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 This is another commonly photographed sight. The question is why this one spot was singled out as being windier than everywhere else. It's another lovely day and not too hot at the moment because I managed to make a good early start and be on the road by ten to seven, not long after the sun came up. I did stay at the Hi-Plains, although getting in was a little tricky. When I arrived, the reception was locked but a sign said that the owner was working in the restaurant upstairs and potential guests should either go up there or phone. The idea of phoning was clearly a joke but I found an open door at the side of the hotel and went up the stairs to find a locked door at the top. A couple of minutes later though, as I was about to try the stairs on the other side of the building, the owner found me and gave me a room. Of course, the restaurant wasn't open for dinner but the hotel owner told me that it would be open from 6 o'clock for breakfast. I was amazed in the morning to find not only that it really was open but that it offered a proper cooked breakfast, unlike pretty much every other hotel. I rather think now that the restaurant has little connection with the hotel. Importantly, breakfast might start at 6 but the hotel owner neglected to mention that he wasn't expecting anybody to ckeck out before 8. He wasn't really fully dressed when the restaurant staff called him to deal with me. The stupid thing is that the only reason why I had to trouble him instead of just leaving my key was because I hadn't managed to get onto the hotel's encrypted wireless network to use the IP phone and had therefore used the phone in my room to call the Hotel Ordway, a hostel popular with cyclists where I had been hoping to stay tonight. I only got an answering machine though. It said I should leave a message and contact telephone number. I gave the number of the Hi-Plains motel and my room number but never heard anything back. Telephones around here do seem amazingly unreliable. I'm not really sure if I can reach Ordway today anyway. It's 140 miles, nearly twice as far as I went yesterday. UTC Time: 12:36, Monday 23 July 2007 Local Time: 07:36, Monday 23 July 2007 Estimate of longitude: 101° 31' 56.35" W = -101.532319° Estimate of latitude: 38° 28' 26.31" N = 38.473975° Possible error on position estimate: 500 metres | |