Day 20 - 106 Miles...

Casper, WY to Lusk, WY

Distance: 108 miles
Time: 6 hrs
Elevation Gain: 2,825 ft

...with the sun in your face and 30 mph winds at your back!!  Today was another great day for a bike ride.  I road a 6 hr century today, my best time ever for ridding 100 miles!  The weather was still good to us, mid 60's in the morning with sunny skies and it got up in the mid 90's by early afternoon, and 30 mph tail wind all day.  If the wind was a 30 mph head wind, we might still be on the road.  We road through open range land today, not quite the desert like we road through yesterday, but it was still pretty barren.  There were green pastures with wild flowers and rolling hills, mountains in the far distance, and you can still see for miles around and the roads still stretched out forever in front of us.  We road through a few small towns, a 14 mile streach on Interstate 25, and saw several, very long, trains.

Tomorrow we head for Hot Springs, SD; 91 miles mostly downhill.

Link to My GPS Route

Front Camera View

Front Camera View

Front Camera View

Front Camera View

Rear Camera View

Rear Camera View

Front Camera View

Front Camera View - SAG stop

Rear Camera View - Travis

Rear Camera View - Jan, Doyle, and Lucy

Rear Camera View - Doyle and Lucy

Rear Camera View

Front Camera View

Front Camera View

Front Camera View

Front Camera View

Rear Camera View - Jim our bike mechanic

Front Camera View

Pedal On!!

Day 19 - Rest Day 2 - Casper, WY

Rest Day in Casper, WY

Today is a much needed rest day, we biked almost 400 miles in 4 days.  Casper is fair size town with many old red brick buildings with some being 5 or 6 stories tall.  There are newer buildings that are even taller. Not much going on today, I did my laundry, cleaned up my bike, watched a movie, walked around downtown Casper and rested.

Here are my stats for the ride so far:

Total distance to date: 1,400 miles (2,267 miles to go)
Total time in the saddle: 106 hrs
Total elevation gain: 53,491 ft
Total number of pictures taken by my bike mounted camera's: 14,250

We climbed to the highest elevation of the tour: 9,658 ft
We road the longest day of the tour: 120 miles
We road the shortest day of the tour: 36 miles
We road the hardest leg of the tour (on paper anyway), but we still have a lot of hard days ahead.

Tomorrow we bike 106 miles to Lusk, WY

Pedal On!!

Day 18 - The Middle of Nowhere

Riverton, WY to Casper, WY

Distance: 122 miles
Time: 7.5 hr
Elevation Gain: 2,844 ft

Today's ride was 120 miles through the middle of nowhere; desert, desert, endless stretches of road, and more desert.  The weather bubble is still with us, still cool and sunny in the morning, low 60's, but it did get hot by early afternoon in the mid 90's.  We had light wind in the morning that turned into a headwind by late morning and became a tailwind in the early afternoon.  I road by myself for the first 30 miles to our fist SAG stop and then teamed up with my roommate Gary ridding the rest of the day with him.  It helps to ride with someone, it keeps you mind occupied and helps makes the miles go by faster.  There wasn't much as for as scenery goes, but we did see a lot of Mule-Deer close the road.  There was one interesting land formation called "Hell's Half Acre"; a big hole in the ground (like a miniature Grand Canon) that the Indians used to drive Buffalo's over.  Tomorrow is a rest day!!

Link to My GPS Route

Rear Camera View - Dan

Front Camera View

Front Camera View - 

There's always one more hill to climb

Front Camera View

Rear Camera View

Rear Camera View

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Rear Camera View

Hell's Half Acre

Front Camera View

Front Camera View

Front Camera View - SAG Stop

Front Camera View - Me (don't ask)

Rear Camera View - Wanda and Edd

Rear Camera View

Front Camera View

Finally something different to look at

Pedal On!!

Day 17 -

Dubois, WY to Riverton, WY

Distance: 97 miles
Time: 6.25 hrs
Elevation Gain: 2,339 ft

We have an early start tomorow, so this will be a short post.

We were supposed to have a nice easy down hill ride today, but do to a washed out road we had to detour around it which added about 17 miles and several good size hills to climb.  It was still a great day to ride!! The weather is still holding out; it was sunny and cool in the morning in the low 60's and it got up into the low 90's by mid afternoon.  We started our ride going through 20 miles of red rock formations and landscape ridding along the raging Wind River. It was quite different from the high mountain pine forest and majestic views of the Grand Teton Mountains that we rode through just days before.  After the first 20 miles the landscape turned into high desert and the views opened to were you can see for miles in all directions and we road on endless stretches of highway.  Tomorrow we will have our longest ride day of the tour, 120 miles of  high desert to ride through.

Link to my GPS Route

Rear Camera View - Leaving Dubois

Rear Camera View - 

Rear Camera View

Front Camera View - Interesting Rock formations 

Rear Camera View

Front Camera View - Red Rock

Front Camera View - Me taking the next picture

Wind River

Rear Camera View - Leaving the mountains

Rear Camera View - for the desert

Rear Camera View

Rear Camera View

Rear Camera View - rolling hills

Rear Camera View - Julie waving Hi

Rear Camera View - The roads go on and on

Front Camera View - SAG stop

Rear Camera View - Leslie 

Front Camera View - 

There's always one more hill to climb

Front Camera View - Endless views

Front Camera View - And we pedal on and on

Pedal On!!