Day 18 - Little Sandstone Creek wild campsite, WY to Brush Mountain Lodge, CO

I keep saying that I'm going to take an "easy day" and make the milage shorter, etc., and Wyoming and the wind keep saying "not so easy my friend!" Today I rode the slowest, hardest, 33 miles ever, including climbing the Tourmalet. Of course I rode the Tourmalet on a road bike with no gear other than a wind vest & arm warmers;-). Today I rode pretty much the entire 33 miles into a 30mph block headwind. I peddled at 2.4 w/kg down a 15 mile long 4% average grade downhill and averaged less than 12mph. Sick. That's apparently just normal for Wyoming.  I'm now happy to be in Colorado!!

The day started well with an uneventful (i.e. bears did not eat or my food hung from a tree) beginning, and I was rolling along a little after 8am following one of the best night's sleep of the ride. Things looked great as I rolled through the celebrated "Aspen Alley" a few miles up the road from my campsite. 
The Aspen are in a bit of a regenerative stage of the life cycle, but it's still impressive.  It's also nice to see the local DOT has maintained this one short section of road as a narrow one lane dirt trail, but unlike the remaining miles that have all been widened and graded for more traffic.
My route took me from high up on the Battle Mountain plateau to 8450', then down to about 6600' in the Little Snake River valley, then up the Slater Creek valley to Brush Mountain Lodge at 7600'. Brush Mountain is a legendary landmark on the GDMBR, where the hostess Kristen greets every rider with a hug and a pizza.  That pizza was among the highlights of this trip I'll never forget! The beer was pretty good too ;-)

While I don't have pictures, the days wildlife highlights included a bald eagle, a huge weasel of some sort that was either a very big Fisher or a wolverine:-) lots of good wildflowers too...

Tomorrow will be a rest day here for me so that Mike can catch up.  He's been battling the same headwinds as I have, and even with a shorter route across the Great Basin Desert, he's needing another day to get here ( he'd hope to be here today). So... I'm planning to rest, eat, and recover to be ready to go over our biggest pass yet at 9800' on our way to Steamboat Springs. Until then, cheers from the GDMBR :-)

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