Wednesday, June 27, 2007

National parks

After leaving Dillon a cool little town, we biked to a wide spot in the road called Alder. The next day we left for a big day, thought we could get to West Yellowstone and the comforts of a hostel bed and a day off, nature thought otherwise. The morning was easy enough however the afternoon was hell (I was an unhappy biker). The Madison river valley is gorgeous however it is also very windy, and sadly it was not at or backs. We fought through the wind covering a whole 5 miles every hour. Then would retreat in hopes that it would calm down, then attack again. We lost and retired to a RV park and cooked our not so tasty meals. Our neighbors were very nice and gave us apples, I had peanut butter so that was a highlight of my day. The next day we woke up to Ice on our tents, we were determined to start early to beat our arch Nemesis the wind. After a cold start we had a tasty breakfast, and a nice ride into west Yellowstone. All of a sudden we are in this crazy world of tourists, and RV's. I think we might be loving our national parks to death. Although we had planned an easy day the vibe of west Yellowstone made us decide to go ahead and enter the park.
The day turned out to be about 96 miles and we arrived in Grant village around 8:00 to say the least a very long day. Two redeeming things in west Yellowstone are the freewheel and heel bike shop and a little place to eat called Uncle Laurie's. Yellowstone is an amazing place that all should enjoy, but maybe a lottery system would be a good idea Homo sapiens out numbered every other mammal about a gazillion to one. The next day was an easy day only about 40 miles to Grand Tetons. It was a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky and the Tetons were magnificent. On our way we meet an awesome mountain biker named Dave. Dave was participating in the great divide race. The great divide race follows the continental divide from Canada to Mexico about 2500 miles. The racers only have 25 days to complete the trip. It is crazy at the level of amazing. The craziest thing was that Dave was trying to be the first to complete it on a fixed gear mountain bike. I was in Awe he carried only about 18 pounds, was chased by a moose, a had a close call with a momma grizzly. When we ran into him he had gone about 1000 miles in 10 days, he could barely hold a conversation, he was toast and was dropping out, but what an amazing idea and attempt.
This stopping point proved to be great we also meet Tom and Mina a couple from Belgium riding a tandem. Definitely free spirits that had never rode bikes before their tandem and are planning to go all the way to Chile, after starting in the Canadian Rockies. The great thing was we all ended up at the Hiker/Biker sites at Grand Teton and had a cookout for dinner. It was a great evening I will remember for some time. Today we had our biggest climb in Wyoming, I am currently in Debois WY. From here on out I think Wyoming will be not much more than sagebrush.

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