Day 22, June 18

Dubois to Lander, Wy
76 miles

I finally I have all three elements needed to catch up on my posts: time, cell service and power.

I am writing this from a gorgeous city park in Lander, Wy.  Although it is a city park, camping in it is allowed.  Too bad we can't have these nice things like this in Ca..

Lander city park

I started out the day at a so so KOA in Dubois (pronounced "du boys". I made the mistake of pronouncing it "do bwah" and a local scolded me.

According to the ACA map today was mostly downhill, with a 1500 or so ft drop in elevation between Dubois and Lander, however, there was a lot of up and down in between.

The first 30 miles to the tiny town of Crowheart (pop 141) happened before I even realized it.

Farmland and cliffs outside Dubois

The start of what was to be a looong stretch of scrub land

In Crowheart I ate a "healthy" convenience store brunch of a pre-packaged Turkey sandwich, an ice cream cookie sandwich, a half dozen fig newtons, a white chocolate and raspberry brownie and a large lemonade.  I talked with a couple of locals there who were curious about my trip (and got the pronunciation lesson).

Wyoming is a good state for bicycling but there are a few oddities.  First are these screwball passing / no passing signs that I still have not deciphered.

Sometimes there is one sign. Sometimes there are two. Only about half the time does my interpretation match the lane markings.

Then there are these divot thingies:

Whomever decided on the placement of these should have the fleas of 1000 camels deposited in their undergarments. They take up about the middle third of the bike lane and are impossible to ride on for more than a few seconds. With their placement so far to the right it would be far too late for a driver to correct and avoid hitting any cyclist or pedestrian that was there anyway.

After a stretch of scrub land I reached the town of Fort Washakie, where I had a marginally healthier lunch. It was an interesting town in the center of several Indian reservations. It is one of two places which claim to have Sacajawea's gravesite.  Since it was down 2 miles of dirt road, straight into the wind, and may or may not have been authentic, I didn't bother to visit it.

A couple of random shots taken before Fort Washakie appear below.

After that was the brief stretch of farmland to Lander, a sizable town of about 1700.