Viva La Vagabond: Landed in Lander

We had a few solid days doing 65+ miles every day from the time we entered Yellowstone until we made it to Lander on Sunday night. We knew Lander was worth spending a least one day in to do some laundry and get everybody back to tip top shape, whether it was healing from sinus infections, hundreds of Mosquitos bites or soreness. Well, Lander quickly became one of our favorite places. They have an excellent Parks and Rec department that takes care of a wonderful park where you can camp for free. This provides a place for the many through traveling bike tourists from the Transam and rock climbers exploring the climbing in nearby Sinks Canyon. Lander is very community oriented and filled with many generous and friendly people. They are also famous or their HUGE 4th of July Celebration. It started to look like we may be spending a little more time in Lander than we really needed to. On Monday we scoped out the town after doing laundry and finding showers. We visited the NOLS headquarters which was fun since we have all worked in outdoor programs at some point. We cooled off inside Gannet Grill and met Alicia and John, a couple that now lives in Kansas City and would love to host us when we come through that direction. We talked to them for hours and John, who is from Lander, told us about all of the great things the town had to offer. We also met Kevin, a traveler from Colorado who aspires to do the TransAm one day as well. It was evening by the time we finished chatting with Kevin and we received and interesting picture of our tent from Sara & Matt. Our tent that we had left this morning in it's own little space was now surrounded by people in lawn chairs...like LOTS of people. We came back to find a small band concert right in the middle of the park. We continued to meet many friendly locals while in the park who get excited to see cyclists staying in the park. We remembered Judy in particular. She is the perfect example of "giving the shirt off your back." A couple of days prior, one of Natalee's beloved Ironman watches bit the dust when a weak spot in the bad finally broke. Judy was wearing an identical watch so Natalee commented on how great they are and explained the reason for her now exposed, impressive watch tan line. Without hesitation Judy tossed her watch to Natalee and told her to have it. This blog has become an account to show that the majority of the world really is still made up of nice, good-hearted people. We have had very few experiences with negative, unaccepting people and countless experiences of the opposite. By this point, we had pretty much decided to stay in Lander until the 4th. We all visited Gannet Peak's bike shop the next day, where Judy works. They gave us EXCELLENT care for a very little charge and put the cycle tourists first. Jordan and Natalee took a little ride up to Sinks Canyon which is on the list of "must see's" by the people of Lander. The "sinks" are where the Popo Agie River disappears into the side wall of the canyon. The water reappears 1/4 mile later on the other side of the road at the "rise" but it takes over two hours before reappearing. Geologist have studied, but still are not sure what path the water takes or what causes it to take so long. The rise also has HUGE rainbow trout that get up to 12 ft long. Once into the Shoshone National forest there is a 1 1/2 mile hike that we took to Popo Agie Falls to dip in the cold water. We made it back to our campsite just in time for the play that was being held in the park. We had one more day to bum around Lander before the big 4th of July festivities. That evening we attended a Native American evil spirit dance where Jordan was summoned by an Indian princess to be a part of the pow wow. Afterwards we ran into Nick, a cyclist that we met back in Idaho. Then two more special guests showed up! Natalee's parents made it into Lander a night early after their flight into Denver. The 4th was filled with lots of activities to be celebrated with parents and many new friends that we met over the last few days from camping in the park. We first attended the parade, the bison BBQ next, then the rodeo. This is the world's first paid rodeo and they are very proud of it. The fire department puts on a HUGE firework display at the rodeo grounds to the beautiful sounds of Toby Keith and other very American country songs. A rodeo, fireworks and Toby Keith, could you get any more American than that? What was even more amazing than the city firework show was our view from the bleachers. The entire town was lighting up with cherry bombs constantly for hours! In the end, we were very glad that we stayed around Lander to celebrate. However, because we lost so many days and because of the terrible construction we have been hearing of, we may have cheated just a smidgen. We hitched rides to Rawlins, but we figure that it was a very reasonable trade off. Natalee's parents parted ways in Rawlins and spoiled us once more with a hotel stay before we restart our journey. Hopefully this will help to refresh us because we have some big days ahead of us to make up some miles! Colorado here we come!

The NOLS headquarters