Warning...towns of low to no populations ahead.

Ok, folks. I guess you can see from Ira's post last night, we are not dead. We didn't have cell phone reception or access to a computer in quite a while. Yesterday we pulled into Gillette, WY and finally had reception. I turned on my phone to lots of voice messages, one from my Dad with a very very stressed voice. My Dad is great, but incredibly prone to worrying. I guess he was convinced I was dead, burned up the forest fire, or perhaps just road kill from a passing motorist. I finally got a hold of him and talked him down. So just to warn all out there who might be concerned... there will be days from now on where we can't update regularly. It will probably go down to at the most once a week.

We've been in Wyoming now for a little under a week. Western South Dakota was preparing us for this. The space between towns kept growing little by little. Here in Wyoming, just because a town is listed on the map doesn't mean anything. We went through Alva, population 50 that just had a post office, and Carlisle (the area where all the forest fires were) which had a population of 32 with just a store which didn't look like it had been open for about 20 years just to name a few.
I don't have time for a huge write up, so here is a sum up of the past week and some quick pics of the area I like. We rode through Deadwood SD, west into Wyoming. We rode up 30 miles of dirt roads up into the Bear Lodge Mountains, part of the Wyoming Black Hills which was incredibly beautiful. Then we went over to Devils Tower for two days and headed west through Gillette to Buffalo. Today we will begin riding through our first mountains, the Big Horns. On to the pics.

Here are three images of the Mickelson Trail. A Rails to Trails which runs north-south all through the South Dakota Black Hills.































Ira riding up in the Bear Lodge Mountains (in Wyomings Black Hills).



Here I am battling 35 mph head winds.


























Here is the Belle Fouche River which runs near Devils Tower.



Here is Devils Tower after sunset.



Scorched land near Carlisle, WY. Part of the 14,000 acres burned in the past weeks forest fires.



























This picture is a bit old, but oh well. This is sunset in Cactus Flat, the night before we rode through the Badlands.