Well there is no food or water or shade for the next 65 miles so we are stocking up in Arco.
Had a home cooked breakfast at the local place (Pickles Place….painted bright green) and then we went back to the site to do laundry.
We had a lovely stay at the KOA which is way more expensive than other campsites (same as hotels here) but you get what you pay for.

We left Arco at one pm after breakfast and laundry and going to the grocery store and getting food and water to last us the next 65 miles.
We liked Arco and everyone was very dressed up; men in suits and all for church today. The buildings there were all original and here are some of them. This town continues to exist because people go to “the Craters of the Moon” National Park.

Also, there was this cool rock hill above town and every high school class since 1920 has carved their date into the stone.

The first ten miles out towards Atomic City were okay even in 100 degree heat until the wind hit.
A mostly flat with periodic gradual climbs would be an easy day even without shade but we had super intense wind like the kind when you’re on a sailboat going fast and it was coming at us from the south relentlessly.
We couldn’t make any good time so the 65 miles which originally seemed like a shortish day started to seem like a can-we-make-it kind of day.
We stopped at a highway rest stop where the motorcycle guys (lots of them on these roads) had guns (yeah, real pistols) on their belts. THEY were complaining about the wind so given how hardcore they are, you can imagine what the wind was doing to us on our bikes.
We were riding slanted into the wind so we’d keep our balance.
It wasn’t the completely weird lifeless landscape of yesterday’s lava land but it was truly desolation wilderness. Not pretty. No homes. No telephone wires. No nothing just sun and desert.
The “historic market” at the rest stop clued us in. There are more nuclear reacters on the land that we biked through today than any other place on the planet! Take that, North Korea. (just kidding)

Finally that nightmare ended and the last fifteen miles there was irrigated land and businesses and homes and we very very slowly slid in exhaustion into Blackfoot.
Blackfoot is a large city of 10,000 and has none of the charm of the past that all the other big and small towns have. Practically the entire downtown is for rent and all of the action is out by the interstate. That action is WalMart and chain fast food places.
The closest campground is 25 miles from here so we are in a Super 8 hotel watching “The Incredibles” GO PIXAR!
Go digital art!
By the way, those of you who know me in my non-bicycling regular artist life, the de young museum in golden gate park, say San Francisco! Say Bay Area, say HOME hired me for the Friday Night party to do my digital art thing August 31st! Yippee!
So I’ll be back before then. Sa wants to leave in a week. We have a friend driving from Chicago to San Francisco and we are going to meet here near interstate 80 and she is going to drive Sa back.
We thought Sa would be able to do her summer school and college prep stuff at night on this trip but there is no way she can get it done even with MP3 downloaded summer reading. She is currently listening to Jane Eyre which seems kind of comical in this time and landscape.
Also, it is just too hard. And Colorado is on fire which is where we are headed so….
I am not sure what I will do. I can’t go home with the friend as there isn’t room so I’ll bike on but if I get too lonely I will bike to an airport and fly home.
We’ll see. It’s all an adventure and already I have benefitted immensely from this experience.