away) and stay on Highway 20.  She also said it would protect me from most of the wind!

I guess I was more tired than I had thought.  The rest of the way was slow.  I stopped a lot to look at the cacti and different rock formations.  Occasionally I would see a group of pronghorn.  Highway 20 was more out of the wind and the only traffic on it was from a cement factory.  The road itself was covered in cracks filled with rubber.  That kept my mind busy because each time I hit a crack my tires would be absorbed in the rubber and my pace slowed dramatically.  

As soon as I reached Douglas the rain started.  I hid out at a car wash for 10-15 minutes until it slowed enough to move on.  In town, there were more choices for food than I was used to.  I decided to splurge and went to Sapporo Japanese Steakhouse.  Everyone in there were Chinese.  From there I went to the railroad museum and talked to the caretaker.  She advised me to go to Riverside Park for the night, which had free camping and hot showers.

They also had a sign that read no camping on the grass, but due to the sprinkler system.  The sprinklers came on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 3 AM.  I scoured the park for somewhere to pitch the tent and found nothing.  I tried in the parking lot, but only bent one my stakes.  I then tried under a picnic table, but it was too short.  I then tried on top of the picnic table, but my tent was too wide.  I settled on hanging the hammock with the tarp over it.  At this point, the skies were clear and it was nice out.  Soon after, the wind picked up and the rain started.  I should mention, that I picked a spot not directly over or near a sprinkler.  The sprinkler would only hit my tarp.  When the storm came, I quickly got the tent out and set it up.  I was camping on the grass on a Wednesday and they could get over it.  I had still not acquired any more stakes and had was using some stakes for both the tent and the tarp.  It stormed, not just rained, until nearly 1 AM.  Then, at 3, the heard the sprinklers come on.  

That morning, I woke up at 6 and the rain had started again.  It rained until 3 pm and I stayed inside the tent the whole time.  I went through all of my peanut butter, snack bars, and tortillas.  All that was left was a jar of honey and some dry cereal.  I probably could have made it to Casper before nightfall, but decided to make a day of Douglas.  I went to the grocery store and loaded up on food and then to the laundry mat.  There I met a couple of guys that followed and crewed at music festivals.  They were living out of a small Toyota truck with a bed cover.  They were nomads, some might say hippies.  They did offer to get me stoned but I decided against it.  One of them said that they pick up a lot of extra gear after each festival and that they had camping gear they were sorting through.  When he mentioned the lot of stakes I offered to buy them off of him and he just gave them to me.  Now, I have almost too many stakes! They invited me to winter with them in California at a nomad camp called Slab City.  

After leaving them I had dinner and then met two more guys at the campground.  They were doing a summer tour of Canada and making a loop down to Colorado before heading back to the east coast.  I talked with Patrick for a long time and eventually followed him to look at an old Toyota mini motorhome he had spotted.  It measured no more than 16 foot and we just happened to catch the owner.  The owner opened up the camper and then showed us his shop and all of the toys he was working on.  Patrick would make for an excellent traveling buddy and I am sure if I met him in Arkansas he would have dropped everything to come with me.  

Oh, and my shoes are dead…

Only nine miles to the border and no more Nebraska!  There were more and more rock formations after crossing the border and I saw my first pronghorn of the trip.  I also started seeing more cacti, but no prickly pears.  I climbed up to one of the rock formations to see it covered in swallow nests.  

I stopped for lunch in Lusk and watched as all of the bikers from Sturgis came and went.  Many of them stopped to talk to me.  One of the locals came and sat at my table.  I was not sure if he was the local bum or the local preacher.  He had a lot to say and sat with me until I left.  From there I went to the grocery store and restored my food supply and then road on.  My goal was to get to Lost Springs, WY for the night.  

Ten miles from Lost Springs another storm hit.  This time the wind was blowing so hard I had to get off of the road.  Those same electric buildings that lined the Cowboy Trail were alongside the existing railroad here.  Unfortunately, it was still working and locked.  So, I hid behind it.  Eventually a rancher pulled up and asked me what I was doing and when I told him he and I both were hiding behind the box peeking out looking at the storm.  The storm was heading South so I decided to chance it.  Not 2 miles down the road was another box and hiding behind it were two motorcyclists.  Stacy and Jodi were coming from Sturgis and took a wrong turn back in Lusk.  They were from Chicago and lived in a tiny house so we had plenty in common.  We talked for nearly half an hour and by the time I left them the storm was gone and the sun setting.  

Lost Springs, WY has a population of four.  One of the four directed me to their park.  They had hot water, a pavilion, and the nicest grass I have ever seen.  It was so nice that they had a sign up saying no camping on the grass.  It was a good thing that I grabbed food from the store, but I am not buying anymore French baguettes.  It was too hard to eat.

I was slow to get around, sitting with Ken and Jan talking until nearly 11.  I saw a donut shop in town and Ken said he would go with me for breakfast.  It has been nice knowing that I would be able to stay with someone I knew every week or so.  Camping out can be somewhat stressful, being in a strange place with nothing but a piece of nylon between me and the rest of the world.  It is comforting when I am with other people and not having to guess at every car that shines their lights on me or every footstep that goes by.

Just outside of Chadron I ran into a small stretch of roadwork.  Right where the flagger stopped me, there was a small storage building sitting in the middle of a field with a sign with the words, “Local honey sold here”.  It was filled with local made crafts and of course honey!  It was $12 a jar, but I couldn’t resist.  The coolest part of the store was that it only had a money box and no attendant.  If I had not of stopped for the construction I probably would not have noticed it.

Not far after the store I started seeing more landmarks.  Large rock structures stuck out of the ground like something out of an old western movie.  After seeing corn for weeks and then sand hills for so long it was motivating to see a change in the landscape.

For lunch, I stopped in the town of Crawford.  I found a small park to rest, eat, and write some.  The park had an old caboose on show.  The attendant remarked that it was just like those tiny houses people are living in.  It had about twice the living space as my boat and I immediately thought about all that I could do with the space.  The attendant was full of advice for the days ahead.

That morning, Ken and I were looking at the map and the elevation change.  He used Google Earth to look at the roads and found a steep grade sign.  He told me that those signs indicate a steepness of between 6 and 10 percent.  I found the hill!  It was the first real hill I have climbed in a long time.  It was 3 to 4 miles long and took me to the top of a rise.  I wish I had a better photo.  Not sure if the view was as inspiring as I felt or if it had to do with me conquering it.  From the top, it was easy riding to Harrison.

With only five miles to go I could see it raining in the distance, right over Harrison.  Wolfgang told me about an A-frame restaurant just as you get into Harrison.  He said they had Mexican, Thai, and American food.  It was hard to believe that a town of just a couple hundred would have Thai food, but I was excited.  If the the restaurant was any further into town, I would have been drenched.  So, for dinner I had pad thai and a salsa!

The rain never stopped and it was getting cold.  There was a motel right next to the restaurant that I thought about staying in.  The only other option I saw on the map was the high school.  It faced the road and had no protection from the wind.  I rode around town looking for other options when I saw the sign for a park and RV.  The park was small, having only one parking spot and hookup, but perfect for me.  I set up camp for the night.  The wind blasted me all night.  I only brought six stakes for the tent and needed another four for the tarp.  I made a mental note to grab some tent stakes at the next big town.