Glen Rock, WY

 Well, today was an exciting day - not the kind of excitement we wanted, but it proved the worth of our RV insurance with Progressive.  Got a fairly early start from Evanston and planned a leisurely trip up to Casper, WY.  However, the road Gods had other plans for us.  As we entered Green River, WY, we heard a huge bang.  Got off at the next exit and realized that we had blown the outside right rear tire on the RV.  Found a good parking spot in the Green River Police Department parking lot.  Thankfully, it was Saturday and the parking lot was empty.  Called Progressive Insurance with whom we have our roadside insurance.  They were outstanding and within an hour, a tire repair truck from Rock Springs arrived.

There's no doubt in my mind that I could have handled the flat tire and gotten us back on the road (yeah, right).  Nice to have someone take care of it who has the proper equipment and, more importantly, knows how to use it.  Soon we were back on the road.  Our spare turned out to be not the best in the world, so he had brought a new tire and quickly installed it.  We had talked about replacing the tires.  Even though they had plenty of tread on them, they had spent their life in Arizona and were subject to the dry heat there. Now we know that we will have to replace the other five tires (probably get six and use the new tire as our spare).  I'm sure that we'll be able to find a good tire dealer in Fargo and get them replaced while we're there. 

Anyway, that put us a couple of hours off our schedule (who knew we had a schedule).  We finally left I-80 at Rawlins and headed north toward Casper.  Interesting countryside - wind farms, oil wells, cattle, sheep and lots of prairie land.  Stopped at Independence Rock State Park, so named because the pioneers going west hit this spot about the first week in July.  Those of you who have read previous blogs will know the history.  Can you imagine starting from St Louis in April, hitting mid-Wyoming in July and then California in September (except for the Donner Party who made too many mistakes on their travels).

Had an interesting conversation at Independence Rock with a motorcyclist.  Vi noticed that he had three flag staffs on his motorcycle and inquired about them.  Turns out he was coming back from a ceremony in Dupois, WY which honored the Magaurez survivors.  He had been on the USS Coral Sea in Vietnam and had many patches on his motorcycle vest, one of which was "Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club" - a reference to the area of operations for the USS Coral Sea.  The ceremony is described below and we had an interesting conversation with him.  He was in Vietnam the same time we were.

https://www.wfmz.com/news/pr_newswire/pr_newswire_entertainment/tribute-to-veterans-of-mayaguez-rescue-at-national-museum-of-military-vehicles/article_4725cfdd-cec4-5085-8f47-880636fa6b5e.html

Interesting how you meet people from different walks of life on your travels.  You just have to stop and talk with them.

Originally, we had planned to stay in Casper, but overshot the mark and are staying in Glen Rock which is about twenty miles east of Casper (actually, it is on I-25 south, but who are we to quibble about direction.  Staying at the North Platte River Campground.  Always fun to cross the North Platte - we have done it many times.  The old saying is that it's too thick to drink and too thin to plow.  Another interesting sideline was that we cross the Continental Divide at least five times today at elevations ranging from 6500' to 7750'.  Who knew the Continental Divide wandered back and forth. 

Tomorrow before we check out, we are going to take a walk down to the river and see what it looks like here.