Ken Malone (RedBird) and I left Spearfish at about 8:20 this morning and the temperature, according to one of the banks, was already 91F. I'm glad we got out of town when we did. We took 90 over to Sundance and then rode down to Newcastle, WY, and went to church at 1st United Methodist there. I had served as an interim pastor for four months in 2015 and had gone to church there on my way home from our Rally in Spearfish in '15. The guy who followed me only stayed a year and the guy who's there now is starting his second year. Ken and I were both very impressed with him. He's a good preacher and enjoys the people. They are enjoying him and his family, too, and that was great to see.
I had sat on a pew next to a 91-year-old lady that had become a good friend during the four months I was in Newcastle. She had helped us pick a residence for the minister (and they needed one, because rents in Newcastle were both outrageous and non-available). We had visited for a couple of minutes when another woman came and informed me I was in her place and had evidently forgotten about reserved seating. She had a big smile on her face and was kidding, but we squeezed her in. The first thing she said was that she had dreamed about me last night. Someone had told her recently that if you dream of someone, you should pray for them when you wake up, so, she said, she had said a prayer for me this morning and wondered if I might be riding my motorcycle. That was a nice moment and I asked her to keep praying because I intended to keep riding.
For those of you who were in Spearfish and saw the trouble I had getting on and off the bike, I want to say that it was nice having Ken with me today. He stood ready to help but I did a lot better than I did either on Tuesday riding up or on Thursday when we went to Devil's Tower. I'm going to call for an appointment to get the bike lowered tomorrow (it'll probably take a couple of weeks to get it into the shop) and I'm also going to get a new prescription for physical therapy. Riding in this part of the world is too great to give it up.
The church in Newcastle has better "refreshments" than any other church I ever served. Ken and I made a meal out of them. We got out Newcastle at about 12:30. The strong winds we'd had in the morning had mostly died down, and the temperature was hot, but bearable. We went down US-85 to WY-270 and then took it through the booming meropolii of Lance Creek and Manville. We stayed on it till we got to US-26 just east of Guernsey. We went through Guernsey and rode past the Oregon Trail Wagon Ruts and Register Rock. Both places are worth a visit but today wasn't the day for that. We rode south and crossed the Laramie River and turned onto Greyrocks Road, which curves and climbs and dives on the south side of Greyrocks Reservoir past a big coal-fired power plant just NE of Wheatland, WY.
It was a day for twins -- twin fawns. Two were in the road before we got to the powerplant. I didn't see Momma, but Ken said she was way out in a field. They got off the road after I slowed way down and started talking to them and Ken saw them go under the fence to get back by Momma's side. Then, just outside the fence around the power plant, we saw two does that each had twin fawns. They were cute little things and they stayed out of the road which added to their cuteness a whole bunch.
We got gas in Wheatland, and found a good family-style restaurant to get refueled, rehydrated, and cooled, and got onto I-25. In Cheyenne, we jogged over to US-85 and followed it down until I completed the circle that Kevin and I started on Tuesday when I turned onto Weld County Road 68 at Lucerne. Ken went around the east side of Greeley on US-85 to Platteville, and turned west onto CO-66 to get home west of Lyons.
We had a few drops of rain that hit us south of Cheyenne, but they evaporated quickly.
As always, it was great being together in Spearfish, renewing old friendships and starting new ones. It was especially good to see Bear and to get to ride in his Shelby Cobra and to share a room with Mike Simmons and get to know him.
We have a great group of people and being with them always seems like just picking up the conversation where it stopped a year ago.
Mellow, thanks for all you do to pull this great Rally together and thanks to the ST folks for letting us old pharts share their fun.