Message from Chris: We had a beautiful ride today down the valley of the Wind River from Dubois to Lander. The surrounding countryside changed dramatically during the day. At the top, the river ran through a narrow channel hemmed in by cottonwood trees just starting to leaf out, and beyond the river on either side greening pastures and hayfields ran up against bright bedrock cliffs. And here and there you could see up a side canyon to the snow- covered ranges far above. At 8:30 on a cool Sunday morning, we had the road largely to ourselves for the first hour or so.
But pretty quickly the valley got much wider (the big ranges on either side annually dump a huge volume of water and sediment, giving the river plenty of scouring power) and the road climbed up onto a broad bench south of the river, flat enough to support big pastures for beef cattle and horses, and cut often enough by tributary streams to give us some regular uphill warm-ups to balance the cool downhills.
Message from Joe: No pelting by ice pellets! No white outs! No self-destructing bike parts! Today was a quieter day for us, and at 75 miles with a steep vertical climb from one drainage to another, one of our most challenging of the trek. Almost the entire ride today was through the Wind River Indian Reservation, a large tract of varied land which often looked like the mythical West of Roadrunner cartoons. The wildlife visible was amazing: pronghorn sheep, elk, great blue herons, all in stunning quiet because there were so few cars on much of the route. The floor of the High Plains were green bluish from the flora growing after the recent snow melt. Very beautiful in an austere way.
Chris keeps me laughing. In one particularly remote stretch, he was interrupted by a text from the Holiday Inn we had reservations for in Lander, with the message “You’re ready to check in!” Given that we had at that point about 40 miles of challenging riding remaining, Chris said he was thinking of sending them a reply “Please don’t send any more messages unless it’s about a Holiday Inn pickup truck on its way bring us to town.”
Lots of time in the quiet of a ride like today’s to think, and I was thinking about how blessed I am to have friends and family like I have …