Day 4 Glendo to Douglas
26.1 Miles + several sight seeing

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The old road from Glendo to Orin Junction is a better route (flatter) than the freeway with only 2 small climbs in the whole 15 miles. We had a very good enjoyable ride this morning. We slept in until 6:30 and were on the road by 7:15. When you don't have to cook breakfast and put a whole camp away you can get on the road much faster. We had a banana as we left and stopped at about 10 miles for a pop tart. At Orin Junction the rest area was closed so we pulled into the truck stop. Breakfast smelled so good that we decided to set down for a real breakfast at 9:15. We are feeling better than we did yesterday but when you start out the day with a lot of climbing it makes the day harder. Today there was little climbing for the first 15 miles. After Orin Junction it was typical rollers for the next 8 miles. Then we were treated to a great 2 mile downhill into town. There was a Safeway grocery store just as we came into town so we stopped to buy snacks and breakfast and lunch stuff for the road tomorrow. We are still full from breakfast as it is only 11:30. After grocery shopping we spotted a laundromat. As I am typing away our clothes are getting clean. Yea! As much as I want to better understand my ancestors which is part of the reason for this ride, I am glad to live in my day not theirs. One night spent in a motel room with air conditioning and freshly laundered cloths are wonderful treats. Nicely graded and paved roads are a big plus too. Much of today's ride was very near the old trail. Where we crossed the North Platte River there was a monument stating that James Bridger operated a ferry about 150 yards upstream. Yesterday as we crossed Cottonwood Creek one hill before Glendo, there was a monument stating that the Cottonwood Creek Pony Express station was just 350 yards down stream.

In general we are in much better shape today. With today being light day hopefully we can recover more. My legs are quite sore but I feel good. Tomorrow we have a long day as we need to get to Casper which is over 50 miles away. It will also be our first day of ridding on the freeway as we have to ride it for 17 miles.

After doing laundry we visited the railroad museum in the center of town. After that we went to the Wyoming State Historical Museum at the state fair grounds. It is a free museum with five large rooms of interesting things in their collection. They had a pole and length of wire from the first transcontental telegraph line and a lot of pioneer and indian artifacts. After the museum we went shopping for some sunglasses for Spencer. Today is Rhielles birthday so we went to a mexican restaurant to celebrate. We told our server that today was her birthday and so they took her picture with a big hat and gave her a free fried ice cream. If you are ever at the mexican restaurant in Douglas look for her birthday picture on the wall. The Douglas city Riverside park is quite an anomaly. They encourage people to camp there for free and even have showers with hot water. We rolled up our shorts and waded into the river to ice our muscles. The North Platte river is really a big fast moving river here in Douglas. I have a new understanding for how difficult it was to get wagons across it. We set up camp in the park and went to sleep.