June 24 - Dubois to Lander Wyoming

Written by Michael with editing and assistance from Gloria, Ann-Renee, and Eric.

As of today we have been on the road for one month. The good news is we are still speaking to each other. So far we have traveled over 1400 miles.

This morning started out at our Airbnb house in DuBois. Eric did an outstanding job cooking bacon, eggs, and toast for breakfast to prepare us for a long day.  The house was plenty large enough for all of us and we were all glad we were at this Airbnb house instead of a hotel.

Today's ride was a 74 mile ride.  It was supposed to be mostly downhill, however we found it much harder than we expected. Some of the difficulty was that the wind was against us some of the way so we felt like we were working hard just to go downhill. Some of it was because the shoulders, or most of the shoulders, were very to extremely bumpy.  Wwhen yyou arre ridingg ovver aaa bbump eevery feww seconddss, it tires you out, lowers your speed, and makes you want to move off the shoulder into the main road - which is not always so safe.  Some of the shoulders had two sets of rumble strips, one on the left side of the shoulder and one in the middle of the shoulder. That made things really bumpy.

The first 20 miles or so leaving Dubois had absolutely stunning scenery. We had beautiful painted hills on one side of the road, and sometimes both sides of the roads, for what seemed like forever.

Each part of the country we've been to has been a little bit different, or maybe a lot different, but still absolutely beautiful.  We followed the Wind River for much of the day. We had snow capped mountains in the background of many of the hills we are looking at on many occasions.

On our first break we met up with a man on an ATV who was out watering his grass and alfalfa. He lives here 6 months a year and he lives the other six months in Florida. I'll go out on a limb guessing that the six months he spends in Florida are in the winter and the six months in the summer are spent in Wyoming.

We spent much of the day bicycling through the Wind River Indian Reservation. In Crowheart, Ann-Renee visited a library that was only open three hours a week in the summer. We felt sorry for the kids whose only library was open three hours a week.

It was interesting to see on the Indian Reservation that more people were walking longer distances in places that you would not expect, for example down the highway. I am a little embarrassed to admit that a man passed me up twice while walking. Now you know how often we take rest breaks.

Our excellent sagger, Ann-Renee, provided an outstanding lunch at a rest area about 40 miles into our trip. If I heard her correctly, she talked to a man who had the privilege of traveling with his great-grandchildren.  Not many people get to do that.

Several of us noticed in both Crowheart and Lander signs about cattlewomen's groups. It was interesting to note that there were no such signs for cattlemen's groups.

Today we saw at least 20 pronghorn antelope,  including one sighting of two or three does and their fawns.  Gloria and Michael also saw two Ospreys in and around their nest.

As we approached Lander, we saw this beautiful lake with an incredible blue-green color. It was warm enough that Ann-Renee would have gone swimming in it had she had her bathing suit with her.

The Indian Reservation ended just before Lander.  And on reservation land was a Shoshone Casino.  

In Landers Ann-Renee saw the following sculpture with a woman on a bicycle. I'm sure it'll be in the Smithsonian soon. In case you can't tell from the picture, the woman in the sculpture has on an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dotted bikini.   You can Google the phrase "itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dotted bikini" if you don't know the song reference.

Eric was able to get his mountain bike tire replaced with a road bike tire in a bicycle shop in Lander today. No doubt this will make Eric even faster tomorrow.

Our laundry is in the dryer.  It's time to do my stretching exercises, sort the clothes, and head to bed.  Another great day comes to a close.  Tomorrow is a 59 mile day and these legs need rest.

June 22 - Grant Village to Colter Bay

Gloria w/help from all

We left Grant Village around 7:45 with the warning that there would be no shoulders for most of the ride.

Having Lesa (a Jackson, Wyoming resident) along helped increase our knowledge of this area. Lesa worked in Colter Bay, so is very familiar with the terrain, wildlife and roads.  Although she is not a Wyoming resident, Anne-Renee also provides us with lots of information about the area.  Today she met us at one spot, arms wide open and introduced us to Lewis Lake.   We can tell she is enjoying herself despite the early mornings!

Today we rode over another Continental Divide.  We also rode out of Yellowstone National Park and into Grand Teton National Park.

 Grand Teton National Park is far more friendly to bicyclists than Yellowstone.  We all celebrated leaving Yellowstone just because of the wider shoulders outside the park.  We are staying in cabins at Colter Bay.

Since we were so close to Colter Bay, we decided to have lunch at Leek's Restaurant near the marina. What a beautiful view!  We scarfed down 2 large pizzas and a salad before getting back on our bikes to ride the last 2 miles to our destination.

I associate Georgia and Thailand with mosquitoes...but I have never seen swarms of mosquitoes like the ones we have seen over the last couple of days in Wyoming.  We are all (including Lesa) surprised by this - especially at these elevations.  There's still snow on the ground here.  Go figure~. We've had to pull out the mosquito repellant and actually use it!

Before dinner Lesa drove us around for a special "Lesa Tour" of the surrounding area.  She took us to Jackson Lake Lodge to see the wonderful view of the Grand Tetons.  We also went to Jackson Lake and String Lake.  It was a fun tour with fabulous views of Jackson Lake and the Grand Tetons! Thank you, Lesa!!!

We ate dinner at the Dornan compound.  There we met Lesa's family including Lesa's husband Jim (left of Gloria).

And Michael found some freshly baked chocolate chip and ginger cookies!

On the way back from dinner, we saw what we are pretty sure was a moose.  However, he wasn't posing as the bison were in Yellowstone.  Clearly he had not been to finishing school.

June 21 - W. Yellowstone to Grant Village

Anne-Reneé writing today.  This was the first day that Lesa and I joined the veteran riders.  The weather was glorious, sunny and low 70s.  We departed the hotel at 715am and headed into a day of riding in Yellowstone Park.
Though I am by no means a morning person I have to admit that watching the sun rise over a ridge on the bank of the Madison River was worth opening one eye to Gloria’s alarm at 5am.

This was a geographically significant day.  We moved from Montana into Wyoming...

rode along the Madison and Firepole rivers, crossed the continental divide twice...

...ascended a total elevation of 2885 feet, reached a high point of 8500 seat above sea level, and some saw the eruption of “most reliable thermal feature in the world” aka Old Faithful  during the almost 55 miles traveled today. 

Incredible stops along the way included Fountain Paint Pots..

Flood Geyser...

...and Kepler Cascades...

...ending the day at the beautiful Yellowstone Lake with mountains in the background.

It was also big wildlife day – we saw bison*, elk, ravens, geese, and an animal rarely sighted in the park, ducks!  NB: For those like me who have been calling the hairy cow-like animals “buffalo” and the people affiliated with them buffalo soldiers please note the following from the site ModernFarmer.com:

“When is a buffalo not a buffalo?  When it’s an American buffalo, which isn’t a buffalo at all, but rather a bison. You can blame early European settlers of the Great Plains for all the confusion.  They too were confused, calling the vast herds of large hoofed animals “buffalo” due to their (somewhat) similar appearance to the creatures found in Africa and Asia.  They were, in fact, bison.”

These guys are fantastic riders – I was often chasing them in the support vehicle after lollygagging at one beautiful sight or another.  Lesa, who was convinced she didn’t train enough and wouldn’t be able to keep up, led the pack into Grant Village.  Eric flies on his new bike, Michael moves back and forth through the pack as he often stops to smell the roses and Gloria steadily plugs up and zooms down the hills.  We met a group of young men biking on the same route across country and they were mighty impressed with our group!  Unfortunately there was heavy traffic in the park and south of Old Faithful the shoulders narrowed, making for nerve-wracking biking.

Doubt that I would last ½ hour on a bike in these conditions so instead happily tried to reach the high bar set by previous SAGgers Hector, Tim and Tom, and Denise.  My role is to drive the support vehicle, carry extra stuff to lighten the load for the bikers, stop at locations along the road to provide a break and sustenance to the riders, and cheerlead.  Also chatted with travelers from around the world during the waits and learned interesting stories and facts about biking and the local environment. 

We ended the ride today at the Grant Village Lodge which is located in a beautiful setting, has neat but small, expensive rooms and the gall to charge for appalling slow internet access.  The restaurant was meh, with service impacted by the new staff – at several locations this week we’ve met young folks whose internships in the park or travel/student visa work started this week. They are polite and friendly but pretty clueless about how to do their jobs and learning on/from us.

One fortuitous event occurred in the hotel – Gloria found a Sacajawea dollar coin on the floor of our room and it turned out that Lesa’s students wrote to the government asking that this coin be minted.  More on the coin: https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/20091127-united-states-mint-announces-2010-native-american-1-coin-design

Out tomorrow bright and early, planning 730am departure….ugh.  But I'm glad to be here - all in all, life is great.

June 19 Driftwater Resort to W. Yellowstone, MT & June 20th (Rest Day W. Yellowstone)

Michael w/helpful comments from Anne-Renee and Gloria

We are only posting now because we have once again been without internet.  Pictures will be added at a later date.

Today was another perfect day for bicycle riding. We started out with a 4 mile uphill climb, but these experienced riders barely noticed the incline despite the hours we were riding it.  We took a rest break at the Quake Lake Visitor Center. Even though it wasn't officially opening time yet, the nice lady opened the restrooms and visitor center for our use.  Quake Lake was created by a 1959 earthquake and landslide that totally stopped up the the Madison River and completely buried the road we were on.   We learned all about the history of this earthquake and couldn't help but think of how Deb and Max would have enjoyed seeing the area.

Shortly after we left the visitors center somebody in an RV honked wildly at all of us and waved. We couldn't quite figure out why this person was honking at us as we were already on the far right side of the shoulder. However as soon as we saw the back of the RV we quickly realized that it was Denise. She stopped ahead and we were delighted to see her. Denise's mom (Tootie - sp?) was with her and introductions were made all around. Tootie is also an experienced bicyclist, and we tried to get her to ride with us.  Denise had even been kind enough to pre-make our lunches even though they wouldn't be staying to join us. It was great to see Denise and we much appreciated the lunch. We were reminded of just how lucky we were to have her sagging for us for so long.

During our visit, I (Michael) was explaining to Tootie, about a neat velcro strap I had that kept my front wheel straight when my bicycle was parked. Regretfully right after they left, the strap was loose and got stuck in my disc brake. Needless to say my bike did not go very fast.  Gloria was in the lead on a downhill stretch and Eric was kind enough to race after her to let her know that I would be awhile.  Then they called Denise to ask her to check to see if my bike was ok.  So Denise did a quick u-turn.   Thanks,  Denise! You are the always so kind!  Upon reaching West Yellowstone, I had a bike shop adjust my brakes to ensure my the velcro strap out hadn't messed up the brakes.

After my brake issue, we continued on to West Yellowstone.  The roads were busy, but the shoulders were pretty wide and usually had rumble strips to alert drivers when they got out of their lane.  The rumble strips were a foot wide and the shoulders were usually at least 3 feet wide.

The winds that had slowed us yesterday were not nearly so bad today.  

West Yellowstone strikes me as a tourist town with mostly three types of businesses:  hotels, restaurants, and gift shops. There are also two small supermarkets and two bike shops.

Rest Day

Today we had several best parts of the day.

1.  We slept in for a change

2.  Anne-Renee and Lesa arrived.  Woman power!

3.  Fortunately Eric found a bulge in his tire on a rest day instead of when he was flying downhill

4.  After dinner, we went for ice cream at Eagle's General Store, which opened in 1908.  They had several classic Hamilton Beach milkshake mixers.  We also met Mathieu from Paris and George from London suburbs.  They are on student-worker visas, which allows them to work and travel in the USA for 3 months.

5.  After the ice cream, Anne-Renee, Gloria & I decided to take a quick trip to Yellowstone Park to check out the various and numerous wildlife.  It appears however that the elk, moose and other deer-like creatures did not get the memo.  After seeing several bison crossing signs, we began to think the bison weren't very good readers - they were not crossing. Just as we were about to give up,  we got a glimpse of a herd of bison before being shooed away by a park ranger on a bicycle.  We were able to stop at a beautiful waterfall at Gibbon Canyon.  Our penance was a 2 hour bison traffic-jam.

We got back to our hotel around 11:30.  

June 23 – Colter Bay Village to Dubois, Wyoming

We had our last glimpses of the Tetons with a view of Jackson Lake as we left Colter Bay Village in the chilly morning (36 degrees).  We left Grand Teton Park and traveled along the Snake and Wind Rivers.

After an excellent tour of Lesa’s Grand Tetons from Jackson Park Lodge and dinner with her family at Dornan’s, Lesa made the decision not to join us for today’s ride.  We were very sad not to have her with us today.  (Lesa, you should get Jim to drop you off at the top of the Togwotee pass and enjoy the ride downhill for about 20 miles).   Thanks for joining us Lesa...we hope to see you again before we leave Wyoming.

The ride today included a long hard slogging climb with total 3517 feet of ascent.  The climbing started in Moran and continued for 18 miles. We crossed another continental divide at 9,584 feet and the Togwotee pass at 9,658 feet.  

We saw at least 20 other bicyclers today.  Most were on the Great Divide mountain bike route from Canada to Mexico that overlapped the TransAmerica trail for about 9 miles.

Luckily after the climb, we had 30 miles of downhill.  The only thing that slowed us down was a fairly strong headwind as we approached Dubois.  However, 20 miles of speedy downhill was well worth the 10 miles of headwinds.

As we descended towards Dubois the landscape changed to painted hills.  We got one final glimpse of snow-capped mountains over the painted hills as we entered Dubois.

Terence, our Airbnb host for the night, left us a bag of goodies.  We really like the spaciousness of his place.  Internet is very good, so we’re finally able to publish several blog posts.  Life is still great!

Dillon to Virginia City June 17

Written by Eric

We are now past the 1000 mile marker.

Today we followed the part of the route of the Vigilante Trail, a road linking the gold fields of Alder Gulch near Virginia City and Grasshopper Creek near Bannack. More than 100 persons were killed in "road agent" robberies of people who were transporting gold discovered in the gold fields in the fall of 1863. The Vigilance Committee of Alder Gulch was organized in December 1863, and in the first six weeks of 1864 at least 20 road agents of the Plummer gang (named for the Sheriff Henry Plummer of Bannack who was the leader of the road agents who were known as the "Innocents"), were captured and hanged.

Gold dredging equipment in Aulder Gulch

Left over gravel fields after looking for gold

Our ride was not as dangerous as in 1863, but was still harrowing sometimes with no shoulders, much traffic, and occasional 18 wheel trucks.

We stopped for lunch in Sheridan which gave us energy to finish the ride.

There was lots of activity this weekend in Virginia City including Brothel Days (with a bed race down the main Street), a Victorian ball, and a Treaty Days gathering of Shoshone, Bannock, and Sheepeater Native American people.

In the evening we went to a performance of The Brewery Follies comedy show, which rounded out our exciting day.

Tomorrow we head to Cameron.  Life is great!

June 18th - Virginia City to Cameron, MT

Gloria

Today's ride started with a 4 mile uphill out of Virginia City.  It was tough - a 7% grade incline.  Not having a shoulder to ride on made it especially difficult, even though drivers were still very polite.

The downhill into Ennis was fast but not a lot of fun.  Our faces and legs were pelted with cold raindrops.  We were glad to arrive in Ennis, where it was sunny and dry.  We had brunch at the Ennis Cafe. It took more time than we had anticipated, but we left full and ready to tackle the last 37 miles.

After we passed the very small town of Cameron, the crosswinds got really bad.  Eric speculated that they were 30 mph.  We endured those winds for 9 miles.  Ugh~

Here are a few quotes from Bob's blog from Virginia City to Cameron on June 7, 2011 - "Up to this point, the Montana winds have not been helpful.  Either we have had unhelpful crosswinds or occasionally nasty headwinds...Montana has impressive panoramic vistas that seem quite different from Idaho and Oregon...I felt good that we had ridden full square into the Rocky Mountains."  We would agree!

Today we saw deer, osprey, cows and horses.  Michael took a picture of a bird's nest that he suspects is an osprey nest.

We rode along the Madison River from Ennis to the Driftwater Resort (has a Cameron address but is 29 miles past Cameron) where we are staying tonight.  I took a picture of a man and his dog in a canoe.  They seemed so symbiotic.

Speaking of dogs...many Montanans drive open back trucks with their dogs in the back.  Today we saw a truck driving 70 mph with 2 dogs on the back, not in cages - hanging on for dear life...but also seeming to enjoy it.

Tomorrow we ride to West Yellowstone.  Life is still great!  

June 16 Jackson to Dillon

This blog was written by Michael with editing and comments provided by Gloria and Eric.

 Please note that we continue to have inconsistent internet and phone service. We post when we can. This causes our posts to be out of order. So please check the date on the post if you would like to read them in order.

 We expected today to be wet, very wet. However, luckily for us Mother Nature had not read the weather forecast. We had some light drizzle in the morning and light drizzle near the top of the first peak, but overall the weather was very pleasant all day long, cool and not raining - just about perfect bicycling weather.

The cows in the Big Hole Valley were watching us as we set out.

We had two healthy climbs today to Big Hole Pass at 7360 feet and to Badger Pass at 6760 feet. Luckily for us we were already fairly high and each time the climb was only about a thousand feet up. Neither of the climbs were all that steep for these three experienced pros.

We did thoroughly enjoy the 2 downhill runs from the above 2 peaks.  I maxed out at 46 mph for a short period on one downhill and we all enjoyed the 14 mile downhill stretch from Badger Pass to the outskirts of Dillon.  I would venture to guess that this downhill was the fastest 14 miles any of the three of us have ever done on a bike.  My estimate is that I averaged over 25 mph in that stretch.  Gloria here - Bob always wanted me to go over 40 mph downhill.  Today I did 42.  I yelled out, "Bob, this is for you!"

We didn't stop at any stores, rest stops, or restaurants - mostly because there were none. That may have contributed to the speed of today's ride.  However we were all proud of ourselves for completing another ride without a SAG, with all our gear, with no stores along the way, and with no problems.

We did see several interesting devices that we later learned were used in storing hay (Beaver slide hay stackers). Somehow these devices are used to create huge piles of hay.

We also stopped by the road to Bannack State Park.  Bannack was the first capitol of the Montana territory.

Tomorrow we have a 48 - 59 mile ride so we plan to get up early...again.    We are still discussing the risks and merits of taking an 11 mile back road shortcut recommended by Google maps.  (Is it paved or gravel, are there road signs or do we just go by mileage, are there more dogs on this route that are not used to bicyclists, etc.)  Tune in tomorrow to see how this adventure ends... Same Bat time, same Bat channel.