Yellowstone and Teton National Parks, and the Snake River

Something I forgot to talk about in my last blog post was some construction that I rode through in North Dakota near the Montana border. I'm not sure how it slipped my mind; it is certainly noteworthy. I had heard about the construction a couple days earlier from some locals, so I knew that it was there. They said that it had been pretty ugly a couple weeks earlier, but they assumed that it would be in better shape by the time I got there. When I arrived at the town of Marmarth, ND, I saw the first part of the construction. They had taken a short stretch of the road going into town all the way down to dirt in both lanes. The cars and trucks had worn very deep ruts in the dirt where they had been driving, and the rest of it was basically mud. I asked the flagger how far the construction went, and she said this stretch was just a couple hundred feet, but there was more on the other side of town, basically to the Montana border. She said the conditions were much better on that side, and that they had already painted lines on it over there. I tried to ride through the softer stuff between the wheel-tracks, but it was pretty sticky, so I dropped into one of the ruts. At that point, my pedals were hitting the sides of the ruts. I ended up making it through, but it wasn't easy. When I got to the other side of town, the road was pretty nice. Then about a mile out of town the road disappeared and I was riding on packed mud. The traffic was one lane, so their was a lead car. I couldn't keep up with their pace, so I just put my head down and pushed as hard and as fast as I could to avoid dealing with any more traffic than I had to during this stretch. At one point I had a water truck coming at me in my lane that was spreading water over the whole road. It appeared as though I was going to get soaked, but he shut the valve before he and I met. This certainly explained why the road was so wet. I'm sure they had a reason for soaking the road between traffic surges, but it sure made for some crappy cycling. If my tires had been any narrower, I would have been stuck. As I pushed onward, I realized that I was working way too hard for how slow I was going. The loud machinery had masked the noise made by my tire rubbing on all of the mud caked into my front fender. I knew that some had built up, but I didn't realize how bad it was until I stopped and scraped some of it out. It felt like I had just released the parking break and the last 1/4 mile of the construction was a whole lot easier. My parents had tried to check out the construction and then come back to give me a ride, but I made it into the construction before they could get back through it. Eh, I made it through.

Anyway, that gap in the story filled, I'll get back to the narrative of my journey, picking up with leaving Billings and my luggage toting parents. The morning of their departure we hung out for a while during breakfast and I got off to a planned late start for the day. I pedaled a few more miles of interstate before turning south towards Cody, WY. As usual, I stopped a few times to fill with water at rest areas and got the usual responses when I told people what I was doing. I pressed onward to eventually arrive in Belfry, MT, just north of the WY/MT border (On a side-note, their high school mascot is a bat. They are the Belfry Bats.). There's not much in Belfry. I stopped at the bar to ask if there was a place to set up a tent, and they told me about some BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land that was south of town that I could probably camp by. I decided that was my plan, but then it started to rain a bit. The area as a whole looked pretty dry, so I was assuming that the rain wouldn't keep up very long. I sat out of the rain in front of the grocery store next to the Coke machine. As I sat there, several locals looked at me real funny, but never stopped to ask what I was doing. Eventually a pickup pulled up and two men got out to use the Coke machine. They asked what I was doing, and I told them about the trip and where I planned to camp for the night and why I was sitting in front of the grocery store. When they heard this, they looked at each other, looked back at me, and told me to throw my stuff in the truck. Both of their names were Dave. One of the Daves lived in Red Lodge, MT, and the other Dave was from somewhere in eastern Montana. He didn't bother saying the name of the town. He's a school teacher in a one room school house. He said he has 4 students this year. Teacher Dave was out visiting Red Lodge Dave to do some hiking before the school year started. Red Lodge Dave owns a few properties in Red Lodge and is also a guide. Apparently he "guides" wherever people want to go. It sounds like he's been just about everywhere. Some of his stories seemed a bit like he was embellishing a bit too much, but he was a good enough story teller that often I wasn't entirely sure what was fact and what was skewed or inflated fact. Either way, both Daves were great. We got to Red Lodge and they showed me my room for the night and then we went out to eat. The next morning Teacher Dave was working on breakfast for us, after which I went with Red Lodge Dave to run a few errands. The Daves gave me a few wildlife pointers about Yellowstone as they drove me back to Belfry to pick up where I had left off.

I did a little bit of climbing between Belfry and Cody. It was a good little warm up before getting into the more serious stuff. In Cody I picked up a package I was expecting from my sister with some of my cold weather gear that I had left at her place when I passed through at the beginning of July. Without that gear, I would have been one miserable cyclist going into Yellowstone. Before leaving Cody I visited a bicycle shop. I didn't really need anything, I just like visiting bicycle shops. The man there told me some stories about cyclists that had come through and offered a few tips. As I left town, I soon encountered an awful headwind. I think the canyon I was going through really funneled the wind into something awful. I've had some windy days on this trip, but I don't think I've ever encountered anything quite like that canyon. It was exhausting. I ended up camping in the lawn by an inn near Wapiti, WY, for the night. They had nice grass and a fire ring, so it was a pretty decent place to spend the night, though there was no shower.

The wind kept blowing all evening, through the night, and all morning. It was a real pain to get my tent packed up with all of the wind. I stepped inside the lobby before hitting the road and made small talk with the owner and some guests. The owner thought I was headed out of the park, and when he learned that I was on my way in, well, he said that he's seen a lot of cyclists come through and they don't make it far when the wind is like this. He told me that if the wind drops down, I might make it to the east gate of the park, but no further (which would be 9 miles short of Sylvan Pass, the big climb for the day). I told him I intended to make it to the gate regardless of the wind, and then over Sylvan Pass and down to Bridge Bay, if not further. He told me I had high aspirations and that I should look forward to camping just before the Yellowstone gate. I think his lack of faith in me made the day go much quicker. The wind didn't stop blowing (though it wasn't as bad as the previous day) and I made it into the park without a hitch. The woman at the gate looked at me with a little disbelief and asked if I knew that I was about to gain about 1,000 ft in the next 9 miles. I told her that it was closer to 1,900 feet in about 8.5 miles, according to the topographical information on my GPS.

As I descended into the park on the other side of Sylvan Pass, I saw some buffalo just hanging out in a pasture. It was eerie to see these giant animals with no gate or windshield between us. I pulled off at a little rest area to use the restroom and encountered a tour bus full of Germans. One woman asked me (mostly through gestures) what I was doing. Another woman eventually translated for us, which then led to a crowd of Germans around me, gawking in disbelief at what I was doing. As I got closer to the first main intersection in the park where I would have to choose right or left, I stopped at a little store and asked people where I should head. I wanted to turn north and go to Canyon Village, but I heard that there were a whole lot of buffalo on the road there. I decided to go left. When I actually arrived at the intersection, there were several buffalo right beside the road and one standing on the shoulder where I wanted to ride my bicycle. I gestured to traffic that I was turning. There was not a turn yet, so they looked at me with a slightly confused and maybe irritated look. I scooted over to the center line and used an RV to block between me and the buffalo. At this, the confused/irritated driver behind the RV started chuckling a little bit. He seemed to get it. I set up camp at Bridge Bay and made myself some beans and rice.

After stuffing myself with protein and carbs, I got on my bike to head for the campground entrance where I had seen a pay phone (no cell coverage) so I could let my parents know that I had made it into the park without getting broken by a buffalo. As I started rolling down the hill from my campground, a group of three children were in the road, waving for me to stop and be quiet. It took me a second, but I soon saw what they were gesturing at. There was a HUGE male elk walking right through the campground. I stopped quickly and tried to get my camera out. He stopped walking, looked at me, walked a little further, looked at me again, then kept walking. I got one picture taken, but it was completely unrecognizable, so I deleted it.

That night it got pretty cold. I was very glad that I had received that package from my sister and that my parents had brought me my down sleeping bag to replace my warm weather bag. It was tough to get motivated to get out of the bag that morning. Eventually I did and then headed for Grant Village, just south of Bridge Bay. I got there before noon, set up my tent and put my bags in the bear box, and headed for Old Faithful. The previous day I tried to get a room near Old Faithful. I was hoping to find room in one of their more primitive options available for under $100. When I asked at one of the other lodges, they said that there were only two rooms available in the whole park, and they were both sweets: one at Mammoth and one at Old Faithful, both running about $600/night. This left me commuting over to Old Faithful. Between Grant Village and Old Faithful the road crosses the Continental Divide twice. Out and back, I crossed the Divide 4 times. In one day. Thank goodness I had dropped off my gear. One very interesting thing I found at the top of one of the Divide crossings was Isa Lake. It's a very small body of water that is on the continental divide. When it rains or snow melts into it, water runs out both ends. It drains into the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. And because of how the Continental Divide twists and turns through that area, it actually worked out that the west side of the lake drains into the Atlantic, and the east side of the lake drains into the Pacific. It makes sense if you see it on a map. I don't know about any of you all, but I thought that was pretty sweet.

When I got to Old Faithful, I was just in time to wait 10 minutes for it to erupt. I think that the wait made things pretty anti-climactic for me. When it's not spewing water, it's a hole in the ground. The process that is going on under the surface is absolutely fascinating, but what's happening above ground was just OK. After seeing Old Faithful do it's thing, I cruised up and down one of the boardwalks that allowed bicycles and checked out some of the other geothermal activity. I was much more impressed with some of the less regular geysers that had created impressive looking structures around their spouts, and the colors in some of the pools were almost hypnotizing to stare at for a while.

When I had checked in at Grant Village, I met two women that were checking in for a large group of people that were on a guided trip that involved camping, cycling, kayaking, hiking, etc. The organization was called Backroads. When I got back to the campground that evening, I wandered around mingling with other guests in the hiker/biker section of the campground and ended up back at their group campsite. They had saved me some leftovers, as they had said they would. I sat at their table while they cleaned up and prepared for the following day and gorged myself on delicious cold food. Burgers, fruit, potato salad, chips...definitely beat another night of beans and rice. They even gave me fruit for the road and told me to stop by in the morning to see if there were any breakfast leftovers. They said they almost always have leftovers and would much rather feed a hungry cyclist than throw them out. I won't argue.

The next morning I woke up to find three bodies lying on the ground in my campsite, and another tent. Four more people had joined me while I slept. They must have arrived after dark, so they may not have seen my tent, because they looked about as confused as I felt when I climbed out of my tent. I got most of my stuff packed up before they were really up and moving, so we didn't interact much. One of them got up earlier than the others and we made some small talk, but it was short lived. It seemed as though none of us were "morning" people. I headed over to the Backroads campsite to see if they were done with breakfast, but they had just served. I waited a couple of minutes to see if I could find out when they may know about leftovers, and one of the women brought be a breakfast sandwich so I wouldn't be delayed any further.

Thad morning I departed for Grand Teton National Park. This meant crossing the Continental Divide one more time, but it was hardly a climb from the elevation I had been camping at. The previous day had been much more difficult. This is about where I started following the Snake River. I stopped at a turnout to read the information post, and apparently I was in part of the park that got burned up during the fires in 1988. The trees were a lot smaller there than they had been further north. Go figure.

While riding into the Tetons, I met several nice people along the way. There were motorcyclists, RVers, and just day trippers in rental cars. Again most thought I was nuts. I sat and talked with one couple for a while, and they even fed me some of their lunch leftovers and contributed a little bit of cash to the "Feed Neal Fund". Again, the people I've met in person have been fantastic.

The ride into the park was made more difficult by a South wind that I had to fight, but it was an easier ride than Dustin and I had two years ago. We climbed Togowatee Pass (9,658ft) and then were led into the park by our waitress from the diner we stopped at for lunch. We were loaded down and she was on a nice light bike built for speed. She led us into the park at about 18-20 mph if I remember right, and neither Dustin nor I had the humility to ask her to slow down. We both pushed so hard to keep up. Seems a bit foolish in hindsight that neither of us asked her to ease up a bit. Anyway, I went straight to the same place Dustin and I had camped two years earlier: Jenny Lake. All of the signs say that the campground is full every day. It is always full. The nice thing about traveling on a bicycle is that they have a hiker/biker section that's never full. There was one other tent there. And yes, Jenny Lake is just as cool as I remembered it. I suppose that could be taken literally as well. The water is mostly snow melt, so it's really cold, even in August. I wasn't sure when my next shower would come, so I jumped in. Refreshing would be the nice word for it.

After my little dip, I made some beans and rice. In Yellowstone they had specific sinks where they want people to wash dishes. I wasn't sure what they expected here, so I asked some people in the regular campground area. First I chatted with people from southern Utah that told me I should use the website www.warmshowers.com. It's kind of like the Mennonite Your Way directory that I've been using, but specifically for touring cyclists. I just created an account, so we'll see if I can get some use out of it. Later I met a nice couple with several children (can't remember how many) that were from near Salt Lake City. I chatted with them for a while and roasted a marshmallow over their fire.

It was close to dark before I got back to my part of the campground. There I met my hiker/biker neighbors for the first time. It was a young man and woman from California. The next morning I got up to take some pictures, packed up my stuff, and when I was ready to leave, they gave me some of the food that they weren't going to eat. They had flown out and couldn't bring the food back with them. I'm pretty well set for a while now. I hadn't thought about how easy tuna packets travel until I got 4 of them from this couple.

Heading out of the Tetons was pretty windy and it looked as though I was going to hit some bad weather. A few miles down the road I was proven right. I took a long lunch break in Jackson, which may have been a bad idea. I think I could have beat the storm if I had just biked on. When I got to Hoback Junction it started to pour. I sat there for a while and commiserated with some motorcyclists about the weather. Eventually they took off in the direction I was headed. They got my cell number and said that they'd call me from the other side to tell me what to expect. They called and said that they got soaked in the canyon, but it was clear on the other side. They figured I'd be good to go after about 20-30 more minutes. When there was a break in the rain, I took off. I made it about half way through the canyon and pulled off at a little campground (National Forest territory, so there were several options) for the night. Again, I made friends with the neighbors because I had to share a bear box with them, and they thought I was a little bit nuts for going on this bike trip. It drizzled most of the evening and stormed pretty good during the night.

The morning started off a little overcast, but not precipitating. I stopped for a break just before noon just past the Palisades Reservoir dam. The place was called The Dam Store. On their sign, it said, "When you cuss, think of us!" How could I not stop at a place like that. The woman working there had the movie Happy Feet on, and I sort of got hooked. While I was watching, the sun suddenly went away. I went outside to look, and some nasty clouds had moved in. I jumped on the bike and hauled down the road, hoping to get out of it's way. I found out that I had been pretty lucky already. The Dam Store had hail before I got there, and the canyon I was camping in got hail after I left. I booked it about 10 miles to the next convenience store where I pulled off to think about the situation. I ended up sitting outside with 7-8 motorcyclists on a long bench, watching the storm move across in front of us. As I thought about what that lineup of us looked like on that bench, the Sesame Street tune, "One of these things is not like the others" came into my head. Black leather and boots, black leather and boots, black leather and boots, black tights with a neon yellow jacket? Must have looked funny.

When things looked better in the direction I was headed, I made a break for it. That "break" didn't really get me very far. About 3 miles down the road I got a flat tire and it started to rain a little bit harder. As I sat on the side of the road in the rain, changing a flat tire, a man pulled up in his car and told me that when I got things fixed, I should pull off at the next right about a quarter mile down. I did as instructed and met Dan (Dan-o as his co-workers called him). Dan is the chef at the South Fork Lodge in Swan Valley, ID. It was still kind of early in the day and I had hoped to push on to Idaho Falls for the night, but when he offered me a dry place to sleep and a hot meal, I decided that my cycling for the day was done. I got all of my stuff situated in a shed behind the bait shop, changed into some dry clothes, and eventually made my way up to the lodge. The food was great, all of the employees were fun to chat with throughout the evening, and I even got to do laundry. Bob, the guy in charge out there, was also a pleasure to meet. He offered me a room for the night, but I knew that I needed to get moving the following day and that if I had a room in a place like this, I would never get out of bed. And besides, they already gave me a dry place in the shed, fed me, let me do laundry, and gave me a place to hang out for the evening. Bob is good at what he does. As I saw him interact with the guests at the lodge, he knew everyone's name. Beyond that, he was very active in helping things run smoothly by taking food to people and whatnot. Beyond that, he treated me like I was one of their high-paying guests. It was neat to see someone in a position like his seeing people instead of dollar signs.

The next morning I headed back over to the lodge for breakfast, as instructed by Dan-o and Bob. While I was eating there, an employee (not sure what her specific job was) found me in the dining room. Bob had told her about me. She told me that she had already heard about me from her brothers. Apparently I met her brothers a while back (a couple weeks maybe?) while I was traveling. They were on a motorcycle trip somewhere, and I must have been making small talk with them at a gas station or something, then they told their sister, this woman, about me. I'm glad she came to say hi. Funny world, eh?

After breakfast I climbed out of Swan Valley and pedaled through a headwind to Pocatello, ID, where I am staying in a Motel 6 tonight. This is the first shower I've had since Grant Village. It's more than 120 miles to get to my friends' place near Filer, ID, so I'm going to try to get a really early start tomorrow and see if I can knock it out in one day. I'm guessing I'll have to split it into two, judging by the forecast. Hopefully I'll find internet a little more frequently in the near future.

(oh, and yes, I did change my route. I decided to take a more southerly route through Idaho, following the Snake River eventually to the Columbia River. Kind of a last minute decision.)