After devouring a couple plates of pancakes with homemade choke cherry syrup, Rick, Kurt, and I watched some Tour de France coverage on television. As was the case in 2004, it was a treat to see the worlds strongest cyclists competing on the biggest stage in cycling. There is no comparison between there journey and my own but every now and then even the recreation cyclist dreams of leading a dashing breakaway from the peloton to a the glory of a stage victory!
At 33 miles, in the middle of nowhere I happened upon the Anna Lope Café in the “town” of Lamont. This place used to be called Grandma’s Café, and when I visited here in 2004, I jokingly wrote that Grandma was waiting for me in her front porch rocking chair with a pitcher of pancake batter and a shotgun. While the place had changed hands, the food was still great. I opted to get a huge chef salad (vegetables in Wyoming?) with a slab of rhubarb cobbler a la mode.
Other than the spectacular geological formations filling the scenery, the most memorable occurrence of the day happened at the Muddy Gap gas station. There I met a group of Mormons reenacting the Mormon Trail of yore. They were dressed in vintage Mormon garb and were trying to be as authentic as possible (thought the gas station snacks in their hands told a different story).
The cycling in the afternoon was brutal – huge headwinds and a rough section of construction-zone pavement. I powered my way through the last twenty miles of the day but I was dead bonked on the finish into Jeffrey City.
As I pulled into Jeffrey City, I found the dismembered leg of an antelope in the road shoulder. This was actually a proper introduction to this place, a former uranium boom town gone bust from the Three Mile Island debacle. The Split Rock Café is the only place of business in the whole town. The proprietors are very friendly to cyclists, but Jeffrey City is Jeffrey City. We managed to get some food in our system and kill some time with the locals before settling down to a mosquito infested camp for the night.
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