Wednesday stats

Start: City Park, Lander, Wyo.

End: Church of Christ, Dubois, Wyo.

The Daily Progress: 75.47 miles — nice! More in this below.

Cumulative climb: 4,147 feet 

Cumulative descent: 2,510 feet 

Elevation at endpoint: 6,946

Ice cream flavors: Mint chocolate shake at the Moose Outpost

Lodging expenses: $0 so far. We're still figuring out how to make a donation at the church where we're staying.

Laundry expenses: 5-ish

Food expenses: $42 + 32 = $74

Entertainment expenses: $12 for the Bighorn Discovery Center

Chris's notes

Shout-out to Dani for braving a long day. Just a week after she joined this tour, our daily mileage has increased dramatically. This was somewhat out of necessity (lack of appealing camping options in convenient 40- to 50-mile intervals), but it's been exciting and very rewarding to make it to those more-appealing places in the past three straight days. After pushing somewhat longer distances on those days, we are now a solid day ahead of schedule, effectively buying ourselves an extra day for Grand Teton National Park or Yellowstone. Sweet! 

I also have to say that getting up at 4 a.m. today to start riding shortly after 5 was not nearly as bad as I feared, and it enabled us to finish a long ride by early afternoon, avoiding the sunniest part of the day and leaving the rest of the day to do other things. It's like having two full days in one, or as Jenna would call it, a second day.

Dani's notes

In anticipation of a long day of riding, we woke at 4 and alighted by 5:20 (DM) / 5:35 (CG). I am the one who advocates for early starts, and I'm grateful that Chris was willing to go along with this plan, even if it did mean going to sleep in broad daylight with a volleyball game raging beside us. I enjoyed watching the sunrise (replete with sun dog!) from the saddle. 

The Wyoming weather gods were benevolent. We were gifted cloud cover for almost all of the ride and a gentle tailwind for the second half. Without these boons, the tale of the day would have been quite different. As it was, we rolled up the church-run cycle hostel in Dubois at 1:15 feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. 

The animal of the day is... maybe bighorns? As we were approaching Dubois, I spotted two ungulates in a field. I gave them a good look but then saw their white butts and decided they must be pronghorns. But once in Dubois, we went to the Big Horn Sheep Discovery Center and there I learned that big horn sheep ALSO have white butts, and the ewes don't have big horns. So, in retrospect, I suspect the animals I saw were bighorns but I can't say for sure. 

If bighorns are not the animal of the day, then baby pronghorns are (very cute). Other animals spotted include a least chipmunk (Chris: "LEAST chipmunk? It's the chipmunk we've seen!"), cows (adult and baby), horses (adult and baby), pronghorns (adult and baby), a donkey and a llama (or alpaca).

Here are two things I've been wanting to say about cows. First, If you stand quietly on a Wyoming highway, the first noise you hear will most likely be a cow. Second, baby cows are unexpectedly cute. 

But biology is not the star science of the day: geology is. Wyoming dazzled us with rocks, especially just east of Dubois. Some standouts: "badlands"-looking mountains with a burgundy stripe, hoodoos, and a red sandstone cliff wall eroded in a manner reminscent of the Grand Canyon. 

We are staying in the sanctuary of a small church in Dubois along with at least eight other riders. Some we have been riding with for two days now, others are new. Once we finish up here at the laundromat, we'll head back to the hostel and swap intel with the EBos.