The minor miracle on Friday September 11 put me back on schedule to attend Church.

Saturday September 12 I rode 73 miles to get to Little America on US Interstate 80. My Daughters Stephanie Fugal and Jennifer Chalmers and their husbands Josh Fugal and Scott Chalmers and granddaughters Halle and Madeline Fugal met me at Little America. It was great to see them. We ate and stayed in a warm, dry, clean motel room.

Sunday morning, September 13, I got up early and rode 30 miles to Church in Lyman Wyoming. I actually do not know how it happened but somehow the Lord was able to meet my goal set in Casper to attend Church in Lyman.

Stephanie shot this picture of me riding on I-80 from her motel room door. You may not notice but I am not carrying any equipment. Stephanie transported it to Church in her car.

South Pass City is another old gold mining town. It has been restored as a historical district by the State of Wyoming.

South Pass was a critical gradual slope route through the Rocky Mountains and over the continental divide. All of the Pioneer Trails crossed it. Later on gold was discovered there.

To really understand what is going on you will have to read the next blog entry.

It is now late in the afternoon of Friday September 11. I still had to ride another 5 miles on a dirt road to get to Highway 28. I wanted to ride another 6 miles on Highway 28 and get to a Wyoming Rest Area to camp for the night.

I got to highway 28 and a minor miracle happened. I was riding downhill and I had a tail wind. It had taken me about 8.5 hours of riding, eating and relaxing to get to this point and I had only covered 26 miles on dirt. I had about 2 hours of sunlight left and I decided to see how far I could go. In the next 2 hours I covered 40 miles. I arrived in Farson Wyoming with sunlight to spare. The ride was exhilarating. I seemed so powerful. I sped downhill at 30+ MPH. I even powered up the rolling hills at about 18 MPH.

My suggestion is if you want to go on a bike ride choose downhill with a tail wind.

On Friday Morning September 11, I got up early and rode 16 miles on the dirt county road to Atlantic City Wyoming. It is a great old gold mining town that is not on a paved highway. A few good and very interesting people live there.

I ate a couple of very good meals, relaxed and celebrated the fact that I was back in "Civilization". Then I rode another 5 miles on the dirt road to get to South Pass City.

About 50 - 60 miles west of Martins Cove the Mormon Church has created another Visitors Center. It is at the location where the "Willie Handcart Company" was rescued from the same winter storm that got the "Martin Handcart Company".

Both companies were rescued by wagon companies that Brigham Young sent from Salt Lake City when he learned that there were still pioneer companies on the trail in Wyoming late in the season (in addition to the two handcart companies there was a wagon company).

It is an interesting but not widely known fact that Brigham Young sent the rescuers out before the winter storm hit. They were also blasted by the storm as they searched for the 3 delayed pioneer companies.

The Willie Visitor Center is on US highway 287. US 287 junctions with State Highway 28 forming a triangle with Lander Wyoming at the top and the Mormon Trail as the base. I eventually wanted to get to Highway 28 so I decided to ride on the Mormon Trail for 30 miles as a shortcut to the continental divide over South Pass. That would save me about 30 miles.

It was now Thursday September 10 and I was way behind schedule because I had spent so much time at Martins Cove and also I had been riding against headwinds all week so I had covered less than one half the distance. I still hoped to make it to Lyman Wyoming for Church on Sunday morning and it was a couple of hundred miles away.

This picture is a shot of me biking along the Mormon Trail. I did not ride fast on the trail. It was too soft for my skinny, hard road bike tires. There were lots of sharp rocks and the ascents and descents were extreme. This was not a prepared road. There was no grading or leveling or laying a road base. This was just a wagon trail across the prairie. I am very glad that I rode on the Mormon Trail for the experience. I saw and learned a lot but it was slow and difficult traveling.

After about 15 miles the Mormon Trail crossed a county dirt road. I gladly transitioned to the county road. It was still dirt but it was a graded, prepared road and my bike did quite well on it. I camped on top of a ridge with just the coyotes for company and decided I would do better on Friday.

This is a picture of a couple of the many Sun Ranch buildings that are at the Martins Cove Visitor Center. See next picture for a more complete description.

This time I did not reverse the order of the pictures. I blogged them in the sequence that I took them. For you that means that you will see the last first and the first last.

This is one of many pictures I took of the cove where the Martin Handcart company tried to find protection from the winter blizzard, many froze to death.

This picture does not really show the whole area adequately. You will have to visit and see for yourself.

I spent most of Tuesday September 8 at the Martins Cove Visitor Center. It is a great place to actually experience some of the pioneer activities.

Martins Cove marks the location of an 1856 pioneer winter tragedy. However it is now regarded as a sacred place to celebrate faith, courage, strength, endurance and sacrifice for others.

A ranch in this area was established by Tom Sun, a French-Canadian frontiersman who later became a pioneer cattleman. The Sun family owned and operated the ranch for the next 130+ years but they never plowed or disturbed the land. It is now essentially the same as it was during Pioneer times and you can still see the indented wagon trails worn into the prairie.

The Mormon Church purchased a portion of the Sun Ranch and established a permanent, year around visitors center using many of the Sun Ranch buildings. It is staffed by Senior Couple Missionaries who do a great job teaching and demonstrating all Pioneer and Ranch activities that took place there. They give you an opportunity for a real hands on immigrant experience. Everyone is welcome and it is free. You can resupply water but there is no food, bring your own.

There are handcarts that you can check out and pull along the old Mormon Trail. I checked one out and pulled it about 3 miles. Then I parked it and walked along a trail that took you through Martins Cove. You even get to cross the Sweetwater River (luckily they have built a bridge).

Every year the Missionary Couples sponsor and support youth groups who come and pull handcarts along the Mormon Trail. It can be a life altering experience for modern teenagers. They must learn to cooperate and get along with others in their "Company". They pull, camp, prepare meals, sing & dance and try to do all the things that the pioneers did before them for a one week period. However I don't think that 1 in 6 of them die like the pioneers experienced.