I was glad to see that when I woke up this morning, it was to the sun going up and not to someone hassling me over the course of the evening. There had been a few showers overhead during the night and I was so proud of my tent for having stood with the storms that had come through. It seemed like it held the rain out better now than when it had with a fixed pole. I had great weather overhead and nothing but blue skies. Besides the temperature it looked like it was going to be a good day. It seemed like as long as I could endure the cold weather for the first couple of hours in the morning that it would start to warm up and everything would be alright after that point. The wind really made for an interesting day to today and as did the fact that I was in such a desolate country. After making myself a hot bowl of oatmeal for the morning I only had a couple of water bottles that were full for the first 30 miles into Fence Lake. I figured once I made it to Fence Lake that I would have no problem filling up my water bottles and I would be set to go for the rest of the day. Since it was so cold outside and I was heading directly into the wind for the first 30 miles, I really didn't suck down too much water. I managed to somehow make it into town off of only half of a bottle of water over the course of three hours into the wind. I was glad that I had only used that much water because when I made it into town, it looked as if the town had died. No cars, no people, and only a couple of houses were in the area. I figured that with the next town being only 20 miles down the road that I could probably make it there without a problem and then I could get myself to some more water. It was finally starting to warm up a little outside and it was probably around 60 degrees outside. I had the wind at my back it seemed for the next 20 miles and it was nice to have the wind going from the west to the east. I made it to the next town and I had the same problem as the town before, no one was around. I luckily had still managed to not use very much water and still had one full water bottle at my side. The only problem I could see was that it was getting a little warmer outside and I was going to have to go the next 20 miles with a strong cross wind to get to the next town. The area that I was riding through seemed to constantly be changing between forest area to a high desert area. From trees to no trees, and then from up one hill to down the next hill. It was constant rolling hills as it had been for the previous few days and I was happy when I finally stumbled into the next town and they had the one supply I had been looking for all day. They didn't have any ice to put in with the water and it didn't matter. The water would get so cold from just the temperature outside that just having water was incredible. I filled up all my water bottles after I sucked down a couple bottles full of water and then started the rest of my journey east for the remainder of the day. I was only planning on going to a town called Pie Town today and it couldn't have ended any smoother than the way that it did. I had one big climb going out of the town I was in and with the wind at my back, I was practically pushed up the hill. I hardly pedalled at all for the remainder of the 20 miles to Pie Town and I made it feeling great. With one hour of daylight to spare I figured that I might be able to eat and then enjoy some of what Pie Town had to offer with it's one cafe and entire population of maybe 25 people. I was planning on at least having some pie while I was in town. Well, I set up camp at a park that was in town, just off of the road, and made some dinner. I was on the Great Divide and it felt cool to be sleeping directly on the Great Divide. I'm not sure what it was, but there was something about it. When I finished my dinner it was so cold with the wind and the temperature had dropped to such a significant measure that the only thing I could do was crawl into my tent. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to have some pie, but it was too cold to even move in the outdoors. I think that since I was nearly at 8,000 feet that might have had something to do with it, but who knows for sure. I was safe and secure in this remote little town for the night and it was a lot better of a place to set up camp compared to where I had set up the night before.Daily mileage: 92.8 miles
Average speed: 11.9 mph
Total mileage: 4,594.5 miles
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