Today’s Highlights:
Last night’s band was amazing. Normally all of our activities end at 9:00 PM, and then it gets very quiet very quickly. As you can imagine, all the riders are ready for some well desired rest so they can get up early and do it all again. But last night a large crowd cheered on the band to keep playing. They obliged up to 9:30, and still the crowd pleaded for more. The fun stopped though, and once again a camp of almost one thousand people went silent under the night sky and tall trees.
It rained a bit last night, but the clouds were breaking up as we broke camp, and there was a stunning purple sunrise. The temperature was in the low 50’s – not too bad compared to other mornings. My day started out great. The rest day was just what I needed and I was riding easily again. Just six miles out of town, we entered the Wind River Reservation and stayed in it all the way to Dubois. We passed some farms and rolling hills of grasslands. There were also many interesting buttes and valley. Views of the Wind River Mountains came and went as the clouds moved across them. We had some rain a couple hours into the ride, just enough to get wet and a little cold. However, the sun came out just enough to dry us off. I reached the designated lunch stop at mile-45 around 10:30 with many other riders.
The day turned bad after that. The sky was very dark in the direction we were going, the wind was picking up, and the temperature was dropping into the 40s. We were headed into a big storm. In a short time, I became completely soaked, to the point where water squished out of my shoes on each pedal stork. It was so cold that both my feet were numb and my fingers were stiff around the handlebars. When I shifted gears, I could not feel the levers. The rain was constant for about one hour. It felt like torture. I also had a minor crash during the storm. My helmet saved my head. For the fourth day this week I questioned my sanity. After that storm, there were moments of sunshine, but there was no relief from the cold.
The bad weather robbed us of some very nice scenery too. It really is a pretty area. We did see a little of the red rock and the Wind River just outside Dubois, but even that was hard to appreciate while focused on finishing just to get out of the cold.
Dubois is a very tiny, quaint Western town, and easy to explore. Many of the riders took time to look around and have a hot meal to warm up. We camped in the city park, and got assistance from many of the town’s residences with luggage handling and meal and shuttles into town.
Pictures Of The Day:
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