Wapiti, Ten Sleep, Buffalo and Moorcroft – four town names in Wyoming which we had never heard about. Could probably have lived without ever hearing about them but now they are part of our little history.
Moorcraft is a supermarket, a couple of liquer stores and a diner. And then of course our little family-owned Rangeland Motel and by the way and not the least a library, which holds the cultural torch high in this remote place. We got to Moorcroft a little before 4 pm after app. 100 miles and some good tailwind. I went to the supermarket to buy milk and beer – beer was only sold at the liquor store which is the law in Wyoming.
On the way I came by Moorcroft library which had not yet closed for the day. A small one of its kind with a considerable department for local history and a lot of DVDs and adult fiction. Cindy and Heather who were at the library the last half hour before closing time could tell that there had been 19 people in the library today.’
The library is financed by Crook County and there are in total three libraries in the county, the one in Sundance is the primary library. Sundance is the county’s “capitol” or seat town. It has got nothing to do with the Utah Sundance Film town. Sundance here in Wyoming is known for the Sundance Kid who was a member of the train and bank robbery gang lead by Butch Cassidy. The Sundance Kid was born in Pennsylvania but travelled west and went to jail in Sundance for stealing a horse and a saddle. He sat for 18 months and got his new name as a bonus.
Back to Heather and Cindy in the library. There were some titles in the local history part of the library which were not from this century and I asked whether political correctness had crept into their world – that you could not mention “Indians” but should use “Native Americans”. It sounded as if that was not a big issue in Moorcroft where some of these questions are dealt with in a practical way. Cindy’s view was that you cannot rewrite history and censor names and words which suddenly change their meaning or interpretation and we could agree across the Atlantic Ocean that people should be educated to understand in which context a text is born.
Riding on the Interstate
The first 65 miles today were on Interstate 90. It is still a little strange to ride down a ramp and use the shoulder of such a big road with 80 mph speed limit, but it works. It was the direct connection between Buffalo and Gillette, where we had our lunch. We called ahead and booked our motel and found a road parallel to the Interstate 90, where we instead saw a massive stock of locomotives and some railroads which appeared new.
In Gillette we heard that the town was known for its energy and coal – no razor blades here. About one fifth of coal produced in the US come from this area – and according to one of the coal companies’ websites 55% of US energy is produced from burning coal. Recently, however, one coal mining company has gone bankrupt and laid off 6-700 people but gauging from the investment in railroads coal appears to stay an important part of the energy supply.
It has felt a little stressful the last 3-4-5 days of coming late the motel, so we have taken advantage of the early arrival today to buy a little food and do some laundry. For those who might suspect that two guys like us would become more and more smelly I can disappoint them by assuring that our room and our biking clothes still smell more of lavender than of the cow fields we pass in Wyoming.
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Fedt med hornet! Det ville jeg gerne prøve 😊👍
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