Day 33 - Medicine Bow National Forest - Rawlins

Peaceful night but a cold morning and I awoke to frost on the tent. Got up and made breakfast but decided it was too chilly to set off so got back in the tent for an hour. 

Eventually set off and immediately bumped into Zach and Kara who had been camped a bit further down the trail. They said they intended to resupply and then push through Rawlins but later had a text from Zach to say they’d opted for a hotel. 

Once out of the forest it was a return to big skies wide open vistas. The road to Rawlins had been fairly recently paved as apparently they were due to build a wind farm which never materialised. Which seems a shame as the motel owner later informed me that the wind is all people in Rawlins talk about. The roadworks and subsequent paving is also why the Tour Divide now goes a different way so there wasn’t even the entertainment of the racers going the other way. 

Made it into town and got shopping done before settling into my incredibly Christian motel - but I won’t hold that against them as they were very welcoming to bikers and CDT hikers. 

I went to a Thai restaurant for dinner but coupled with my large late lunch I felt like I’d overeaten. When getting into towns it’s hard not to just inhale all of the sustenance on offer. I returned to the motel and watched a bit of the Club World Cup, which is the first I’ve seen of any of it, despite it being hosted in the States.

Rawlins had a certain charm about it. More so than other similar sized towns and cities I’d passed through. There were some large, old weatherboard houses which hinted of a grander past.