Dawn came just about the time the sun rose, as you might expect. In an effort to mitigate the possibility of outgrowing my present clothes, breakfast consisted of two yogurts and some coffee.
Off like a shot after that, we bulleted along I-80 out of Rawlins, WY and traveled through all that Western Movie kind of terrain with mesas, gorges, sagebrush and so on. Ruggedly beautiful but very sparsely populated. A few oil rigs working and some railroad tracks, but just deer and antelope playing beyond that. And I don’t recall hearing even one discouraging word, in fact. We went through the Routt National Forest in a corner that ironically, was pretty much bereft of trees. Probably saved time when they put the Interstate through there.
Dad decided the truck needed an oil change at this point, so we stopped at a place called Grease Monkey (there was ample grease but I saw no evidence of monkey activity) in Laramie, WY. While Dad was there, I took the bike to a place to hose off that mud that was caked all over it from the road repair area we went through a few days ago, being careful to avoid washing away the spot where Father Walt blessed the bike. It looks better and suddenly, I'm getting better mileage. Funny thing out this way--mid-grade gasoline is only 87 octane and premium jumps up to 91. I've been burning the lower octane so the bike won't run as hot, but the mileage is lousy.
I swung back over to meet Dad and we dined on bologna sandwiches again. We spiced up the meal with a can of beans that we ate cold. No sense warming them up on the truck's engine block.
As I stepped away to discard the wrappings of our lunch, I nearly lost my life tripping over my right boot sole. It had been loose for a couple of days and I was going to make the Corcoran Boot people fix it, but this needed fixin' and needed it quickly. We had no buffalo hides and sinew with which to fashion some moccasins, so I drove around Laramie looking for glue. With the boot sole flapping in my relative wind. I tried near the University thinking that kids will sniff anything, but I was wrong. They're obviously beer drinkers there. So it was back a couple of miles to the local branch of a widely-known chain of stores whose name begins with a "W" and ends with “almart”. Several people were amused by my flapping boot sole as I searched for the crafts section, some of them dancing to that crazy beat. Fortunately, I found the two University kids in Laramie that DO sniff glue (they weren’t aware that the spring term had ended and everyone gone home for summer) and asked them to recommend something. After a few sniffs, I blearily reached for the nearest spray can in the Glue Section, made my purchase and went out to the parking lot to commence repairs. These consisted of wiping off the dust on the sole and spraying the glue onto the parts to be joined without overspraying onto my clothes or my stockinged foot. All I needed was to glue the boot onto my foot later. I was adjacent to the garden section of this "W" store and wedged the boot between a couple of bags of mulch to hold the sole on the boot as the glue set-up. Thirty minutes later the glue had mostly set and we were back on the road.
We continued on I-80 into Nebraska and proceeded to outrun some menacing dark clouds and lightning (I could see it in the rear-view) and finally arrive in Ogallala, NE about 7pm. We made camp in the Days Inn at Exit 316. On entering the lobby, I noted that they had received several President's Quality Awards and was feeling pretty good about my choice of lodgings. I accepted the room key from the Innkeeper and walked down the hall. I did not expect to see the beds unmade and used towels on the bathroom floor, so I returned to the front desk to report the matter. The Innkeeper was as apologetic as he was dumbfounded but quickly set me up with a better room with a view of the parking lot. Such a feature is not to be underestimated when you have your motorcycle sitting outside.
Neither Lewis nor Clark was successful in their three combined escape attempts today. They are learning to work together as a team, but I am the dominant species and have predicted their every move. They bear close monitoring. I believe they will next attempt to tunnel their way out of a ground-floor hotel room. But I will book on the second floor or higher to foil them. Daily lashings will continue until morale improves. We are aiming to make Omaha, NE tomorrow. G'night!
No photos today!
Here's the day's route:
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