13 July 2010

We got underway shortly after 8, and since we had about half a tank of gas remaining, we decided to ride, forcing a break in an hour or so.

Again, the morning was cool, almost chilly; I was glad I'd zipped up my sleeves. One nice thing about traveling on the interstates: you can almost always find gas. And sometimes it's a "Travel Center" where you can find anything! Maybe not the highest quality, and always overpriced for what you get, but...need a belt? They've got it. A replacement charger for you cell phone? No problem! (This is just an observation, I didn't need either of those.)

Not much interesting happens on the Interstates, though. You can make good time, but it's boring. The winds have been unrelenting, and either crossing, or occasionally tail, and most times gusting. So that's a bit wearing, as is trying to maintain a constant speed. I'm leading, but Boyd has cruise control; I try to maintain 77-78 (in a 75 zone), but quite often find myself dropping under 75, and overcompensating to 80+, with him yo-yoing behind. And the varying wind doesn't help.

We've been getting close to 200 miles / tank of gas, so after riding only 150 miles, I was surprised to see my low fuel light come on. I'm not sure if it was the wind, or the oxygenated fuel (from a Cenex station), but within a mile there was a exit with a couple of gas stations. The off-ramp noted "Road Construction Ahead," and at the bottom we were waved into the left lane of a repaving project, which we took to the closest gas station. After filling up, we tried to go back, but no; if you want east I-90, you have to turn left, go down to I-25, and take that north. But first we had to wait for a great variety of traffic to clear, in both directions, for random reasons.

We'd tentatively planned to hit Devil's Tower NP before calling it a day, but that extended gas stop, and the fact that the day had heated up to miserable had us pretty well wiped by Gillette. We pulled off into a cluster of chain motels, but the Best Western was full (lots of things apparently going on in Gillette); she found us a room across the road at a Comfort Inn (again!), where we did some needed laundry, and ate groceries from the market up the hill.

States: Montana, Wyoming

next
home