Forecast for this week, dry and windy with scattered lost sheep and the odd hailstorm. Yup this week we have crossed our first desert for a long while and learnt that it can be hard to trust your sheep to a Basque or Peruvian guy as well as the importance of avoiding strong rain showers! Thankfully we've tackled all this in the company of some fellow cyclists, so can share the trials and tribulations, and finished up celebrating the 4^th July in style with Rodeo, beers and fireworks. Quite lucky considering most celebrations were cancelled throughout the country...

So we hung out in the campsite where we left off last week, chilling with the gang while attempting rather painfully to slack line (our friends were all pretty good at it!). That evening we were to say goodbye to them for a little while as they were going to try for a massive day to get the impeding hell hole of the "Grand Basin" out the way in one foul swoop while we were going to take it a little easier on ourselves. This basin consisted of hundreds of miles of dry, open, windy desert, where you're only likely to make friends with the wild horses that scatter the landscape. In any case we had a fitting farewell as they introduced us to the American tradition of "s'mores", which I can only describe as about as many calories as it's possible to fit in your mouth in one go! We've all heard of toasting marshmallows, but sandwiching them between biscuits together with a block of chocolate was a new one to me, but an American camping right!

So it was, us "taking it easier on ourselves" by waking up at 5 in the morning to hit the road... We rolled onto the plain north of town and quickly encountered the expected headwind roaring into our bloodshot eyes and cracking our delicate lips... Pedal after pedal, wheel turn after wheel turn we trundled through the desert. The bleakness of leaving the almost ghost town of Rawlins to the loneliness of the basin had a strange beauty to it, particularity prominent as lone wild horses would canter up close to us to check out who these crazy guys were before rushing away into the endless flat once more. One thing we didn't get on with were the hail showers that were around, one got us pretty bad and led us to cower with our backs to the wind to avoid a good pelting! We were wondering how far the other guys had made it into such a strong headwind but our only slight connection was when Danny and Valerie (Campbell's parents) drove past mid morning to very kindly drop off some water for us, it was great to actually see someone else as well as top up the tanks! We finished the day on one of the few lakes around, hiding in the tent from the insistent wind.

We had planned to arise early as the wind seemed to be much lighter before the sun rose in strength, so at 4:30 we were moaning and groaning about the upcoming grind. Lucky the sunrise was a stunner and got as in a better mood! Again it seemed endless, the pedalling and the wind were relentless once more once the morning got started but we ploughed on through, meeting another Great Divide cyclist coming the other way (and enjoying the wind on his back! Grrr) who gave us news of our friends up the road. After a while we passed through an old oil field full of nodding donkeys and dreamed of some kind of wind lubrication that wasn't to be, so stopped in a ditch for a nap and then read a book until the wind died down. Not much more we could do, and the wind didn't die down so when a sheep farmer we'd seen previously pitched up and offered to take us down the road we were ecstatic! Shame he was mildly racist as, apart from that, he seemed like a nice guy... He described some Mormon teachings and complained about the Basque and Peruvian sheep herders he'd hired that kept loosing his flock and quitting their jobs shortly after... Anyway he took us to a campsite after driving past a huge herd of wild horses (he suggested there might have been 500 of them!) and we settled into the abandoned site for the night.

The Grand Basin was still stretching out before us and once more we hit the road early. Things were very windy from the off and got bumpy and hilly. After nearly 90 miles we finally found a town and jumped at the chance for a beer and meal in the bar/gas station there (nothing much else in town besides mosquitos). On the advice of the barmaid we camped on some BLM land just out of town with full bellies and shaky legs.

We had the short cycle into the next town where we'd been told by passing cyclists we could camp on the cheap in the town park, here we met a couple in their mid to late 70's camping in a tent! How fun, they were pretty chatty and we enjoyed their company for a long while. Instantly we started making acquaintances around town starting with Twyler at the visitor centre, a lady who'd recognised us as she'd cycled past in the morning. She pointed us to the local pool for a shower and had set up a free box for passing cyclists (even giving us some bear spray someone had left behind! Important as we were shortly to enter Grizzly bear country...). We'd heard the day before that there was a local rodeo in the next town along, about 30 miles down the road, so we had planned to hitch a ride down there to see it. Problem was it was at night so we took our bike in case we couldn't hitch back... Well getting there was easy thanks to a local guy and the county sheriff, who was going to police the event and was happy to take us. He was super into the rodeo and used to do some bull riding when we was younger (and his kids do rodeo for tourists up the road in Jackson Hole) so was more than happy to help us get our first ever experience! The event was super cool, a drive in style due to the Coronavirus meant there were no food or bar but it was fun to see a local event they do once a year to celebrate Independence Day. Problem was that this kind of event attracts the red neck type, and so two foreigners with pushbikes wasn't an attractive proposal for give a lift back home... So after a good "coal rolling" we were left to cycle home at 10pm, which was to take us 4 hours in the cold... We managed to convince ourselves it was worth it by the time we reached the tent and I'd managed to tell Ruth the entire back story to the King Arthur legends through chattering teeth. So not all bad!

It was independence day! I was reminded a few times that this was independence from the British, so we thought we'd revel in good old British pass times such as drinking beer in the local brewery! We also met up with our friends from Rawlins who we had somehow managed to leapfrog during our super long day previously. It was lovely to spend this day of celebration with some locals (well from the other side of the country but local enough for us!) and there was a free BBQ and fireworks in the evening, how we managed to be in one of the only towns that had not cancelled everything was a miracle!

With a slight hangover we had some things to catch up on and so passed the day in the visitor centre with Eric and his wife, some full time "RVers" who volunteered there and kept us entertained. We played cards with the guys and passed the time away in a beautifully wasteful manner! Soon we were to enter bear country proper, not those silly little black bears you can scare away by blowing a raspberry, but the full on Grizzly. We hope to survive to be able to write the blog next week but if we don't you can guess what may have happened...