Just Keep Pedaling: Wyoming

This is Part 7 of an 8-part blog series chronicaling a 7-day road trip, during which we were able to achieve riding our bikes in 8 different states toward our goal of riding in all 50 states.

Links to all posts:

Day 1: South Dakota

Day 2: Montana

Day 3: Idaho

Day 4: Washington and Oregon

Day 5: Utah

Day 6: Wyoming and Colorado

Day 7: No rides or posts, just finished driving the rest of the way home.

The Grand Adventure continues

Day 6, Morning:

We got up early Sunday morning and headed east into the mountains outside Salt Lake City, passing Park City where many of the Olympic events were held back in 2002.

We continued to entertain ourselves on the long drive with gems like this one from the 80's on 8 channel on the satellite radio.

After long stretches of nothingness like this ......

and some neater rock formations like this.....

and lots and lots and lots of snow fence like this.....

we found ourselves finally reaching Wyoming!

..... where for some reason they don't want you throwing your dogs in the trash at the rest stop.

We found that the miles of nothingness only got worse in Wyoming. So we entertained ourselves with comical comments about the roadside venues like the Green River flowing from the Flaming Gorge requiring some heavy penicillin.

We somehow crossed the continental divide twice in matter of 30 miles. Don't know if we went through some sort of time vortex and Doctor Who zapped us or if we were just hallucinating!

No, we did not stop at Little America as we were afraid of the toxic waste emanating into the air from the Tronox chemical factories nearby. ("Tronox" just sounds kind of evil. ~~H) I was afraid the paint was going to peel off the van if we stayed too long. Just say yes to green energy, though..... ~~H

Finally we reached Laramie, our chosen ride in Wyoming! After some GPS rerouting we found the trailhead of the Laramie River Greenbelt Trail. More info here.

We parked in Optimist Park.

A large number of other vehicles were pulling into the parking lot at the same time we were. We wondered what we had gotten ourselves in the middle of. Large numbers of people dressed a bit fancier than we were piled out of these vehicles. It appears there was a group baptism happening in the river. We let them carry on with being washed in the blood of the lamb. We went on about our bike riding.

It was a nice paved trail that ran along the Laramie river, although in this picture it was kind of hard to see the river due to the vegetation they were letting grow up along it.

There was a brief stretch where we had to ride on the street through a quiet residential section, but the path was very well marked. I give kudos.

Here you can see a bridge going over the river that took you off to a little side trail.

Eventually we came to this loop which was donated by the Union Pacific railroad. It was a pretty area along the river where they had planted some trees.