Friday September 10

Well, we have transited the dreaded east and mid-west and are finally in the true west. Wide open spaces in all directions. It brings to mind the old Cowboy song "Don"t fence me in". There is something about the vastness of the west that is refreshing to me. I never tire of the miles and miles of open spaces and the variety of scenery that is so different from what we have back east. We left early from Kearney, NE and were soon into Wyoming. There is something about seeing the sign welcoming us to Wyoming that raises my spirits and gets me excited about the days to come. Mileage for the day will be about 600. The temperatures are much cooler out here and the range for the day was from a high of 62 and a low of 38 as we passed through a local wind and sleet storm for about 40 miles. Storms out here are awsome as you can see them for miles and there is no place to hide. I always keep a keen eye out for the signs of any funnels. Winds were easily in the 50 MPH range which really plays havoc with the fuel mileage. What is so evident in Wyoming is the number of wind turbines that been built. We would pass huge installations of them that each would have literally hundreds spinning away at their 16 rpm speed. In the course of the day we saw thousands of them on both sides of the highway. We ended up pulling into the RV park where my dad will be staying in Coalville, UT at about 4:30 p.m. They have small one room log cabins that have three beds for a frugal $28 per night. Initially my dad had planned to stay in the empty motorcycle trailer, but this is a far better approach and I will feel much better leaving him here to spend the week. He will have the truck for short trips and to go out for meals. His dog Gretchen is his proverbial side kick, so he is happy as a lark. Tomorrow Rich, Joe and Gerry will arrive at Salt Lake at about 10:00 a.m and we will pick them up at the airport. The Phat Pac will be complete and we will unload the bikes and head out on our adventure. Total miles for the trip via truck has been 2,147. Total elapsed time has been 62 hours which includes all sleep, meal and fuel stop times. It is a good thing we are not ICC regulated truckers, as we could never cover that distance in that amount of time legally.