Day 49, Sunday, June 9

Shoshoni, Wyoming to Pilot Butte Reservoir, Wyoming

There are no restaurants in Shoshoni so we made do with the convenience store. While we were there we ran into another racer in the Trans Am Bike Nonstop race, Dennis Howe.

Like Vinny night before, he graciously put up with me asking him questions. I was particularly interested in the route he took. The race does not follow a set route. Instead, the racers must hit three checkpoints as they ride across the US. We have not settled on our route across Oregon, so any information we can get from eastbound riders is valuable.

From Shoshoni US 20-26 crosses the Wind River Reservation, one of the largest reservations in the US, shared by the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. Portions of the reservation have been ceded to the US, including the town of Riverton. A majority of the people living within the reservation boundaries are non-Indigenous, and in the one and a half days we spent riding across I believe I talked to only one Indigenous Person.

We had a mostly flat ride to Riverton where we had breakfast at a nice cafe downtown. When I came out my rear tire was flat. This was our eighth flat of the trip, and I hold the lead over John, 5-3.

With the flat fixed we headed out of town. It was slow going into the endless wind. We had considered making it a really short day after the previous day's century, but both of us felt ok. Our bodies have adapted to the daily stress of the ride. 

We ended up at Pilot Butte Reservoir after 47 miles. We probably could have ridden further but there were no good places to camp beyond there, and it would set us up nicely for a 55-mile ride to Dubois the next day. 

The Spillway Campground is right on the highway. It would be noisy but we decided to stay there. The campground is a small beach on the southeast end of the lake, and it was mostly occupied by a number of people we would later find out were all in one family.

The family did not appear to be camping, just enjoying a day at the lake. We decided we would just just sleep in a little picnic pavilion above the beach rather than trying to find space for our tents on the beach.

We were just resting in the shade of the pavilion when one of the family members, Jess Gordon, came up and invited us to join them. So we went down to the beach and hung out with them for a while.

Jess was there with his wife Desiree. Her father was there, as well as two of her kids, who each had a friend with them. There was also Jess and Desiree's young daughter, and a couple of dogs. We had a really great afternoon just hanging out with them, eating their food and drinking their beer.

I particularly enjoyed talking to Desiree's father about how his family came to homestead on the Wind River reservation. He holds a long-term lease that Desiree will inherit. It was not clear to me if they lease ceded land from the federal government or lease directly from the tribes. 

Someone before sunset we had to go back up to our pavilion. We still had to get our sleeping pads and bags out. As the sun set it got cooler, and later on the wind picked up over the lake, but I still had a good night of sleep.