July 27 - Day 32 - Rawlins

A&M Reservoir to Rawlins, WY
Distance - 47.5 miles, Avg Speed - 11.6 mph

Having arrived in the dark, it felt strange waking up this morning as we had no idea where we were! The reservoir turned out to be an utter disappointment, a large slime pool, rather than the luscious cool pool of water we had been dreaming about the whole 90 miles of yesterday. We decide to hang on to the water we had filtered from the well yesterday, rather than risk the reservoir water. Bill tells us in an admiring tone that one of the hikers (super macho man) just took some water from the reservoir, blew off the flies, and then drank the water. We are not feeling quite so macho! As we don’t have a lot of water, we decide to follow Bill’s plan of cutting over to Lamont, then taking the highway down to Rawlins. According to the map, there is café at Lamont, called Grandma’s. Bill must be starving, as he is not carrying a stove and only seems to eat Pop Tarts. He is also not carrying a water filter – he just adds a drop of Chlorox to his bottles. Here’s a photo of us with Bill, although it is a little blurry:

After recent disappointments with closed cafes, we try not to build up expectations, especially when we see the sign outside the café which has clearly seen better days. It says "open", but is it?….YES IT IS!!!!!

Grandma's Cafe...you gotta love it!  I lot of money went into the size of the sign,  but not so much into its maintenance.  Who cares though, it is here, so are we, and it is open!  We will rest now; we will eat.

Bill is already there, cramming food in as fast as he can. Poor Grandma, she is cook, waitress and washer up and feeding 3 ravenous cyclists must have been hard work! Iced water never tasted so good. Her café is on the Trans Am cycle route, so we are not surprised to meet a couple of cyclists further down the road, although they are on a recumbent tandem which we have not seen before.

Bill disappears into the distance as he is much faster than us. He is having mechanical problems, he broke 2 teeth on his small chain ring and his back wheel needs to be trued so he needs to find the bike shop. No doubt we will cross paths again.

We crossed the Continental Divide once again today.  I think this is #11 so far on our trip.  I am starting to lose track.

Rawlins is not an attractive town - most of the services have built up between the highway and the I80, so downtown feels run down and neglected. It is a 7 mile trip just to go to the grocery store for more provisions for the next 3 days. We end up in Super 8 and spend the rest of the day doing laundry, washing ourselves down and, of course – drinking a beer or two!