Day 40: Pinedale to Little Sandy Creek

Ride time: 4:09

Average:  11.8 mph

Distance: 49.06 mi

Today might have been a new record in getting out of camp--we made it out before noon with just 10 minutes to spare...  The Fargonauts that we met yesterday stopped by to check out our gear, and we chatted for a bit, so that's one excuse, but other than that, we were just plain slow.

Our ride was toasty.  This area of the country gets a tremendous amount of sunshine, and yet no one has solar panels, but they're destroying the land south of the city in search of natural gas and oil fields...  Anyway, it was pretty hot and the trees aren't that tall, so we didn't have much shade.

Multi-tasking while packing up camp

Instead of mosquitoes, the black flies have hatched--the biting kind that hurt really, really bad.  We passed some cows near a creek, and all of a sudden, dozens of flies starting swarming us, and we took off as fast as we could.  I was pedaling about 20 mph, and they were still hounding us!  Those jerks can move fast.  After a few more patches of this, Nate said, "At least they're not landing on us."  Not five seconds after he said that, one had taken a chunk of flesh from my right calf, and I smacked it as a drop of blood appeared in place of the skin that had once been there.  The good thing is that the bites don't itch afterward.

The scenery was dry, dry, dry, but we can still smell the sage.  The Wind River Mountains were to the north and many peaks still have snow pack.  It would have been nice to roll around in some snow on our ride.  The creeks seemed like small miracles every time we rode over one.

No shade

We saw several markers for the Oregon Trail on the ride today.  There were supposed to be gravestones, too, but we didn't stop to look for them.

We took a break in the shade of some aspen trees that we encountered for a brief period near the end of our ride, and a beautiful orange hummingbird buzzed around us, probably attracted to the smell of our raspberry electrolyte drinks.

Our campsite tonight is right next to the Little Sandy Creek, so we jumped in and swam after we set up our tent.  There are four other guys here, all with B.O.B. trailers, so Nate named them the Bobs.  It will be nice to have some other people to ride through the Divide Basin with.