Safe Return Doubtful

83 miles (133 km) – Total so far: 1,214 miles (1,954 km)

Even in such a tranquil and potentially quiet place as Alldred Flats people make unnecessary noice. A caravan arrived at 9:30 last night and decided to take one of the neighbouring sites. The driver left his engine running for about 30 minutes. On these Forest campgrounds with basic facilities, which is a water pump and a pit toilet, people bring generators. I am surprised they are allowed, they make considerable noise. This is an area that bears frequent also. Not much chance of them being around last night though with all the noise.

At 6:10 am I decided 10 more minutes, then woke up at 7:30. First time I’ve done that, and it does mean an extra hours riding when the sun is high and hottest. But I was away quickly on a cold morning. The initial downhill was freezing on the fingers, but there wasn’t much that went steeply. 30 miles to Cokeville, and really all that is there is a huge service station, or Travel Plaza. After a break there I continued following highway 89 south until it joins highway 30, and after about 20 miles that veers west. As usual, just into the afternoon the wind gets up, and it’s a southerly. I was into it for a few miles, but when I turned west I found out it was behind me, happy days. Those last 30 miles are also uphill, so it was a real boost.

Kemmerer is an interesting town, nestled in the surrounding hills at an altitude of 2110 metres. It has the huge advantage of a bypass. But it’s still locked in ‘Eclipse fever’ and for some reason the 3 campgrounds north of the river and railway, just out of town, would not take a tent. The Riverview RV Park never accepts them, the other two wanted to save space for more lucrative RVs. So I went back into town and to the city park, by the hospital. There is a swimming pool here, and I got a shower 2 minutes before they closed for the season. I will eat in town and camp here later.

The water pump at campground, it actually needed about 40 turns.

Starting the day with a downhill – cold on the fingers at 4C…

Briefly back into Idaho, and back into Wyoming

The sort of scenery, Wyoming plains, for much of the day

Fossil Butte – described in next photo

Arriving into Kemmerer – a town with a by-pass, should be less noisy..

Storytime:

Today, a guest blog from brother Nick

Sibling Rivalry –

Being a large and robust family of 4 large and robust boys meant of course having to be large and robust in order to maintain your place in the pecking order.

This could take the form of mad scrambles for food at dinner time as there was no time to stop, pause and think about what you wanted to eat. It was a case of once it was on the table, it was every boy for himself and eat until there was no more. For some of us, sadly this view of food seems to have continued.

Or one particular memory was of a xmas gift of boxing gloves to us all many year ago (Nige would have been about 4 or 5). Quite what my parents were thinking with the gift of 4 pairs of boxing gloves, one pair each, is still astonishing to me. What could possibly have gone wrong – Health & Safety clearly wasn’t in our parents’ mind) ? Once we had discarded the associated gift of the boxing ball on a plank of wood, we basically got stuck in in age order – Andy beat up Dunc, Dunc beat up me and then we all beat up Nige and to this day I remember Nige never cowering but standing square to be hit. He had stupidity and courage even then ! That Xmas was a flurry of cuts, scars and bruises and if I’m honest set the tone for a few years to come.

Our parents message to us was always ‘be your own people and don’t follow’………we all did that and of course that creates differences in attitude, ambitions and character.

Sibling rivalry is inevitable and it is only fair to say that occasionally this spills over and I’m honest enough to say that I fell out with Nige more than most – maybe we were just too similar and too competitive……or just too different ? But I can also say that over the past 5 years during his fight with cancer all these differences were put aside and we made our peace on more than one occasion. This was important for us both and allowed us to move on with no regrets and ‘what-ifs’. By moving on and putting conflict behind us we are able to fully remember the good times, the funny times, the silly times, the childish times…..of which there are far too many to recall here. I also remember with Nige that there were far more good times than bad