Rawlins to Jeffery, WY 70 miles

We left really early to again avoid the head winds. In Lamont we hoped to eat breakfast, but being Sunday it was closed. We crossed the Great Divide trail, but we were doing a beautiful downhill and refused to stop to look. We also crossed the Continental Divide twice today.



Moving on to Muddy Gap, we found the gas station to have outrageously expensive food. I got two bottles of iced tea for $5. There we met a couple who told us dire things about Jeffery City, including that we should not devulge to the restaurant people that we were vegetarians.
Later we met Ross from Astoria. He is moving to Laramie and gave us a message from Sara that she had caught up with one of the desperados and would move on with him. Ross' brother and a friend work the 10th st used bike store in Portland, the shop I think helped my daughter Rachel fix her bike.
Out on the road someone in a Liberty Jeep Wanna Be tried to stop me by pulling over on the shoulder (forcing me out into the roadway to avoid him), sticking his arm out the window and saying "whoa". I am not a horse, so of course I didn't stop. He stopped Bill instead. He yelled at him for being too far out in the road and when Bill tried to discuss it with him, the guy said "don't lie to me or I'll take you in right now". Bill implied it was a good thing I didn't stop or we probably would have ended up in the pokey. As it was, we later decided the pokey might have been better than where we did end up.
In Jeffrey City, we found the same guy at the restaurant, but he pretented not to notice us. I sang Haleluia (by Jeff Buckley) as he got into his vehicle to leave.
At the restaurant, the only choice for us was a grilled cheese with fries. We tried for a salad, but were informed that they no longer have the ingredients for salad. No ice cream either.
The "campsite" is an old abandoned Elks picnic shelter without water. The bathroom consists of flush toilets that have no water and a box on the floor as a pit toilet. Maybe it is so dry here it never leaks out the bottom onto the concrete. We have almost hit bottom, but there really is no other place for 19 miles, and that would only be another campsite, no other services. Mike Mizer showed up, poor soul, and was making the best of thingss. He pitched his bivvy on a picnic table and hid from the mosquitos. At around 7pm Bill and I decided to try to camp next to the river. Janelle and Ted had gone off to the bar to have a beer and play rummy unmolested by mosquitos, and we thought we should at least have a pretty place to camp if we were going to have a primitive site.
We never could find a road to the river, but settled for opening a ranch fence gate and going a short distance on a dirt track. Someone in a pickup beeped and waved; this may have been the land owner, but I felt it was permission. Generally, if something isn't posted and you close the gates, ranchers (so I think I have heard) don't really care. On the road we saw a horny toad, the first either of us had seen in years.
We had assumed there would be no or few mosquitos, because there was no water: wrong. There were loads. We both quickly made camp for the protection of that wonderful invention called mosquito netting. Every time you got back in your tent you had to kill the 20 mosquitos that you carried in. Still, all in all, it was a superior spot to the ex-elk shelter.
Incredible sunset and moon rise with a panaramic view of the country, including antelope.

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