63.10 mi / 4:53:05 time / 12.9 mph avg. / 30.5 mph max. / 2623 ft. climbing
Staying at Gillette Days Inn

Last night was probably only the second night that I haven’t put the rainfly on the tent. I almost wish I that I had used it, not because it was raining, or because it was cold, but because the moon was so darn bright. Bright enough to read by!

I woke up just before dawn and ate breakfast while I headed out on a hike around Devils Tower. It was nice that there are two trails that make concentric circles around the tower, so I could do half a loop on the outer one, do the inner loop, and then finish up the other half of the outer loop, for about five miles total. The tower is amazing (especially in the sunrise); probably the most impressive thing I’ve seen so far on the trip. Visiting it added a lot of miles to my total, but it was easily worth it.

While I only saw one other person on the trail, I saw four guys a few hundred feet up stuck to the side (and strangely, could clearly hear them talking and shouting “on belay! belay on!”) Apparently 5000 people a year are crazy enough to climb the thing. To me, rock climbing is something that makes me say “Wow, that seems really hard, why would anyone want to do that?” But then I suppose the rock climbers might say the exact same thing about me. Still, on a bike, when you get tired, you can just stop. When you’re wedged into a crack in a cliff waiting for your partners to catch up, you really have no option but to keep flexing your muscles. But I’m sure it’s pretty nice when you get to the top.

So that makes three National Parks/Monuments that I’ve hit in the last three days. I’m amazed at how clean they all are, and also how “wild” they all seem (well, Mount Rushmore is pretty tamed). I also love all the “Now Entering/Leaving BlahBlah National Park/Forest” signs, with their rock foundations and brown/green color schemes. They’ve really got a good branding thing going! Hmm, don’t think I have any pictures…

The hike meant that I didn’t hit the road until a little before 10am. There were some good hills to climb on the way down to Moorcroft, along with some more road construction over the peaks. This time it was 7 miles of milled surface, not a lot of fun. Beyond that, the Wyoming roads/shoulders have been really nice so far.

Then after lunch in Moorcroft it was west on I-90 to Gillette. I was going to take a road that paralled I-90, but it was closed somewhere along the line, so I just stayed on the Interstate the whole time, which was pretty empty anyhow. I saw my first oil wells, plus a big coal mining operation, and some big coal-carrying trains. Beyond that, not a lot of excitement (but that’s probably because I’ve gotten used to seeing hill and mountain vistas all around).

Gillette is a veritable metropolis, with an Applebee’s (that served a beer as fancy as Fat Tire), Home Depot, and Quizno’s right across the street, among other things. As an added bonus to the WiFi and Continental Breakfast, I discovered that the motel has laundry machines, so I was able to clean some clothes, particularly the ones that I had been wearing for at least five days straight. That orange shirt you see me wearing in all the pictures is a Mountain Hardwear Wicked Tee that I got for $9 from Dick’s, and it’s the best wicking t-shirt I’ve ever had. Light, comfortable, cool, and it only smelled half as bad as you would expect such a shirt to smell after a week of wear, hundreds of miles, and gallons of sweat!

Once again, I could watch WGN here (the Cubs were on tonight, I think I’m starting to really understand their nationwide fanbase). It really hit me how far I have come when they showed a between-innings shot of the moon rising against the black sky, while here, it was still sunny!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 10:29 pm and is filed under bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.