We woke early in our room at the Econo Lodge with a plan of getting to McDonald’s at 6 and leaving at 6:30. Bill and Greg were also staying at the Econo Lodge were going to meet us at Mickey D’s. Rawlins was deserted at 5:55 AM when I rode to McDonald’s while Vanesa stayed back at the hotel and finished up packing and walking the dog. It’s weird riding through a town where there’re absolutely zero cars and trucks when just hours before the place was packed and you had to be super careful to not veer off the far side of the lane. It’s kind of cool and eerie at the same time riding through a deserted city. By the time everybody finished what they were doing, getting what they were getting to eat, and were ready to ride, it was 645. Not bad. If we leave only 15-30 mins later than planned that’s alright. We headed out of town and were soon met with a long, gradual, mild uphill, not knowing until we arrived at the top that we were climbing to our third pass of the Continental Divide. It’s super barren out here with a lot of scrub brush and a lot of pronghorn/antelope running around in the fields, but still oddly beautiful. It’s definitely more beautiful in the early morning or late evening hours when the colors are nice and the angle of the sun is low. We’re aware of rattlesnakes being here but we haven’t seen any yet. After we crossed the Divide we dropped down into a huge 20-something mile long valley; From the moment we entered, he pretty much can see where you had to exit and it felt like it just took forever to get there. The terrain changed and there were super beautiful rock formations everywhere, but the wind also picked up quite a bit and suddenly we were riding in a head/crosswind of close to 20 miles an hour. Let’s just say that never peeing into the wind becomes immensely more important out here. And sometimes that’s tricky because you don’t wanna walk off the road into Rattlesnake habitat to go pee, but you also don’t wanna pee facing traffic; most of the time it works out pretty well, but every now and then you get busted by a car that comes by at the least opportune moment. And it was cold too…47 degrees when we left and in the low 50’s when that harsh wind hit, so it made for slow going until we got to the other end of the valley when suddenly the sun came out and the wind died down somewhat. We then slowly climbed up and over the Continental Divide again and made our way to the Muddy Gap junction and turned left to head through the hills to Jeffrey City. Jeffrey City was still fresh in my mind as the worst town I had ridden through in my 2010 Trans Am trip, but this time we were headed to the Jeffrey City Church which now has a hostel for cyclists and is apparently a pretty good place to stay. Also, though we’re not going to stay there, the motel is said to be open for business now (I remember walking through the motel in 2010 when it was shut down and closed for business and seeing how the rooms were ransacked and there was a lot of evidence of people who were squatting there and doing drugs) so if the church doesn’t work out, maybe the motel will? Sounds like things are looking up in Jeffrey City! This time, riding the road to Jeffrey City was very pleasant weatherwise, in the low 70s, while in 2010 I remember passing through in triple digit temperatures and it was miserable. I remember there being a huge rattlesnake sunning about 5 feet from where I pulled off the road to pee back then, but there were no snakes around today that we ever saw. In 2010 out here the land was a sunbaked brown color, but on this day in 2022 everything is still tinted with a shade of green as summer hasn’t really hit yet and it’s been a wet winter. So what was a fairly crappy ride 12 years ago was a really nice ride today! When we got to Jeffrey City, it was only a minute or two later that Bill and Greg showed up. There were mosquitoes swarming, not as bad as Rand, Colorado, but nasty enough. The town is tiny so we saw the church we were planning to go to. We had read on our maps that you’re supposed to check in at the restaurant (there’s only one in town) if you want to stay at the church, but we decided to make our way directly to the church because many church hostels we’ve been to have an always-unlocked door for cyclists. We pedaled and then walked our bikes about a third of a mile down the desert dirt road to the church, only to find the front door of the church locked and when I looked around the sides of the building there are no doors on either side. So, irritated with ourselves for not having checked at the restaurant first, we pedaled/pushed our bikes the third of a mile back to the highway again and rode down the street a couple hundred yards to the restaurant. When we walked in, the lady behind the counter snarkily told us that the door back door to the church is open 24/7 and rhetorically asked why we hadn’t just gone to the back door. She made a few other kind of weird jokey-grouchy comments that certainly didn’t make us feel welcome. But we all needed to get some food in us anyway so we decided to sit down and order a meal. Let me just say this was a special experience and any other place in the world, I think we would’ve walked out. The lady, the owner, was the only one working there and she was incredibly rude the whole time we and other customers were there. She acted like we were privileged to be in her restaurant. She made snarky jokes that weren’t really jokes, and she was just grouchy as hell. (And I can’t blame her, living in this shithole would steal any one’s joy, I think.) But when Vanesa asked for a Coke, she told her where to walk to go get it herself. When I ordered an ice water, she told me to come up to the bar and she would give it to me. When she didn’t bring any butter for my pancakes, and she wasn’t around anywhere to ask, I walked back partway toward the kitchen and asked her if I could please have some butter and she just rolled her eyes at me and walked away to go get it. I went back to the table and a couple minutes later she brought out butter she’d put into a little metal condiment tin, loaded with all kinds of crumbs in it from when she had buttered previous pieces of toast. So gross. These are just a few examples but she was literally rude the whole time. And she can do it because she is the only game in town. There’s no store, no other restaurants, no gas station minimart. In fact she has a lump to sell gas at the restaurant. If you want food, you get it from her. End of story. When we wanted to pay she hadn’t brought the check and she was nowhere to be found so I just added up the bill in my head. I didn’t want to leave a tip, but I only had a $20 bill and the bill came to $16; I figured it was worth putting down the $20 bill just so so we could get the hell out of there and get to the church and not have to talk to her anymore. Well worth $4. Bill and Greg stayed to finish eating and pay for their dinner but Vanesa and I headed to the church hostel. We pedaled/pushed our bikes down the dirt road again and this time we went to the back of the church and sure enough we found the door open. And happily, what we walked into was actually quite a nice hostel for cyclists. The chapel was upstairs but the whole bottom floor had been turned into a big empty room where we could lean the bikes against the walls, there was a ping pong table and a basketball hoop, and past cyclist visitors all signed the walls with permanent markers. It was air-conditioned and there was a hallway with about three big rooms on either side that had air mattresses on the floor and you could sleep wherever you want it. There was a kitchen that had some coffee in the refrigerator. There was a washer and dryer, although we found out later the washer didn’t work. There were bathrooms for the shower, although the men’s toilet was broken so we all used the ladies. But honestly, this was, no pun intended, a godsend. Out here in the middle of nowhere, having a safe, cool, spacious place to lay your head away from mosquitos and rattlesnakes and hot sun is wonderful - this isn’t a good place to camp. Bill and Greg showed up and it was good to have them there, but there were several other cyclists there that we didn’t really jive with. Everyone was polite but there were a couple of guys that were just big blowhard know-it-alls that just wanted to tell you how much they know. Ugh, I hate people like that. But on a trip like this everybody’s doing their own thing so you only have to talk for a minute before you can just excuse yourself to go do whatever you have to do, which is what we did. There WAS one kind woman there, not a cyclist but a hiker doing a solo trip on the Continental Divide Trail (going for completion of the triple challenge, having already completed the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail), that we liked and for some reason Maui IMMEDIATELY liked (Maui is usually shy and takes forever to warm up to new people but this lady she ran in circles with excitement and was putting her paws up on her asking to be petted!). Vanesa and I picked the last bedroom on the left and she used one of the church air mattresses and then put her own camping air mattress on top of it because it was dusty; I used a regular mattress off the top of a bunkbed that I snagged from another room. The shag-carpeted room had years of dust hiding inside but was otherwise clean and it was quiet and cool. Thankfully V’s asthma and both of our dust allergies didn’t kick in; V slept poorly because she was cold, while I slept great until I woke up sweating hot half an hour before the 5 a.m. alarm sounded. We downed our overnight instant oats for breakfast (NOT enough energy, no protein and not enough calories!!) and hit the road shortly after sunrise.