Before, during, and hopefully after account of a Great Divide Route journey in the summer of 2010.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Day 42: Sweetwater to A&M Reservoir

Ride time: 6:12
Average:  10.8 mph
Distance: 67.37 mi

We woke up at 5:45 AM to once again beat the heat on our crazy ride through the Divide Basin.  There is limited water through this section of the ride, so any chance we have to fill up, we did.  Surprisingly, I had cell phone reception at our site last night (Sweetwater Creek) and I called base camp (i.e. Mom) to have her check on the situation at Diagnus Well, a water source here in the Basin.  She ended up putting my brother, Paul, on the phone, and he checked on the Internet to see what he could find about the well.  He couldn't find anything specifically other than other people's blog entries about being able to get water at the well, so that was enough information for me to decide that we didn't need to filter the water from Sweetwater Creek; we could just wait 10 miles and get it from Diagnus Well.

Filling up at Diagnus Well (note cow skull next to my bike)
We arrived to the well, which was pretty obvious because there was green all around it, instead of brown and yellow that is pretty much everywhere in this high desert.  Here, we met Brain, a biker who has been on the road for nearly 8 months of his 18 month journey.
From left to right: Nate, sign, and Brian break up the horizon

Fortunately, we had good weather on our ride because if it had been raining, the roads would have been extremely difficult to ride on.  We saw a herd of wild horses, two lizards, and tons of pronghorn (commonly mistaken as antelope).

After a long, hot day and another divide crossing (#17), we made it to the reservoir and jumped right in.  Well, I kind of whined a bit because it was a bit nasty, but the cool water was refreshing.

While on the ride, Brian and Nate hatched  plan to ride the rest of the way to Rawlins tonight--a night ride through the desert...


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