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.