On Monday morning, Donna saw that UPS tracking indicated the delivery of her new laptop would arrive by 8pm. I was hoping it would be well before before 8pm because the Sweetwater Fairgrounds office closes at 5pm and they would take the delivery.

I went to the office and told them we expected a delivery and asked when UPS usually delivers – I was told between noon and 3pm. I paid for another night here to be sure we could get her laptop. I then made a run to town on the Spyder to pay for the diagnostic fee and retrieve her bad hard drive and also pick up a few necessities.

Around 4pm, I asked Donna to check the status of her laptop delivery – the woman in the office said she would call me when UPS delivered, but I hadn’t heard from her. The UPS tracking showed “Delivered and handed to local resident Adams.” What?

I went to the fairground office and the office manager Erika said that UPS dropped everything back in their shop since they delivered some large boxes. She led me back to the workshop area and there it was – Donna’s new laptop. I have to say, the office staff at Sweetwater Fairgrounds and Events Complex are some of the nicest people you’ll ever encounter.

They do a great job of keeping the area around the events center clean and well-landscaped.

However, the RV area is nothing more than a large gravel lot with 1200 hook-ups. The caretaker doesn’t seem to do much. Donna and I slept poorly most nights as we had issues with barking dogs early in the morning and long-term residents heading out to their workaday lives. The barking dogs were especially bothersome. A couple in a site near us had three dogs and it seems that they thought it was okay to just let the dogs out in the morning around 6am to do their business. The dogs would bark constantly as they ran around loose for what seemed like an eternity. Then the caretaker’s dogs would join in the barkfest.

Donna spent most of Monday evening getting her laptop configured. Of course this meant using a lot of data on our Verizon plan, but what can you do? I have to mention that Verizon’s coverage is incredible – it’s rare for us not to have a usable Internet connection.

Donna defrosted some grass-fed lamb rib chops we bought from the rancher in Portland and made lamb chops with a red wine, rosemary and garlic pan sauce. As usual, I’m dining first-class.

We were watching the Rio Olympics on TV when dogs started barking non-stop near our coach after 9pm. I looked out the window and sure enough, our neighbor with the three dogs had let them out. I walked over to his site and knocked on the door. He and his wife were totally oblivious to the barking dogs running loose. It wasn’t a pleasant exchange.

We got a late start Tuesday morning. It was 11am by the time we pulled out. I had to circle back before we left the grounds when I realized I left our jack pads behind. Our first stop was the Pilot/Flying J at I-80. We took on 45 gallons of fuel at $2.42/gallon. I wanted to have a full tank as we weren’t sure of where we’ll stop for the night and how much generator run-time we might have in the next couple of days.

We stopped at the Love’s travel center in Wamsutter for lunch. It was a crowded truck stop with back-in spaces. I had to jockey back-and-forth a few times to get us into a parking lane, but no harm done. Over lunch, Donna and I discussed our options for the night. We decided to hit a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) site south of Rawlins at Teton Reservoir.

Heading eastward on I-80 we crossed the continental divide twice. The continental divide is a hydrological divide where watersheds drain either westward to the Pacific Ocean or eastward to the Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic. In southern Wyoming we encountered the Great Divide Basin. This is a region where none of the water falling to the ground drains into any ocean. We were at 7,000 feet above sea level at that point.

We pulled off I-80 at Rawlins and headed for the BLM site. On the way, we passed a sign for Rim Lake which also turned out to be BLM public land. The road we were on turned to gravel five miles before Teton Lake and I stopped in a turn-out. I was leery of continuing to Teton Reservoir. The road surface looked okay at that point, but there was no guarantee of its condition further on and being able to turn around. We made a several-point turn-around and came back to the Rim Lake turn-off.

It was a gravel/dirt road that took us a couple of miles to the small lake. On the way, we spied a few pronghorn antelope. That’s Wyoming – you’re likely to see more pronghorns than people in many areas. This is not a bad thing.

We found a level spot that I can easily exit from and we set up for the night.

A few cars and pickup trucks came through the area in the afternoon but didn’t stay long. Three bicyclists rode in around 7pm and set up tents for an overnight stop. They were far enough away from us that we couldn’t hear them. We heard a pack of coyotes howling after dark and the gusty winds woke me a few times in the night. But it’s nice to be away from it all and only waking to the sounds of nature instead barking dogs and vehicles early in the morning.

The weather forecast for today looks good – sunny and mid 80s. We’re debating about moving to Teton Reservoir and staying overnight there. I’d like to check it out, but there’s a 50% chance of rain by tomorrow and we’ll be five miles down a dirt road that could become muddy. Also, it’s not likely that we would have internet at Teton Reservoir. Our other option is to head to Laramie where we won’t have any worries about mud. We’re in no hurry, so we’ll decide later this morning.