Energy Bust

We woke up early this morning knowing we had a long day ahead of us.  Since we stopped short of our goal  yesterday after exhausting ourselves with the wind and pilot car incident, we needed to cover more than 70 miles and make it over a pass before reaching tonight’s destination of Pinedale, WY. We made it over Union Pass in good time and pedaled on towards Pinedale. Unfortunately the downhill we expected after the pass was hardly downwards, and the strong wind made it even worse. Still, we pushed on motivated by the thought of a warm hotel room and a bed once we got there.  For most of the day we paralleled  Wyoming’s beautiful Wind River mountain range along Route 191.

70 miles and 8 hours later we rolled into Pindale and began our search for a hotel room. Much to our surprise, every hotel in town were completely booked – even on a Tuesday night! We ran into Deborah and Ralph who informed us they had just reserved the last room in town. We learned this was a result of the recent energy boom. A bit disappointed we set out to find the local campground.  Campground is used loosely in this case and in Pinedale it apparently stands for a grass lot filled with people living out of trucks and makeshift RVs.   As we went over to set up our tents we met Daniel and Ben, two other GDR riders. We had dinner at the local pub, then headed back to the campsite to trade divide stories over beers with our new GDR friends.