It was already toasty with the wind out of the southeast when we departed Casper on a nice frontage road that paralleled I-25 for the first 30 miles.  Then we got on the interstate for about 14 miles and finished the last 50 miles on one of the loneliest stretches of road around . . . SH 18/20.  The only break in the scenery riders had after leaving the interstate were the coal trains that came by about every 15 minutes.  The trains out here have anywhere from 100-150 cars and fill up the horizon when they pass by.  You can spend all afternoon counting the cars on a passing train . . . one was parked waiting for another to pass and I measured it with my bike computer at 1.6 miles long. They move very slowly when going east, some with three engines in front and one in back to help them up the long, shallow grades.  They're really friendly and always toot at us as they pass. The railroad followed a large part of our route on the day we rode into Casper, too. On that day, a RR worker from Nebraska pulled up to SS#3 and practically drooled with envy over what we were doing. He was a cyclist and had "2 years, 2 days" 'til retirement when he would have the time to go on a x-country bike tour. I gave him one of the ABB catalogs.

After we got to town, we found it full of revelers . . . there was a frontier days celebration going on complete with parade and reenactment of times gone by--such as the Cheyenne-Deadwood stagecoach route during the Black Hills Gold rush. A local character who epitomizes that era was Mother Featherlegs, a red headed woman who wore red pantalets--ruffled drawers that tied at the ankle and flapped in the wind as she rode. An admirer said that she looked just like a feather-legged chicken, and the name stuck. She and her cohort, Dangerous Dick Davis ran a saloon and brothel out of their cabin southwest of Lusk. It was a favorite gathering place for those on the wrong side of the law. Her local fame soared in 1879 when she was discovered shot dead at her spring . . .with the missing Dangerous Dick's footprints all around. She was rumored to have a lot of money hidden away. Whether it was stolen by her murderer or still awaits to be found depends on whose story you believe. Either way, she is remembered fondly by residents. A marker stands at the site of her cabin and her famous pantalets have had adventures of their own. Stolen from the historic site in 1964, they graced a Deadwood saloon until 1990, when a determined posse of Lusk residents raided the saloon and got the pantalets back. The parade included a red-headed Mother Featherlegs as well as cowboys, Indians, saloon girls, mounted cavalry, and gamblers . . . high entertainment for us cyclists and the locals who lined the street.