Rawlins, WY

Day 45: Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Jeffrey City to Rawlins: 74 miles

I packed, folded my tent, and hit the road early, before Byron awoke. Not that there was anything I wanted to do, except get out of Wyoming. Its monotony was getting to me. That was one thing that hadn't changed since1981.

Well, I did see some more interesting rocks. They resembled the excretions of a giant dinosaur.

These rocks looked like a pile of glop.

These didn't.

The second construction zone started 22 miles outside Rawlins, and extended for ten miles. The shoulder had been entirely torn up. It had been compressed and rolled somewhat flat, so that a loaded bike wouldn't sink in, and could almost be ridden on it. But you wouldn't want to. The road was narrow and extremely busy, so I was constantly pulling off onto the shoulder to let traffic by. It wasn't as bad as other cyclists had said - except that the shoulder on the other side was worse, and that was what they had had to contend with.

No shoulder - with the heavy traffic
(not apparent here), not very pleasant.

Rawlins, one of Wyomilng's larger cities, is still very much a cow town. I had supper - a chicken taco salad - at Buck's Sports Bar (it wasn't a cowboy bar), then looked up my warmshowers hosts. Kevin and Lucy live in a double-wide, and were hosting two brothers who were also doing a cross-country trek. We had showers and some great conversation, and we bikers bedded down on the floor of the living room.

The warmshowers crew in Rawlins