7/4 - Riverton to Worland - Day 19
 

The theme for today is: "Ya gotta stop and see the dinosaurs; you never know when you'll see them again"

I left the Riverton High school by 7:10 today. Had to stop in town to get some cash from an ATM.  The sign on the local bank indicated that I was 66 degrees. Not a bad temperature for the 4th of July. Now if it would only keep cool all day. By 10 AM it became very apparent that it was going to be a HOT one, a very very HOT one. Sill not the afternoon and it was already 91 degrees!

The road became very beautiful as we started to ride through a very beautiful canyon with high steep walls on either side. At the 39 mile mark the road started to drop and we had several short tunnels that we shot through. The picnic stop was at the 51 mile mark and I arrived by 10:45.  The picnic stop was a surprise today. The food was a typical 4th of July picnic, hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad. It was great!

Only 4 more miles down the road was the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in the town of Thermopolis. The Dinosaur Center was a bit more than a mile off the road, but what the heck, who cares if it's sweltering hot and only going to get worst, when else are you going to see dinosaurs in Wyoming? So I headed to see them. The it was worth the trip and was back on my bike an hour later.

It then became a task to grind out the remaining 35 miles in the heat with no shade in sight.  The scenery was mostly dry brush without any green that might give you an illusion of lower temperatures.  Somewhere along the road, Alec pass me by.  Alec is most likely the fastest rider on the tour.  As he started to speed away, I figured that as long as I could keep in view, I was doing OK.  Fifteen miles later at the next water stop, I still had him in sight, just mostly a little dot on the horizon, but still in view just the same. Such is the mind games you play just to keep moving.

By the time I got into Worland, it was 2:30 and 99 degrees. That's a really hot day!