BearTrap Festival --> Laramie, WY

You know you are in Wyoming when you pass mail boxes like this one. If you can't read it, it says Cheney. I thought about what a great and realistic opportunity it was to maybe give ol' Dick a piece of my mind, but I opted against.

We arrived at the BearTrap Festival but only after the toughest hill yet. From Casper proper to the festival grounds, it was about 5 miles and 3000 ft. That wasn't so much the problem, the problem was that some of the grade must have been 10% or more. We made it, but our faces were turning blue. We even had one German couple stop and give us some juice and tell us they felt so sorry for us. We we elated to finally arrive at the top though and see the festival stage and grounds. Now we just had to follow my friend Steve's map and find his family's cabin, where we'd be staying for the next 3 nights (big coincidence I know). As we were searching for the cabin and about 5 minutes before we were going to officially declare ourselves lost, there comes Steve and Melissa in their car to guide us in the last 1/4 mile. We were expecting them this weekend, but the timing couldn't have been better. Their cabin was built in 1952 by Steve's grandfather. It's a log cabin tucked in bunch of pine trees. A peaceful place to be. We felt really pampered to have such accommodations.

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The festival is only a 2-day affair, so we had all of Friday off which called for a trip (in the car) to Casper. I coerced everyone to stop by the Dairy Queen as we passed it. Mostly because I began hyperventilating once I figured out that Steve, the driver, was actually going to pass it up. I was like, "NNNNOOOOOOOO, PLEASE GOD NNNOOOOOO!". So, they took pity and we all enjoyed some sort of ice cream treat (though I'm pretty sure I enjoyed mine more).

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We tracked down the festival host, Jana and let her know of our arrival. They were super stoked that we'd arrived. Turns out that the Casper newspaper had done an article about the BBT recently. Plus, during the 2 days of the festival, they announced our tour's info and statistics four times! We felt pretty special to say the least. But man, after bicycling up Casper Mountain, I was like, "Hey, do you think you can throw a coupon for a double bacon cheeseburger with curly-q fries in with those props?"

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Our homies, Spring Creek, is playing BearTrap. We love them and have since they were the house band at the Princess Wine Bar in my hometown of Crested Butte, Colorado. Below is a picture of them during their first set Sunday morning. They even played my request, "You Don't Have to Move That Mountain". They put on two incredible sets and the crowd responded well too.

One funny thing that happened during the festival was during Asleep at the Wheel's set, there was lots of rain and wind and lots of people called it quits and headed out. Then their headman, Ray Benson, starts talking about all the people who have left and says "All those folks that left were from Colorado", and the crowd went crazy! I sorta hunkered down, proud at least that I had stuck it out. But then again it served me (us) right since in Colorado we tend to joke a bit (a lot?) about Texas skiers (Asleep at the Wheel is from Austin, TX).

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BearTrap is a nice festival, still very small scale, which I like. There was camping galore all around the festival for those that wanted to camp and Casper was only a 15 minute drive down the mountain for supplies and what not.

We headed out of BearTrap after one last night in the Cabin. That was some good sleeping let me tell you. Still, we must be in biker mode because the haystacks immediately reminded us of muffins and made us hungry. Here's another thing I've noticed about Wyoming. I've determined that the towns here support one liquor store per 100 people. So for example, if you roll into a town of 340 folks, you can expect to find 3 liquor stores.
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We are taking some long and windy roads. Wait, that's confusing. I want to say the wind blows on these roads not that they are curvy. We are in sight of lots of wind farms each day now. Seems like Wyoming has it all when it comes to energy resources, oil, gas and wind and lots of sun too.

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We stayed last night in Medicine Bow, WY. Pop. 274, liquor stores 2. It was blazing hot out. Someone said 96F. We sought shelter in the gas station convenience store. Things were looking good when I spied a fountain station and even some chili and crackers. Now I have to admit, a pot of chili in a convenience store would almost never catch my attention but at this moment, it looked so good. I served myself a bowl and ate it standing up. Plus they had a bucket full of saltines, of which I must have put about 30 packets into my chili. In fact, when I threw away all the wrappers for my saltines, I was a bit embarrassed because they became all un-crumpled and the shear quantity of them looked sorta ridiculous as they cascaded into the wastebasket. But man, was that chili good! Oh, and did I mentioned that they had a soft-serve ice cream self-serve machine too! Goodbye 96F, Hello extreme nausea! We both hurt ourselves.

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We're staying tonite in Medicine Bow. This is the town made famous in Owen Wister's novel "The Virginian". One qoute from the book is particularlly famous "When you call me that, Smile," and is written many spots throughout the town. They are pretty proud of this connection to this famous book. There is the Virginian hotel, Trampas Hotel, and the Miss Molly Laundromat. We hung out in the free town museum and learned all about Medicine Bow and life in the early 1900s. That evening we camped in town park which invites campers with tents to overnite there. We felt very welcomed in MB.

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From MB we've decide to beeline to Rockygrass because we don't want to risk missing any of the awesome music (you should just check out the lineup!). So that has us on Hwy 287 all the way to Fort Collins where we are looking forward to hooking up with our good friend Andy. He and his wife just got back from bike touring New Zealand and the trial and tribulations of bike touring are sure to be fresh in memory. It will be nice to reconnect with him again (his wife is, unfortunately, out of town).

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The ride into Laramie has been somewhat uneventful. The winds have not been hurtful which is better than nothing. All our systems are greased and running smoothly. We've got this bike touring down to a science really. I know where everything is in my panniers (finally) and I don't get such a sore rump anymore. We can put our tent up in no time flat and I really look forward to bedding down for the evening in our familiar abode even if it is in an unfamiliar place. 50 miles doesn't seem very difficult. I am sick of the clothes I bicycle in and look forward to ceremoniously burning them when we return to Crested Butte.
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I had to throw this pic in. It is as you arrive into Casper, WY. We were hungry too, but I have to say, their "reverse psychology" didn't work on me. We just pedaled on to a different diner.