"It's just another place." - Day 12

Happy 232nd birthday USA! We woke up without an alarm at 7, made breakfast and bid farewell to Buzz's girls. Before we left, I had the distinct pleasure checking off another bucket list item by using an actual outhouse.
We were on the road by 8:30 but it was hot and uphill to Gillette. We hardly saw another soul on the 55 miles of dry and desolate Wyoming. Seven miles outside of Gillette I flatted again, and again didn't check the bead before inflating. This time I decided to replace the whole tire, but went through another two CO2 cartridges in the process.
Given our CO2 situation, I opted to invest in another pump at Wal-Mart in Gillette. It came in handy just 7 miles later when I flatted. Front tire flats are scary. Not wanting me to get too far behind my respectable 10 flats so far, Travis flatted a few miles later, bringing his total to 6. We grabbed some groceries in Moorcroft just as the store was closing, before running into another long and slow uphill battle into Sundance.

Once again, the end of the day was quite a struggle. It seems that the last 20 miles of the day take as long as all of the previous miles. We anxiously hope that around each curve and behind each hill lies our destination but more often are met with more hills. Today especially, the mile markers were taking particularly long in counting up, and our anxiety was exacerbated by the setting sun. However, we made it into town by 8:45 and per our usual routine stopped at the first bar we saw.

At the bar we met Bo and Deano, pseudo-brothers who offered to let us pitch our tent at their place outside of town. Deano even stopped macking on a lady to pile the four of us into the front of his truck with bikes in the back. We apologized profusely for cockblocking him, but he said his parents had taught him to help people in need. Deano was an army ranger who said of his number of tours in Iraq "it's just another place." He was quite legitimate.
The trailer park residents were keen on shooting off fireworks late into the night, but we were to exhausted for it to be a nuisance. Tomorrow we've got an alarm set for 5:50 and then it'll be off to South Dakota!

Time	Trip	Odometer	Average	Max
9:05:56	119.3	1220	13.1	31.0