Windy Wyoming

Day six – today has cost me $35., campsite (no hook ups) plus breakfast, lunch and dinner all (but gas) inclusive. My body, still on Eastern Standard Time was awake early. I was ready to ride by 6:30, so after a quick stop for gas and breakie I decided it would be a great day to veer off the highway at least a couple of times for photos and headed into Cheyenne. The folks (who were up) were very friendly. My Ontario License plate is now an anomaly and folks just stop to chat. One of the locals I met on the street suggested, with a Midwestern drawl, that Cheyenne had more to see than all of California. I took a few quick photos (nothing was open yet) and headed west. Next stop, does this sound like every western movie you ever saw? Laramie.

I rounded a bend on the I-80 just outside of Laramie and there before me were the majestic, snow covered mountain peaks. I’ve crossed the Continental Divide now and have decided that western Wyoming should be renamed Windy Wyoming. Some stretches of the highway were, what I imagine, driving back and forth through the turbo dryer at the drive through automatic car wash would feel like, not that I have actually done that. But it was windy enough to make a rider slow down. I am wondering if perhaps a bit more research as to the “character” of this particular route might have been in order after having a 6 foot plus, 220 lb Harley rider complain about the wind.

Parts of I-80/30 are under construction which doesn’t hinder traffic much unless it’s a stretch where four lanes have been reduced to two lanes and a semi breaks down on your side. I sat for 45 minutes admiring the scenery, waiting for the semi to be removed. The line of traffic was so long that it took a full 10 minutes from the time I saw the traffic at the head begin to move until I was actually underway again.

Tonight’s campsite is windy, but lovely. It’s not far off the highway but I can’t hear the traffic. It’s small and I’ve met some of my neighbors – a group of paleontologists from the University of Washington here on a two week dig, looking for prehistoric mammalian fossils in the rock formations nearby. The landscape is rugged and barren. The rocks that appear to have been shoved from the bowels of the earth thousands of years ago house a treasure of fossilized remains of creatures from gone by eras. The tops of the hills are dotted with hoodoos reminiscent of Drumheller Alberta. Tomorrow I should be in Utah.