Gillette Wyoming

I forgot to give the answer to my question from the other day. The state song for the State of Ohio is "Beautiful Ohio". I was sure it was The Ohio State Fight Song! Thanks to everyone who replied. I also realized that I made a mistake (or should I say BING corrected me AGAIN!) on the Talbotts website. I corrected it for the last post.

When I left off last we were at the Lazy J campground in Rapid City, SD. It sure was a great campground. It may have won so far for the cleanest showers! When we got there I asked the campground host if the hill we had climbed the day before to get there from Rapid City was worse than the climb up to Mt Rushmore that we were headed to. She said "Oh no it's nothing like this hill". You've got it made from here. We had about a 20 mile ride to Mt Rushmore. We started out "climbing", into a headwind, with temperatures at 98 degrees. Should be a good day. Rt 16 to Mt Rushmore was a very busy four lane highway. We stopped in a little convenience store for "breakfast". I asked one of the workers if we could get off the hightway. She said yes, I live on this little side road. I see cyclists on it all the time. I said is it hillier than Rt 16. She said oh no. I drive it every day. Do I need to tell you anymore??? Let's just say the first hour we averaged a screaming 7.7 mph! And we didn't fall over once. We arrived in Keystone which is a small town at the base of the Mt Rushmore. One side note to this day. The Black Hills were beautiful to ride through but all of the tourism was discouraging. You could do just about anything from panning for gold, riding horses, seeing "wild animals", taking a chairlift ride to many other things. Who knew that Old McDonald's farm was located in the Black Hills.

Another thing that I was wondering was, I saw a sign for Sitting Bull's Crystal Cave. Why did Sitting Bull have a Crystal Cave??? It was pretty amazing all of the tourist "traps". In fact we decided since everyone was paying for all of these things we were going to start charging $10/picture that people took of us. We stopped in Keystone, the tourist capital of the US, for something cold to drink. I think I already told you it was 98 degrees! We talked to another lady in one of the shops where we got our Cold whatever it was, who cares!! I asked her about the hill we had to climb, she said oh it's not that bad. And once you get up there you got it made. It's downhill all the way to Custer, where we were headed for the night. So off we went, now we are back on Rt 16 heading UP to Mt Rushmore. It seemed like a pretty tough climb, the toughest we have had so far. But it was so hot that we just thought the heat was getting to us. It was a three mile climb. Almost at the top, we got our first view of Hap's Uncle George. Yes, he really is Hap's Uncle George. George W. is Hap's great, great, great (or however many it is) Uncle. Little Happy was once photographed for the newspaper cutting down the cherry tree when he was a young boy. It was a very long time ago...... We rode on up to Mt Rushmore and the people at the gate just waved us through. I guess if you are dumb enough to ride a bike up there you don't have to pay. The carvings were just awesome. We loved it. We took about a zillion pictures. We spent quite a bit of time up there just looking and then eating our lunch of Peanut butter and bagel and chips. As we were standing there a women came up to us and said that she worked a photographer for the tour buses. She couldn't believe we had made it up there on that bike. She told us it was a 15 percent grade. No wonder I was sweatin. She had made four trips up and down and passed us each time. Her name is Mickey and she is in the picture above. What a nice lady. We talked to her for a bit about our trip and Alpha One. Thanks Mickey for the encouragement!! We also gave her one of our new business cards that Alpha One has provided for us. It has information about Alpha One and our blogsite so people we meet can follow our adventure. Mickey and a few other people have asked us about donating to the Alpha One Foundation. We are not taking any donations, but if you go to their website I am sure they will tell you how to do that. http://www.alphaone.org/. Or send us a comment and we will help you out.
As we were starting to leave the monument it started to cloud up. I asked about the route to Custer and was told, oh don't worry it's downhill all the way. Well we started downhill, but then it we started with more climbing. We finished the day with a whopping 8mph average. On the way down it started to hail and rain. OUCH. I don't mind the rain, but the nickel sized hail hurt. When we stopped to get out our raincoats, a pickup truck pulled up behind us and the couple inside yelled get in until the hail stops. So we did. The hail finally stopped and we took off, it rained for maybe a half hour and then the sun came out. It was about this time that we ran into three other cyclists who were also headed to Custer. We rode for awhile with Terry who told us where they were camping. We stopped for pictures at the Crazy Horse Monument. Which was pretty amazing, and much bigger than Mt Rushmore. Oh I forgot to tell you as we were riding Terry told us it was mostly UPHILL to Custer! Thank you Terry. Finally an actual cyclist who knows whether a road is going up or down! We rode into Custer and found the campground. We met the other two cyclists Mike and Chas. The three were on a three week tour. They were from San Diego CA. We went to dinner with them and really enjoyed their company. It is nice to talk to other cyclists. They have been taking cycling tours since 1989 so we had lots of stories to share. Hap and I did our laundry and said good bye to our new friends. They were headed to Sundance WY the next day and we were going to Upton, WY. Also, they got up at 5:30 AM! For those of you who know me you know how really funny that is to me! 5:30AM! I'm on vacation. I'm on vacation!

The next day we got up for our ride to Upton. We did have a little headwind but it wasn't much. After the winds we have had this was nuthin. The terrain changed as we headed west into WY. It became more dry, flat to rolling, and less farmland. The temps were high again. 98 degrees. We stopped in a town for lunch. I seem to be having these cravings for chocolate milk shakes. I'm sure it's just a phase I'm going through. As we were sitting in the restaurant we saw the three guys go by. Mmmmm.....what are they doing we thought.??? We left and caught up with Terry and Chas. They said they had decided to take a different route to the Devils Tower. That was ok with us, we were glad to see them again. Hap and I had to make a stop in a bar for ice water in our water bottles. IT was HOT........no shade.......but were havin fun.......were peddlin.........it's hot..............

In Upton, Chas and Mike had stopped at the only restaurant that was open in town. Chas came out waving a large chocolate ice cream cone. It was only polite to go in and join them! They had planned to go on further, but changed their mind and stayed in Upton. We had called a motel and got a "reservation". There were two motels in town. We checked out the one and there was a sign on the door that said "CLOSED ON SUNDAY". Mmmmmm that's a new one. The lady on the phone had quoted me the price of $60/night. That seemed alittle pricey for where we were but we really had no choice. When we got to the hotel it was a DUMP. One of the men staying at the hotel was standing outside and even told us that before we checked in. He also said he was paying $50/night. When Hap and I went to check in the lady said she only took cash. Mmmm that's odd. So Hap says, since you only take cash how about $50 instead of $60. She said ok. I think Hap must be part airline pilot or something. We told the guys that so they got the same price when they checked in. It sure was a bad place to stay. But it did have a shower, AC and sort of a bed. My tent would've been a better choice though. Hap finally put our new spare tire on the rear. We have 1850 miles on the back tire with NO FLATS! That is the most we have ever gotten out of a tire. We went down the street to the cafe with Mike, Chas and Terry for dinner and had some great food. Then said goodbye to them AGAIN. Remember the 5:30AM thing! We shouldn't see them again. But maybe when we go through San Diego next Fall we can get together. We hope you guys had a safe trip back to Lutz, WY. Let us know how it went.

This morning we ate breakfast in our room. Oatmeal and fruit. We got away from Upton after spending some time at the post office trying to figure out the Zip Code for our next mail drop. We are getting a new spare tire sent to Billings MT. We should be there this Friday night. Who knew they had 8 post offices! It took awhile to figure it out. I made a call on my cingular cell phone to Bill and Jill (the new granny and pappy!) to get them to send our tire and another derailer cable. As I was talking I noticed all of these people kept staring at me. I thought maybe I forgot to comb my hair or something. As it turns out, a lady finally came over and said how did you get your cell to work. No one in this town can get one to work. That's why everyone was looking! The ride today was fairly easy as far as hills and route. We were on Rt 16 north to Interstate 90 west into Gillette. The problem with today was the temps. It reached 100 degrees. The wind wasn't a problem again, just the heat. We stopped for lunch in Moorcraft and then went onto Gillette. Tomorrow's plan is to ride to Buffalo on I 90. It's going to be a long stretch on the interstate but oh well. It's not so bad.

I thought of something I wanted to mention the other day when we were at Cabelo's. For those of you who don't know it is a huge outdoor sporting good store. They were having a big sale on fishing boats. There was a guy walking around the store with his head down, repeating over and over, "I do NOT need a boat, I do NOT need a boat......" Now I know what I look like in a bike shop! Until next time. Take care. And thanks for all the great comments (except you Bing).