Days 6-8: The wind begins

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Leaving Walden began as a pleasant cruise with a slight crosswind.

After 10 miles, the weather up ahead really changed for the worse

Luckily, I had just arrived in a tiny town called Cowdrey. At this point the storm had progressed into a full-on lightning show. A couple on a motorbike stopped a couple hundred feet off and turned around

I took shelter under the protruding roof of the post office on the left of the picture, but I thought this building was more interesting

Eventually the storm hit the road up ahead where I would have been riding if I continued! When the storm passed and I rode past, there were marble sized hailstones littering the sides of the road

The landscape really opened up as I got closer to the border

Thrilled to arrive in Wyoming! I was more focused on the growing dark clouds above me — got hit by a few of their drops but outran them

This was the worst section I’ve been on 😞 (so far). If you reallyyy zoom in you might be able to see where it leaves the valley. It was awful to have a semi truck go by me at 60+ mph and still see it off in the distance many many minutes later. The reason it was so bad was because with me the whole way was a big headwind, which got worse the closer I got to the end. The final climb out wasn’t too steep, but the headwind was so strong I could only inch up at 4 mph. Then the rain hit, which the headwind slammed into my face. I ended up humming nursery rhymes to pacify myself

Instead of getting to Saratoga, my planned destination, I stopped in Riverside, at a lovely campground by a rushing river (guess there’s a lot of snowmelt at the moment). Unfortunately I had a pickup driver “roll coal” (rev his diesel engine to pump out smoke) on me as I got into town. The campground had a notice in a few places: “No open carry allowed in the campground”. The owners reserve a perfect grassy area just for hikers (the Continental Divide Trail runs nearby) and bikers on the TransAmerica trail. These hiker/biker specific sites should be more common further out west in national parks and along the coast. I got a massive pizza at the Bear Trap restaurant opposite (but didn’t end up in the Mangy Moose bar next door to it)

Leaving the campsite the following morning I took a couple hundred feet detour to see this sign

Getting to Saratoga was only going to be 18 miles (two hours or less) so on the spur of the moment I took a ride down this dirt road that I knew would go to the town eventually

A heart-in-mouth moment when my front tyre and I discovered the side of the road was a lot softer than the hard packed middle

I got a close look at an antelope, which I had been seeing for a couple days. It had a disturbing face and made an extremely disturbing noise at me

In Saratoga I’ve been staying in a house provided by St. Barnabas' Episcopal Church specifically for bikers on the TransAm trail. It was fun to see the guest book, even though it only went back a couple years. I saw the entry of Markus, the German guy I met in Hot Sulfur Springs! Staying with me is Caleb, who rode with Markus for a few days, and his dog-like cat (read: extremely friendly) Marilyn Monroad, pictured poorly as she tried to get strokes. They’ve done thousands and thousands of miles over the years (across the country 5 times) with her in a bike-mounted cat box

Saratoga had a real Wild West feel to it. People walk around with cowboy hats and I’ve seen them out in the fields with horses. Caleb had me go on an errand to buy whiskey from the local “dive bar”. He predicted that when I went to the counter, a woman next to me would ask where I was from. Somehow, that happened to a T! The bar was gloomy, with people smoking cigarettes with their Monday evening drinks. The supermarket in town I went to had taxidermy bears and animal heads everywhere, and I saw a guy food shopping with his family with a pistol in a hip holster. The supermarket was up on a hill, and as I was walking back down with my bags, a Hispanic guy called Ray stopped, lowered the tailgate of his pickup truck that he was hauling landscaping equipment in, and had me sit on the tailgate as he drove me right back through town, past the sheriff’s office and to the church. The truck had a trailer on the back so I raised my legs to prevent them from getting trapped when we turned. Once we stopped, he showed me why he couldn’t have me in the passenger seat — a tiny, tiny teacup chihuahua puppy was asleep there! He blessed me and drove off

During my day off the bike, I went to the Saratoga museum. I loved going inside a Union Pacific train caboose and imagining it going across America

Tomorrow I’ll be going 42 miles to Rawlins, supposedly one of the most grim towns in Wyoming because of its bleak weather, dilapidated businesses and proximity to oil production. If I can’t get up early, I’ll have horrific headwinds as I go down the only interstate section of the TransAmerica Trail (so I expect I will have those headwinds).