Day 42: Jeffrey City, WY to Lander, WY (58.5 Miles)

Waking up in the creepy motel, I decided I wanted to leave Jeffrey City ASAP. I took off by 7:00AM and found that Chris & Chris had already broken camp and left before me. I'm assuming they had a very interesting night and came to the same conclusion this morning. I rode by Aaron and Shaz's tent and headed West. The morning was crisp and chill, therefore I had to layer it up. I found the Chrisses at small rest stop near "Sweetwater Station." There were no restaurants all morning, so we just snacked as we rode...

The highlight of the morning came in the form of long 6% grade descent down into a beautiful valley. We rode down to find a Biblical amount of grasshoppers lying on the shoulder. Like a wave of green, they would try to avoid our bikes; however, we must have run over thousands of those little buggers. Lady Chris isn't the biggest fan of these little creatures and would get pretty annoyed if any bugs tried hitchhiking on her bike/trailer. I would often hear her beckoning to Christopher, "Get it off!!!"

Christopher was fiending for coffee, so we tried to stop at a small diner near the Little Popo Agie River. It turned out the restaurant was closed for renovations, but the lady let us sit in the shade and use their bathrooms. We talked with her for a bit and she explained that her daughter and son-in-law had purchased old buildings from a ghost town and renovated them into cabins. Sadly, it didn't look like it was the most successful business endeavor... mainly because it was smack-dab in the middle of nowhere! As Chris and Chris looked over the maps, I played with the local dogs, including a precocious little three-legged Chihuahua.

Snacking again, we made the short ride into Lander by noon. It felt great to get all my riding in within the morning. In addition, this place turned out to be the nicest town I've found in Wyoming. It's described as an "outdoorsy" type of place, and I could really tell by the quality of the city park. They allow for overnight camping and it was by far the nicest place I've pitched a tent in, and this includes all those 10-20 dollar campsites! We found a bike shop and I purchased some long trousers to keep me warm at night and for future use when riding in the cold Boston winter. Christopher bought some warm gloves and we rode down to the camping store so that Chris could find a better portable pillow. We grabbed some lunch and then split up to run some errands.

I spent some time updating blog posts in the fantastic town library. Aaron and Saz made it into town and also came to library to update their blog. We then talked about how it takes as much effort to keep a blog going then it is to keep biking. After sitting for hours infront of a computer, I felt really irritable and needed to relax. So I headed to a nice little pub/restaurant with the Chrisses and took in some more biking fuel. There were so many attractive young people all around and it really felt like I was back home. Sadly, we had to leave this place in the morning and so we headed back to our tents.

When we arrived back to our tents, we found a new community of tents that popped up within a few hours. Hiding in one of these tents was Matt, a Manchester fellow that rode along with the Chrisses through Kansas. We also saw the Bernstein siblings, who had to share a small tent because Saz somehow lost her tent poles! There was a softball game at play in the adjacent field, but it ended early and now it's time for sleep. Let's see if these new warm-pants do what they're advertised to do!