Today was the easiest century ride I've ever done. Of course it was also the shortest (the others were 117 and 120 miles). We had a nice gentle tailwind most of the day, with very little climbing.
We also said goodbye to one rider yesterday (Bob), but picked up a couple more. Here's Janice at load this morning getting ready for her first day. She'll be with us for this leg of the trip. We also had Fred join us for the rest of the way to New Hampshire.
Heading out of Casper this morning, I thought these smokestacks had kind of an eery look to them.
With not a lot of roads out here, we took to the interstate again today. That was actually a really nice section to ride after all the rough shoulders we've had lately.
And of course, we're seeing more and more Wall Drug signs. I think I counted 3 or 4 today. Sounds like we'll be there sometime next week. We got a tip from another traveler today, on where to get really good pizza in Wall.....might have to check that out if we have any energy left after that day's ride.
Here's another road sign I thought was a little different than what I'm used to. I don't know what the speed limit was on this side road, but if you have to slow down to do 60 in a sharp turn, it's gotta be pretty fast.
We also went through Douglas today, which claims to be the home of the jackalope. You have to watch out for these guys. I caught this one trying to roll off with my bike.....
Some of the towns out here aren't very big. I heard from a previous rider that I needed to stop in Shawnee to visit with the postmistress there, as she was a really fun character to meet. From mthe looks of it, she must no longer be there. The few buildings left appeared to be boarded up.
However this next town was different in that with a population of only 1 person, they have a bar and a church. Not sure if the 1 person there runs them both. But then Mike did go into town, and has a picture of a sign on the church that says the population is actually 3. So maybe there's not any conflict of interest there after all.
Might be a little hard to see, but you can see these storms and rain from way off before they get to you. I was working on trying to outrun this one and had to stop to get this shot of the old farmhouse. With the weather it looked like something out of the Wizard of Oz.
I finally decided to take shelter in the 3 Sisters Truck Stop about 10 miles outside Lusk and see if the storm would pass me by. As luck would have it, they had really good pie there. Check this out all you Ragbrai'ers......I already got my pie!
In Lusk, they are having their annual Rawhide Days festival. We got to see the parade with all the covered wagons and townspeople dressed up like settlers and others as American Indians.
These guys dressed like American Indians would wait for the wagons to get a little ahead and then go flying up the street yelling and whooping like they were attacking. Apparently the festival has something to do with somebody getting skinned alive, and they have a reenactment at the festival.
Well, tomorrow we head out to Hot Springs, SD, so we'll be leaving our third state behind. That doesn't sound like a lot, but these states out here aren't as small as the ones most of us are from. I heard that we have now gone over 1600 miles total, and have climbed the equivalent of over 45,000 feet.
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