Day 49: Atlantic City, WY to Fontenelle, WY

It got downright cold overnight, and remained so in the early morning hours due to the magic of being at a higher elevation.  I didn’t feel like firing up the stove, so it was a cold breakfast and a quick exit from the campground.  I startled a jackrabbit on my way out; first one I’d ever seen.  Those buggers are big!

I had the option of backtracking (uphill) to the main road, or taking a well-packed but winding dirt road to South Pass City.  I was rested and feeling ambitious, so I took the way less traveled.  I had to dodge some free-range cattle as I went, but I reached the former mining boom town after about an hour.  There was a small reconstructed main street with old timey buildings along it.  I was the only one there and nothing was open except for a gorgeous, heated state-of-the-art tourist bathroom, which I gratefully took advantage of.

After snapping a few pictures, I got rolling and hit the main road in short order.  It was a little more than another hour until I crossed the official Continental Divide.  It was a somewhat unexpected milestone, but it made me feel like I was making real progress.  This put me about two-thirds of the way into my journey.  Counting miles was too daunting a prospect for me, so I had been going by number of states done versus number of states left to go.  There were 8 behind me, and 3 more ahead.  I spent most of those first eight states being apprehensive about the Rockies looming in my future, but because of the route I had chosen I had inadvertently cheated my way through what may have been the least challenging path possible.  I promised myself that I'd take a much harder route next time!

A short while later, I slammed on my brakes and almost went flying over my handlebars when I spotted an antelope.  Everybody I’d met for the past three days kept talking about how the area was lousy with these guys and that you couldn’t swing a dead jackrabbit without hitting one.  If this was the case, I’d somehow managed to miss the burgeoning herds all around me as I raced across the lonely plains at a blinding 8 miles per hour.  Once stopped, I whipped out my camera and powered it up.  While I was waiting for my device to decide it was ready, I watched the beast hop away in that peculiar way that antelope apparently do.  By the time I zoomed in, it had disappeared into the brush.  Drats, foiled again!  Oh well, I’m sure there’d be plenty more along the way.

I had covered about 45 miles (a good deal of it downhill) before I came to the town of Farson and celebrated the sight of a gas/food station.  I loaded up on edibles and drinkables, gulped down a red slushie-thing, and made good use of a nearby picnic table in the shade. 

The rest of the day was mainly flat, which was good because I wasn’t breaking any land speed records after gorging myself on gas station cuisine.  I reached the little town of Fontenelle an hour or so before sundown.  They had a free camping area, which turned out to be an odd arrangement that had probably seen better days.  There was a big area with a 10-foot high chain-link fence all around it.  As you went through the gate, to the left were a collection of public works type buildings, and to the right was an orderly row of what appeared to be campsites.  A lone, possibly abandoned, RV trailer was the only occupant besides me.  The grass was overgrown to about knee-high and dried brown.  It looked like there were vestiges of water and electrical hook-ups, but I didn’t mess with either.  I thought the high fence was strange, but then I realized it would do a good job of keeping out any animals (wild or domestic).   I flattened out a spot in the grass, set up my tent, and went straight to sleep without bothering to eat any dinner.

What I Learned: Coyotes are straight up scary! Back home I’d heard a lone coyote barking now and again, and once I heard a pair of them calling back and forth to each other at a distance. But that evening was the first time I’d heard an actual pack of coyotes all wailing away together. Talk about unnerving. If I didn’t know better, I would have attributed the sounds I was hearing to a band of crazed demons out hunting for my soul in the blackness of night. Even knowing better didn’t provide a whole lot of comfort. Good thing I had that big fence!

Distance Today: 86 miles
Total Distance: 2,622 miles