Revisiting a Memorable Stop on the Wyoming Frontier

SINCLAIR, Wyo - We had a very rewarding lunch stop today at the historic Parco Inn in the tiny community of Sinclair (pop 426). The frontier town in south central Wyoming is at the juncture of I-80 and highway 287 which Carl and I followed out of Yellowstone as we biked our way toward Colorado to cross the Rockies. We had spent the night at the Inn (then called the Sinclair Hotel) during our 76 cross-country bike trip, It was one of only a few hotels we stayed in that entire summer. It was a very needed one after a grueling day of pedaling against 50 mph headwinds. Once a thriving town, Sinclair today lives in the shadows of the sprawling Sinclair petroleum refinery. There's not much to the town except for clusters of houses and a few businesses.. Motorists along busy I-80 usually bypass the town for stops at Rawlings to the west or Laramie to the east. Standing out is the 1925 stucco inn across from a beautiful city park with a train caboose. Emily and I pulled into the park to picnic and to let the dog run around with the boys. Trevor and I walked to the Inn and stuck our heads in to look around. We were greeted by Mr. Mike Holmes, pastor of a Baptist congregation that has been using the Inn for worship and to house missionaries. I explained to Mike I had stayed there back in '76 when it was a functioning Inn. I told him that my brother and I were retracing our bike route with our families and had many fond memories of our stay there. Mike invited my family to join in for a tour. He showed us around the magnificent lobby with the nostalgic check-in counter, antique fixtures and giant buffalo head still looming overhead. Mike then let us peer into one of the Inn's 48 rooms on the actual hall I think we stayed during our bike trip. He was a very engaging with lots of facts about the Sinclair and its place in history, Its VIP guest list included folks like Amelia Earhart and Clark Gable. Mike told us the fascinating story of Horatio Jackson,, his sidekick Sewall Crocker and goggles wearing pit bull named Bud who were the first to drive a car across America in the 1903. The story had lots of parallels to our bicycle journey: overcoming mechanical breakdowns, punishing weather, detours. I did some quick research and discovered crossing the country took us each about the same amount of time (Horatio's 63 days from San Francisco to New York compared to our biking 51 days from Eureka, Calif. to Ocean City, Md. We both followed a similar route through the stretch of Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming, At least Carl and I had maps and developed roads. The first auto trip must have been very adventurous.