DAY 11 - DIRT ROADS AND ANTELOPE

We awoke in the tent behind the Bright Spot and were re-welcomed by a hot breakfast and coffee. We got on the road pretty soon, but.. not the most exciting of roads. If you look at highway 20 on a map of Wyoming, you can see how straight it runs but it's hard to understand without experiencing. It's pretty much this:

... for a really long time. Just us, our bikes, a couple cars, and the occasional antelope. What goes through our minds at these times? Well, Don was reminiscing about college, Dave was thinking about his impending move to Denver, and I was oscillating between brainstorming dissertation ideas and thinking about the last time I was traveling across the country (but in a car). The view for the many hours of riding, besides the grassy plains on either side, is something like this:

In any case, we headed from Hiland where we stayed to Casper, WY, where we stopped by a grocery store to get a ton of food and soothe our ravenous hungers. The cashiers at this Albertson's were super friendly, and offered to let us sit upstairs in their break room to eat our brunch. 

From there, we headed a couple miles up the hill into town to pump up our tires at the local bike shop. The people at Ragged Edge Sports were incredibly friendly, and let us use their pumps and even have us a screw that Don was missing from his show. Thanks!

More long straight road for us from Casper heading east, and we eventually got to Glenrock, where we stopped for a cold drink and some help with road advice from some locals at the grocery store. The staff were helpful and even grabbed an atlas from the back to help us on our way, but as always we had to make our own (silly) decision. Stuck with a choice between riding up a hill, on the interstate, or on a dirt road for the last 30ish miles to Douglas, we chose the dirt road.

 

Which, of course, turned out to be the worst kind of dirt road: one that's actually gravel and therefore terrible on our road bikes. Instead of turning around, we kept going, I guess because we're stubborn. The road wound past a power plant and then a river, which at least was pretty (the river, not the power plant).

 

Due to the fairly abandoned nature of the road, there was also a lot of wildlife. Antelope watched us from the field as we rode by slowly. I don't think we realized we'd run into antelope, but they're pretty cool looking.

Probably the highlight of this otherwise way-too-long dirt road: we saw some baby antelope running along a dry creek bed. Not sure this does justice to how cute the tiny little ones were.

However, after they noticed us blocking their usual escape route, they turned around and one of the young ones ran the opposite direction. One of them, though, ran straight into one of the barbed wire fences that lined the fields along this road. He kep struggling against the wire, probably because he was so scared of us. We didn't really know what to so, since it was our presence that was clearly makin him so agitated that he kept getting more stuck! We debated just leaving to let him figure his way (calmly) out of it, or trying to help him. Eventually, Don approached by himself, equipped with our tiny multitool to try and cut the antelope out. Our scissors didn't cut it, so despite the kicking and yelping of the antelope, Don had to manually pull it back through the fence to where it had started. The antelope sprang free and ran off to join the rest of his family. Hopefully that makes up for us scaring him - and maybe even begins to repay the karmic debt we're obviously in from the kindness of the many people who have helped us so far on this trip. Thanks again, kind strangers! We appreciate everything you do.