October 12th, 2015

What happened…

Andrew writes: We spent our rest day yesterday with our host family, who all seemed pretty happy to lounge around and watch football. Maybe Sam and Jay could adopt us??? It was really nice. At one point, Sam and I went for a drive to do some shopping, and the girl at the espresso hut, Katie, said she had hosted some cyclists last year who were riding north all the way to Inuvik. This would be Daniel and Josef, the two Czech cyclists we met on the Dempster Hwy who ended up using our food box in Eagle Plains. Small, crazy world right?

The Harnack clan is pretty rad. Sam and Jay have probably seen more movies than I have, and picked up on all of my obscure references, and I worked to match theirs. Supplanted from the “Mid West”, this happy family has embraced the true outdoor spirit that makes up the way of life here in Wyoming. This includes hunting, biking, hiking, and fishing. They are new to Warmshowers, and we are the third cyclists that have stayed with them in the 10 days since they joined. Perhaps we’ll catch one of the other two groups in days ahead.

Our next target is Atlantic City (not THE Atlantic City), which sits in the Wind River Mountain range, at the bottom of a Continental Divide crossing, South Pass. It’s about 86 miles, so we have decided to split this up into two days. The ride today was mostly flat, with a nice tailwind which made the ride pretty quick and easy. We had hoped to find some sort of rec site or rest area along the way, but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, we’re camped out either on public lands, or a farmers field, it is hard to tell. There is a dead wolf standing spirit guard a few hundred meters away. I think he got too close to the cattle. There are also hawks soaring overhead, foxes jumping through the tall grass, and magpies lurking, trying to steal some dinner.

Amanda writes:
After spending a glorious day watching football with the Harnack family I felt like we could conquer the world. We haven’t found too many Warmshowers hosts that actually like football so it was an absolute treat to be with a family that didn’t think it was rude that I wanted to watch football. After we had a wonderful breakfast of antelope meat and other amazing things to celebrate Jay’s birthday including cinnamon buns (hooray!!!!) a moose came by.

I was so incredibly excited by the moose – at first I screeched “a moose!!!!”. Then I wasn’t sure and said okay maybe it’s a horse, having never seen one up close. They’re HUGE. I think Sam and Jay thought I was nuts prancing around trying to find a camera but they were patient and helped us get close to it by going in their car to take pictures. They’re massive animals and now my animal viewing is complete, except for a grizzly bear which I’m okay with not actually seeing.

We set off and we’re hoping for a campground. We saw the sign for the campground that talked about early settlers camping near the river. It talked about the lives lost crossing the desert and the time it took them. At the bottom of the historical sign it indicated the campground was no longer in operation and was private property and there was no trespassing. Righto … on we go then. We camped on some random bit if land near a farm and called it home for the night. The dead wolf was kind of eerie with it’s big hole from a shot gun bullet in it, but we made due. Overall the scenery was amazing, the roads nice and quiet and the tailwind glorious.

Today’s Photographs