 |
| Sunrise over the Bighorns |
 |
| Ten Sleep brewing |
The team broke camp at 5:00 AM this morning, so we didn't have much of a choice but to follow suit. We waited it out a little, but had everything in the car at swung by the drive-thru coffee shop a couple blocks away to pick up some morning Jo.
Rather than head to the park to have breakfast, I figured we'd just drive up into the Bighorns a bit and find a nice view. It was a travel day today of sorts, but we had a little less than 4 hours to get to Lander and lots of time to do so.
After about 15 minutes out of town, we found a gravel road with an awesome 360 degree view of the mountains right off the highway that we pulled off and had our granola/bananas along with our coffee. It was an absolutely stunning view to see the sun rising over the plains to the east.
We drove another ~45 minutes to the Tensleep Lake road for a run. It wasn't exactly what I envisioned for speed work, but we knew it was long after driving it 5 years ago and had access to water and plenty of trails right next to the side of the road for one of us to hang out with Dash while the other was running. I did 6 miles up hill and 6 miles down, attempting to do speed work that ranged from slow, but reasonable pace, to laughably slow. Even the way back wasn't crazy fast because it was gravel and the grade was pretty steep in spots. Still put in some good work for the day though.
Kate staggered her run a little behind mine to limit the time Dash was in the car. When I got back, I then took him for a walk while she ran. She pitched her speed for the day and opted for a trail run along the creek, which was a sweet trail.
The drive down the Ten Sleep Canyon was just as amazing as 5 years ago when we last drove it. Huge sheer rock walls rise above the road. Great scenery.
We had putzed around enough to start the day, that lunched time out well for a return to the Ten Sleep Brewery just outside of town. We had lunch supplies and got a flight to drink. I wasn't exactly in the beer drinking mood post workout, but it was nice to be back here as well. We were also here 5 years ago and the views from their patio are also great.
Pit-stopped in Thermopolis for some ice cream at their local walk up ice cream place. I think every town out here has at least one or two. I know I harped on this a little yesterday, but in the window were two signs. One said "powered by Coffee and God". The other was for "Christian designed" apparel from Central Wyoming.
There were four models on the poster. Two of them were black. To me, this just feels like blatant false advertising. Wyoming has the lowest proportional population of blacks in the union (thanks Wikipedia). Quick math would indicate there are a grand total of ~4600 in the state. If these models were from Thermopolis, they would constitute 25% of the African American population in town.
As I continued to think about it though (it was a long wait for ice cream), I reconsidered. Maybe if you are black and live in Wyoming, you ARE crazy religious. That would explain why you'd choose to live there in the first place. Getting back into the car, we actually saw one of the (presumably) 8 black residents of Thermopolis walking down the sidewalk. What an interesting conversation it would be to get their life story of how they ended up in Central Wyoming.
Our place in Lander is right in town. Lander seems sweet. It's fairly lush by Wyoming standards, thanks to the water from the Popo Agie River. There's no college here, so the community they've built has been organically grown, which is pretty cool.
For dinner, we walked a few blocks to the city park where they had concerts in the park and food trucks all summer long. We were a little late to the show, so a lot of the food trucks were out of a lot of menu items, but we ended up with a burrito, tacos, and some chips and guac and took in the show.
Looking forward to some good mountain hiking the next couple days.
No comments:
Post a Comment