July 1, A New Month

Today is the 1st of July. Hard to believe that the year is half gone! And we entered a new state today, Wyoming. There was a big fanfare, too.... ok, so we took pictures of the Wyoming sign. Doesn't that count as fanfare? And we entered right at a huge fireworks place. Not even a tent. They had a real building!

By the way, one little bit of trivia. When I wrote yesterday's blog, I got the number of firefighters wrong. Jeff pointed out to me that there are 1.2 million firefighters in the country, not 2 million. Just wanted to set things straight!

So we started out the day at the Ranch Hand Truck Stop. I couldn't remember the name of it last night! Right outside of Montpelier. Jeff got his early start, and headed up to where he left off yesterday, which was in Georgetown. By the time I got up and got on the road, I caught him as he had finished that leg and was in the post office, talking to the person working there. After I found him, we went back to Montpelier and he took off running towards Wyoming, and I stopped to do laundry.

 

 

Montpelier has a very nice pioneer museum but I didn't take the time to go inside. There were too many other things to do!

We also passed through a couple of other towns, very small ones. One of them was Bennington. It was kind of cool, old, but with some nicer residential places.

The Old Cabin in Bennington...

This was my year! Woo-hoo!

There are beautiful horses everywhere here!

Georgetown is another little town we passed through.

 

So, since I have been doing laundry on the road, I have had to pump quarter after quarter into every dryer just to get things moderately dry. It takes forever! But not today.... I had the hottest dryer's on record. In fact, it is a good thing that I routinely dry our clothes on a lower setting. I would have melted half of Jeff's running gear, just like I melted the backing to the mattress pad and the bedspread! The dogs get the bedding dirty (well, too dirty for my taste) so I do wash them a lot. This is the first time I EVER melted anything! I pulled the melted backing off, and can still use the items. However, I am not happy about doing that!

I decided to use the public dump in town, as I didn't think we would be in a real town with an RV park tonight, and I was right. We drove up the road from where Jeff stopped for the day, in search of 4G. Since we had gone from no service all day in the hills, to having a bit of service, at least enough for a phone call, we figured that the closer to the little town we got, the better it would be. Well, that didn't happen. We got to the town of Cokeville, and still only had moderate coverage, not enough for internet. There is a Flying J in this town, though, so we figured we could hook up to their wi-fi. Seems there is a charge for that! Another bummer. We have some things we need to get done, not to mention posting the blog. Hopefully the next town will have it.

Here is my road ahead pic from early Wyoming.

So we are camped out at the truck stop, again. No problem, it is FREE! And relatively safe. Since we didn't want to fire up the grill at a truck stop, we went in search of a city park here. We actually did find one. It was very nice, and the children that were playing there, unsupervised, all grabbed their bikes and left when we pulled up to one of the grills with a picnic table. And then the train came, which was right next to the park. That was fun. The most interesting thing here is the fact that the place is swarming with mosquitoes! I mean, CRAZY! This is Wyoming, a very arid, dry rocky climate. Where the heck are all the HUNGRY mosquitoes coming from? So I sprayed myself down with Off, but Jeff toughed it out. We ended up eating inside the coach, and still killing mosquitoes inside. But we had a great dinner, grilled chicken breast, grilled yellow squash and grilled red pepper. We use our grill a lot!

There are so many roadside historical markers relating to the Oregon Trail. It is truly amazing. While I am out doing my little couple of miles so Jeff can rest, I still wonder at the determination of those people! Today, when it was my turn, I passed a sign that said the next 5 miles was a deer migratory path, so watch for deer. I must have seen 30 carcasses and deer bones in a mile.... It was so sad.

One really important milestone happened today, also. We broke 1,000 miles! No fanfare for that, though. Just keep plodding along. Just day after day. Jeff is holding up very, very well. We do need to order some things, and have them shipped ahead to Colorado Springs.  Guess that will have to wait until tomorrow. I feel confident that Kemmerer will have enough service for us to post and order.

So, being out in the middle of nowhere, but the Oregon Trail and the occasional ranch, we were worried there wouldn't be a good Mailbox of the Day, but we were wrong! Check this one out....