Bicycling Montana, Wyoming,
Colorado and New Mexico - 2006

Rawlings to Saratoga, WY

June 18, 2006
Distance 44.5 Miles
Climbing Elevation: 1,270 feet

We headed out after eating breakfast. The first few miles were on a road which ran parallel to Interstate 80 between Rawlings and Sinclair. Sinclair was originally named Parco after the company that built the original oil refinery and town. Originally the company owned everything, refinery, houses, hotel, schools, etc. Sinclair bought the refinery from Parco and the sale included the town. Sinclair did not sell the houses, schools, etc for a number of years.

The surprise we had as we rode our bicycle past the refinery, two construction cranes were located in the refinery area and they were Lampson Cranes which are built and owned by the Lampson Co located in Kennewick WA. You can see the crane masts on the right side of the picture.

The wind gods were great for the first 22 miles. At Walcott, we made a sharp right hand turn and for the rest of the day the wind gods generally did not help us at all and at times we went straight into the wind. The wind was from the WSW and we were going almost straight south. If we turned just a little west we would be fighting a headwind. We went down more than one hill and if you stopped pedaling, the bicycle began to slow down. One thing that we saw a lot of in Wyoming is snow fence. As we headed south from Walcott, a pronghorn antelope looked at our bicycle for a long time as we climbed a very long hill. Then he would run ahead of us alongside the highway fence and between the snow fence until he was almost out of sight at which point he would stop to see if we were still coming. This continued for a couple of miles until we lost sight of him. A couple of miles further on we say him and two other antelope again and they ran ahead of us until they got past the end of the snow fence and ran out of sight. You can see these three antelope just rounding the end of the snow fence on the following picture.

They have the snow fences to keep the snow from drifting on the roads and the help trap the snow so they have more runoff when then snow melts. We consider the area very windy; the locals don't even notice the wind.

We stopped in Saratoga for lunch only to find out that Riverside, our destination, was having a rodeo this weekend and they were all booked up. Sure enough we called and found out we could not rent a room tonight. So we decided to stay and enjoy Saratoga, which included another great supper and a ride up to the Saratoga Hot Springs. The good news is the Hot Springs is open all the time and is free, the bad news is you need to bring your own towel. Needles to say we do not travel with extra towels. So we returned to our hotel room.