Yep, first time for this trip that we had to ride on an Interstate (I-80 to be exact). It’s also the first time Doug has ever ridden on an Interstate (me not so much). For awhile, to Sinclair, we were on a regular old highway. Sinclair was on the map as a town (it actually is a town). It has town stuff, like a park, but it is mostly the big Sinclair Oil Refinery. All the Sinclair gas station/convenience store stops we have made led us to the big refinery. Okay, not really…it’s just the route.
The playground in the park was filled with dinosaurs (Sinclair’s…mascot???).
Just before getting on I-80, we stopped at…you guessed it…a Sinclair convenience store to use the restrooms before riding 13 miles on the freeway.
We took the I-80 on ramp.
At least there is a nice wide shoulder.
This being Sunday morning, you’d think, maybe less traffic. Not really, but almost all the traffic changed lanes to pass us, even though there is a massive shoulder.
We made pretty quick work of the freeway riding. Then we exited onto highway 130 to go to Riverside. It was then that the day became much much less pleasant. We turned straight into a massive headwind. At one point, I was actually going downhill at 4 mph! It was brutal. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, it started to rain. I couldn’t put “Flap Flap the Duck” on in that kind of wind, so I just put my Shake Dry jacket on.
Ominous…
The temp was around 55. I was tempted to put my leg warmers on too, but in the end, I didn’t dig them out.
I pulled off to take a breather. When Doug caught up, he said he’d even been blown off the road, and went down. Now his bike wasn’t shifting good.
We had about 5 miles to go to Saratoga. We had planned to eat lunch in Saratoga, then push on to Riverside. We were seriously rethinking that plan.
We rolled into Saratoga. Apparently, it’s known for its hot pools. They are free, and open 24 hours a day. But, what we were interested in was food. We found a sandwich shop that, had we been 30 minutes later, would have been closed (my lucky horseshoe in action again). Once our bellies were full, then we could decide what to do next.
A guy had ridden past us when we were about 2 miles out of Saratoga. He stopped me and asked how the weather was in Rawlins. He said the weather from Waldon was horrible…cold and wet. I thought, geez, at least he had a tailwind! I told him we were probably just going to go to Saratoga. He asked if we were going to stay in the church. Since I hadn’t looked at the accommodations for Saratoga (because we were going to Riverside), I didn’t know of this church.
In the sandwich shop, I looked at the map. There was no mention of a church that hosts cyclists. I don’t think this is a one-church town. Instead, I started calling hotels. The first one didn’t pan out. Neither did the second one. We had ridden by the Riviera on our way into town. I had seen the “vacancy” sign. So we went there. Yes, back in a hotel. At least this one is way cheaper than the one in Lander.
There is another couple (Bob and Claudia) here who are cycling from Waldon to Grand Teton and back. Today was their first day. They said it was cold and wet. They didn’t even realize what an awesome tailwind they had!
Anyway, we should be able to make it to Waldon tomorrow, which is what we had planned for tomorrow anyway. We’ll just add the miles from here to Riverside onto tomorrow’s ride. We did do 42 miles today with a whopping average speed of 7.9mph.
Sorry there aren’t more photos, but it was a less than stellar day, and even so, there was nothing to take photos of anyway…pure Wyoming desolation!
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