The things you find when dumping! Or when going off the road a bit. We made tracks along 80 today, but managed to spice it up with a meander, a historic site, and a BLM running Beaver TV.
Richard rode his bike out of Curt Gowdy and followed highway 210 through the Medicine Bow National Forest until it got back to Interstate 80. He certainly got his fill of climbing on this lovely route, and actually ended up at the highest point on the highway. How many times I’ve stopped at the Lincoln Memorial on 80, I have no idea. I know I’ve never approached it from the back though, so that was new. We met up at the rest stop and Richard got changed into “civvies” for the continued journey in the car.
We knew we’d need to dump tanks somewhere and the person at the Curt Gowdy Visitor Center recommended we dump at “the prison.” Well of course we were going to have to do that, weren’t we? It was a quick drive to Laramie, WY, where we followed directions to the Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Park. Wow! This is a really interesting place to stop, especially if you take the self guided tour and run into a park service volunteer who really knows her stuff! Turns out this was the only prison to ever successfully incarcerate Butch Cassidy. They have a very detailed and well presented display on him in one of the cell block areas. 
They also have a cool scavenger hunt thing where they give you a card with a prisoner’s information and you search to find the poster that outlines their story. We got Alison Cunningham, a man who appears to have taken the fall for an abused wife in the murder of her husband. He served 13 years. There is also an exhibit for the women’s cell block. Plus, throw in some well preserved period buildings and a display on period ranch life and you’ve got yourself one fascinating dump stop.
Following that, we continued west until we got to the town of Sinclair, which appears to be an entirely gasoline based community. Really, the only things that exist are a Sinclair gas station and a huge processing plant. However, if you follow the little road north out of there for six miles, you can find the Dugway BLM. It is free, but no hookups and only five sites. We had backup plans in case it didn’t work, but the last minute luck of the underplanned held out and a guy was leaving his site just as we arrived.
It was a peaceful, remote feeling place. Pronghorns grazed in the arid prairies along the approach, and the sheltered little valley by the river offered one of the few patches of blue sky within the widespread smoky haze of the interstate. The only downside to the place was the abundance of mosquitoes. I donned my Permathrin treated clothing and braved it. 
I was rewarded with a beaver sighting across the river. In fact, as I watched the wildlife show, another one appeared from the branchy lodge and made its way up onto the bank. This was extremely entertaining and I watched them for a long time as they swam, emerged onto banks, grabbed branches off the bushes, and brought them back to chew on in the water.
The sun set and flocks of Pelicans whizzed by in formation, disappearing into the next valley down river. What a very nice place.
Total miles: 128.7, 16.3 mpg, 3 hours 27 min. Site 2? The sites are not marked and there are no reservations. Vault toilets, but they’re nice and clean. There’s a water spigot, but you need to operate a hand crank to get the water out. No dump, no services. No cell reception for either one, but we got it back about a mile back toward 80 as we left.
