Kevin – Wednesday. With the weather slated to get HOT, our mutual decision for today was to start as early as possible after sunrise. Denny took first segment out of the 66 Ranch camp headed west on HY-220 and Mark (who’s been a tad under the weather) drove me forward so I could start my first leg.
We are scheduled to be at 6th Crossing of the Sweetwater in three days, but we talked it over and decided that with three bikers (Denny, Mark & myself), it might be possible to do the entire 45 miles to 6th Crossing in one day. It would require each of us to complete three 5-mile segments (3 bikers x 3 segments x 5 miles/segment =45 miles). And with the extra rider we’d each get about a 20 to 30-minute break between our segments. A piece of cake – potentially.
And we made marvelous time … until the wind really kicked in. At first the wind was from slightly behind our left side helping us a tad, then shifting to full on from our left side, and finally it became a very stiff head wind. In combination with the elevation gains and losses (hills!), this considerably slowed us down. Worse, it was very tiring. Mark, despite not feeling up to par kicked it and did some extra miles to spell Kevin and Denny. We’re older and Mark is an avid biker. But at 11 AM, I called it for the day leaving us 4 miles short of my 6th Crossing goal. It was a good ride anyway and put us two days ahead of our intended schedule.
We took a few minutes at the Handcart Visitor’s Center, then drove back to 66 Ranch camp. We had our lunch and worked on our other projects until ...
We got MORE visitors! Christa Prowse and Camille Chivers-Forland, sisters, have taken on a project to bike, document and prepare a ‘biker’s guide’ for the Mormon Trail. They’ve been biking from Nauvoo and got almost to Casper when yesterday they had a run-in with goats-head thorns (see our blog post of Day 50).
We were introduced by mutual friends and have been following each other’s progress for a few weeks. At Casper, they were planning to take a break for a few weeks to conduct some necessary business. The goat-head encounter just moved their plans up a couple of days.
They arrived with their bikes and gear stuffed into a small rental car. How they did that was inspiring. All four bike tires were festooned with goat-heads and as flat as a pancake. We suggested the tire liners we were sold in Greeley Colorado a few weeks ago.
We prepared them some food (they’re scarfing down about 4,000 calories/day) and between bites they related their experiences and plans. We agreed to share planning maps and maps of what we’d found along the way. Becky’s cream-filled pastries and donunts were greeted with enthusiasm. An extra packed lunch was provided along with instructions on how to reach Farson WY where the famous ice-cream store is located rounded out their short (all too short) meet-and-greet. Christa is planning on joining us on July 24th for the symposium at This is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City. I asked her to be prepared to share a few minutes of their experiences to which she agreed.
1847 connection: The Mormon Battalion detachments were pushing hard every day trying to catch up to the Brigham Young pioneer company. It was largely a group decision; they wanted to catch up and were willing to work harder daily to achieve that goal. But, on the evening of July 2, the group was so tired they decided to lay-over for three days – July 3, 4, and 5 – getting back on the road on the 6th.
Sometimes we sprint. Sometimes we have to carefully nurse our daily energies, time and resources. Sometimes, we get stuck and need someone to ‘pull us out’ - to redeem us. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (We have just enough of what we need to get us through each day. The Lord takes care of it all.)