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Return of the Triumvirate

8/26/2014

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Kellen Smetana
There are some weeks you remember why bicycle touring is more than simply riding past beautiful scenery.  Reuniting with friends from adventures past and bringing them into the new, testing your mettle against the everlasting might of the elements, and exploring some of the most wondrous creations of the grand planetary scale: this week was one of those weeks.
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It's more than just the bike
After a fabulous and filling stay with Willie and Don, we departed the growing Bozeman, continuing north to our next major destination: Great Falls, Montana.  It was a speedy ride.  The first evening back on the road, a wicked storm descended, and we were lucky to duck under a park pavilion just after dusk, keeping us dry for the evening.  The next day we timed our ride to lunch on the lawn of the capitol building in Helena and even managed a mini-tour of the stately halls on our full stomachs.  That evening, we camped in a woman’s yard in Wolf Creek, a small town hemmed in between deep red canyon walls.  Her husband had just driven to the other side of the ridge to check on a wildfire started by a lightning strike in the storm we hid from the previous night.  At only 50 acres, it was just your everyday backcountry fire for these folks, and everyone we talked to seemed to think it was very much under control; still, it was cool to see the souped-up fire suppressant trucks racing about.  It was also interesting to interact with some of these responders, who come from all over the state and country to put in multi-week shifts out in the wildfire country out west.
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Stately lunch
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Wolf Creek Canyon
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Wildfire trucks racing off over the ridge
As has been the case across the state, we landed yet another great host in Great Falls.  Dropping down into the valley about 100 feet from the mighty Missouri River, we were greeted by John and kids Mark and Luke.  John has woven himself into the fabric of the cycling scene in the town and was able to navigate us around almost entirely on bike paths.  He was also incredibly knowledgeable on the history of the city and its importance to the Lewis and Clark expedition.  One of President Jefferson’s many tasks for the adventurous team was to map back to the source of the Missouri River; it was here in Great Falls, after all, they discovered they had chosen the correct fork of the river and then spent nearly three weeks portaging boats above the five falls.  On our rest day Cory and I paid a visit to the Lewis and Clark Center in town: it’s quite cool to see how much of our recent journey has overlapped with theirs and also to imagine what it must have been like for them without maps or any real knowledge of the route ahead.  A truly adventurous duo; I was glad to have refreshed my memory of their epic two-and-a-half year expedition.  The next day, Cory and I moved into the city, hit 4,000 miles en route, and finally hailed the arrival of our friend Theo!
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Riding down to stay along the Missouri
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Crossing paths with the great explorers Lewis and Clark
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One of the five Great Falls
Over three years ago on the last major tour, I pulled my bike into a hostel in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.  Upon arrival, the owner quickly showed me another loaded bike parked outside and introduced me to the adventurer behind the wheels, Theo Brun.  It didn’t take long to uncover our shared route toward Europe and lay out plans to ride together.  A week later, Cory had arrived and the three of us set out for two months of cycling across the deserts of Central Asia on some of the most unforgiving roads in the world.  Somewhere in the depths of western Uzbekistan a bond was formed strong enough to bring our friend back for a second tour with the Smetana brothers.  He left his flat in London to travel to Great Falls, and he will finish the ride with us to the Pacific.
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Our first dinner together in Uzbekistan three years ago
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The triumvirate returns
We persuaded Theo to cross the pond with visions of glorious cycling challenges and adventure, and boy were we in for it!  His bike was built in the first few hours.  The next morning we departed north for a couple days back in the great western plains.  Cruising across this barren territory of barley fields and Native American reservations, we blasted out 180 miles in the first two days, riding deep into the night and battling incessant headwinds and cold rain under a constant shroud of clouds.  I suppose Cory was just getting a little payback for what Theo and I put him through his first few days from Tashkent three years prior.  The riding was hard and Theo survived.  Two days from Great Falls we had already made it far into Alberta, Canada and arrived at the doorstep of Waterton National Park.
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Enjoying good omens along the way
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Riding across the empty lands of western Native American reservations
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Crossing back into Canada
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What it's like riding at night
I find it useful for my own memories to parse an extensive trip like this into major focal points or segments: this week surely centers around Waterton-Glacier National Park.  This joint national park spans the US-Canada border and houses dozens of gaping glacial gorges and valleys, some of the most impressive geologic masterpieces of the last ice age.  I envisioned the three of us riding across a sparkling, sunny, stunning landscape laughing like we were kids in The Sound of Music.  I should know better by now.  We woke up the next morning to weather that seemed to arrive from the gates of Stalingrad.  The next three days it was bitter cold; rain soaked our bones and clouds shrouded down over all the mountainous heavens like a thick coat of white fur.  Because temperatures dropped below 32 degrees, high elevations of the park actually got new snow – in August!
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Ready to set out into the cold
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Riding under a blanket of clouds and rain
Alas, as the appropriate proverb goes, we just rolled with it.  In fact, I must say we quite enjoyed it in a way only traveling cyclists can.  The clouds brought fleeting mystery to the mountain peaks, and the cold rain brought some hearty tests of character.  After all, what would adventure travel be without a bit of adventure?
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A mystic shroud over the mountains
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Happy to put the "adventure" into "adventure cycling"
Our first full day back in Canada, we climbed up into Waterton Lakes National Park.  Fixing flats and battling rain all afternoon, we looked so pitiful that the girl working the park entrance booth simply let us in free.  After spending a night in Waterton Village we explored the majestic Prince of Wales Hotel, overlooking mountain-bound Upper Waterton Lake.  The lake is an amazing specimen of the grand scale of carving power evident in the sliding glaciers.  Later that day we climbed back into Montana and down to the small town of Saint Mary, sitting on the border of Glacier National Park and marking the eastern end of the renowned Going-to-the-Sun Road.  After our initial push out of Great Falls, we had modified to shorter days in an effort to stall, hoping the clouds would eventually break and give us a chance to ride across the park in all its glory.  This proved to be a prescient move.
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Looking south across Upper Waterton Lake
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The majestic Prince of Wales Hotel
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Crossing back into the US
The next morning we awoke, crossed into the park, and began our ascent of the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road.  This feat of engineering, completed in 1933, took over 12 years to build and is still the only road across Glacier National Park.  For over 50 miles, it winds up and over the continental divide at Logan Pass, carving out a ribbon of road clinging to the side of unbelievably steep glacial peaks.  Still under a blanket of mist, we pedaled past Lake Saint Mary and began our climb up the 6% grade to Logan Pass.  The mist turned to rain as we ascended into the clouds, grinding along the curvy path of the road as it climbed higher and higher.  By early afternoon we reached the top and ducked into the visitor center to have lunch out of the rain.  Because you burn so many calories climbing, riding up in cold weather is actually not so bad – each one of us only wore a single shirt; going down, however, is a different story.  The wind of the descent rips all heat away from your body.  So, bundled up in all our clothes, we prepared to descend twenty miles into the clouds and rain of the western slopes.
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Early morning departure on the Going-to-the-Sun Road
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Exiting a tunnel into a wall of mist near the summit
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Knights in colorful armor
Just as we paused for the obligatory photos at the pass, the clouds broke!  The wide valleys gaped opened and the sun lit the landscape as if a massive curtain of clouds had been pulled aside.  I have ridden almost 15,000 miles on this bike, and these twenty rank among the best.  We followed the wondrous road as unwound lower and lower through the glacial valleys and down to the river below.
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Opening the curtain onto pure magnificence
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Unwinding along the mountainous walls as we drop into the valley below
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An incredible feat of engineering
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A modern day explorer surveying the land below
That evening we elected to camp one more day in the park.  Arriving early, we sprung for a short hike up to Avalanche Lake, where we finally caught sight of our first bears of the trip.  Two grown black bear cubs were foraging for food on the far shore of the small, scenic lake.  It was a perfect end to the day.  The next morning we awoke early and sped down into the ski-town of Whitefish for a much needed half-rest day.  Clothes washed and groceries restocked, we have conquered the great continental divide a final time and are ready to make our final push to the Pacific.
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Baby black bear
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Welcoming evening at Avalanche Lake
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Finishing it all off with a rejuvenating piece of Huckleberry pie
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Western Fun

8/15/2014

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Cory Smetana
We left Jackson and coasted a few miles west to Wilson, the base of our steepest climb to date: Teton Pass.  It was six miles up a ten percent grade, and we were fortunate that the side we climbed had a bike path to the top.  After two hours, we reached the top and dove into the foggy posterior of the pass that also descended ten percent and then leveled out where Kellen and I entered the state of Idaho for the first time in our lives.  I’ll have to count, and I know Kellen edges me out, but we’re both a few shy of setting foot in all 50 states!
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Riding into a cloudy mist on the western side of Teton Pass
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Trying to get creative crossing into our 11th state
Soon after our colossal border crossing we cruised into Victor, a relatively small town that houses many commuters to the Jackson area since Teton Pass is open year round and has a bus system that makes the trip twice a day.  There was a wide street that ran through the downtown area and small neighborhoods that spread outward and spotted the wide open valley, holding gorgeous views of the distant mountains.  Down one of these long arterial roads was a small circle where our wonderful warm showers hosts, Gene and Jenn lived.  This couple left Chicago a few years ago to join the outdoor lifestyle and beautiful scenery out west that we have so often seen the past couple of weeks.  We stayed an extra day to explore Victor and visited Grand Teton Brewing Co. where we joined some others in touring the brewery.   We learned about their brewing process, admired the giant barrels of fermenting yeast, and threw a couple back along the way.  We were also delighted when we learned the special on this day was buy one pint and get one free if you rode in on a bike!
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Gene, our wonderful host in Victor, Idaho
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Touring Grand Teton Brewing Company
From Victor we headed north towards southwest Montana.  We pedaled over some low rolling hills where dry fields of barley and oats glistened with a gold sheen.  We biked underneath a low flying plane that was dusting his crops and into the city of Ashton where we ate lunch.  The route from this town split two ways, one road directly north, and the other “scenic byway” trailing slightly out of the way.  We took the scenic byway, chewing up more elevation in a shorter time than its counterpart.  It was well worth travelling through the more attractive part of Targhee National Forest as we were able to ride past Mesa Falls along the way.  After the detour, we hopped back on the state highway and sped into Island Park.  We weren’t out anytime soon seeing as the city, only 500 feet wide in most locations, claims to have the longest “main street” in America at 33 miles.  This includes all the gas stations, lodging, and restaurants dotting the highway, serving this fly fishing hub of the US.
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Fields of gold
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Mesa Falls, Idaho
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Making sure we don't go thirsty...
The next day a few miles into our ride we saw a mountain range standing tall in the distance.  As the continental divide forms the border between Idaho and Montana, we were quick to label this as our next state crossing.  And indeed it was!  This was now our sixth time crossing the continental divide and our third time entering Montana.  Soon after, we were back skirting the western edge of Yellowstone as we continued north; we stopped in the park, only 30 miles short of Big Sky, to have lunch.  The beginning of our meal, we were drying our tent in the sun from the previous night, enjoying our PB&J bagels with a view and without a worry in the world.  By the end of the meal some dark, ominous clouds stormed in out of the woodwork.  We put our jackets on to be safe, a prescient move seeing as a mile down the road it started to rain.  Then the rain turned into a treacherous pelting of hail.  At this point we were riding through a tight river valley and had nowhere to seek shelter.  We had a short stint, keeping half as dry, underneath a tree to put on our riding pants.  Waiting and shivering under the tree would only make us more miserable, so we decided to keep riding to get our core temperatures back up.  Shivering and cursing along the way, I looked forward to Big Sky and a shower, where we could look back at our short misfortune and laugh.
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This state border was easy to see
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Hiding out from the hail
To our advantage we were riding downstream along the Gallatin River which marginally shortened our miserable conditions into town.  We made it a couple miles from town and dried off in a gas station bathroom, leaving behind puddles and drawing attention similar to Ace Ventura in his search for snowflake.  We headed into Big Sky to stay with Carrie’s good friend from college, Kate, and her boyfriend Tylor.  The next few days were an absolute blast!  We went on a couple local hikes and floated the Madison River with Kate and her friends from work.  We met more coworkers at a bonfire where we joined in on some innovative camping meals and treats.  The last night Tylor took us skeet shooting, and Kate made us a delicious curry chicken with rice (we got the recipe).  They were very gracious and generous hosts.  Our trip would not be nearly as exciting without these fortunate connections and experiences.
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Great times with Kate, Tylor, and Levon in Big Sky!
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Saturday afternoon float on the Madison River
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Clay shooting
From Big Sky we continued to trace the Gallatin River downstream to Four Corners, where we turned east to Bozeman.  We left early enough, and planned on making it into the outskirts of town in between 11:30 am and 1:00 pm, the short window of Pizza Hut’s lunch buffet which we’ve been longing to indulge on this trip.  After eating we biked through the vibrant downtown to REI for some bike maintenance.  Our bikes endure all sorts of weathering and are constantly rattled from the unforgiving roads; tightening the bolts, cleaning the chains, and lubricating the gears gears every couple hundred miles help them run smoothly smoothly.  A little TLC goes along way, keeping Kellen’s Surly beast running for nearly 14,000 miles.
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Pizza Hut lunch buffet: we each had over 10 slices
Earlier in the trip I thought we would be on our own through Montana: just us and the elements.  Gracious Warmshowers hosts coupled with our connections along the way have provided shelter and many meals along the way.  Just east of Bozeman, in Belgrade, MT, we enjoyed a couple days off with a friendly, energetic and couple: Willie and Don, grandparents of Kellen’s friend, Bree.  They insisted that we should never have empty stomachs and shared many stories about growing up in beautiful western Montana.  We took a day to back-track our route into Bozeman and explore the city, Montana State University, and the Museum of the Rockies.  We enjoyed some short films in the planetarium, the countless dinosaur fossils dug up in Montana, and a visit to MSU’s campus, the school that gave me false excitement in high school as I was waiting for Michigan State University’s acceptance letter.
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Willie, Kellen, and homemade rhubarb pie!
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Montana State University football
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More dinosaurs!
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This museum was a little more science-oriented than the one in Glendive
On our final day off Willie and Don drove us near Three Forks to explore the Lewis & Clark Caverns.  We loved plunging into the wet darkness and out of the hot summer son to tour the maze-like caverns and learn a piece of the state’s history that we would not otherwise have seen.  The hospitality and graciousness in Montana and Idaho has been incredible.  Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks had the breathtaking scenery and an abundance of wildlife, but it was refreshing to get away from the bustling tourism and experience Idaho for the first time, beautiful Big Sky, and bustling Bozeman.  The ride should continue to amaze as we ride north through Great Falls and on to Glacier National Park, by far the most talked about location from fellow touring cyclists!
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Down in Lewis & Clark Caverns
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Leaving Willie and Don's home at the foot of the mountains
Finally, check out the new Photo Pages posted for Montana and Wyoming!
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A Fortunate Detour

8/5/2014

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Kellen Smetana
Nearly 150 years ago, several prominent American financiers commissioned artists and photographers to join geologic expeditions to this region of the country to help promote the American west.  Over the last week, we saw first-hand in the jaw dropping scenery why the images they returned with led to the creation of the world’s first national park (Yellowstone, 1872).  Simply marvelous landscape: I’ll try to keep the prose light and photos heavy.
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Scenery like Yellowstone Falls
The Northern Tier cycling route, which Cory and I had been following since Minneapolis, rises north in Montana to hug the Canadian border as it passes through Glacier National Park and northern Idaho en route to the Pacific.  Had we followed this route, we may actually already be close to completing our cross-country journey.  In planning our ride, however, we found that our friend Theo could join us later in August and decided to build in a detour south to accommodate.  That proved to be the spark for a route that took on a life of its own.  The more we plotted and discussed our ride, the more excited we both became for this segment: it was time for some real mountains!

The first major component of our ascending journey was the Beartooth Highway, a 65 mile national scenic byway crisscrossing the alpine Montana-Wyoming border.  We first heard of this epic road from a fellow cyclist at a gas station in North Dakota; he heralded it as one of the greatest climbs in America.  Of course, with superlatives like that, we weaved it into our own route.  We had been slowly climbing since about Bismark and had caught our first sight of the Beartooth Range pulling into Billings, but now it was time to hit the mountains for real.  After a wonderful sejour with our hosts in Billings, we had a late, speedy day along a gradual uphill to set us up for an ascent of Beartooth Pass the next day.

The next morning we sped across the remainder of the gradual uphill to Red Lodge before the road bent further up like a launching pad skyward.  From there, it was a seven hour ascent to the top of Beartooth Pass: we climbed over 6,000 feet to reach the 10,947 foot pass, almost certainly our highest elevation of the entire trip.  It was a hot climb, but a smattering of cheers from passing motorists made us feel a bit like we were climbing in the Tour de France, only with less agility and a lot more baggage.  By 5pm we were over the top and bounding down into an absolute playland of natural beauty on the western side.
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Looking back down on the switchbacks of the road below
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Top of Beartooth Pass: 10,947 ft
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Dropping into a mountainous playland
We elected to sleep high up in the mountains that evening; it was a great decision, even though an incessant rain moved in late evening and brought overnight temperatures down into the 30s.  As we are now deep in bear country, our stealth camping is on hold in favor of established campsites, with bear boxes for storing food overnight and plenty of information on local activity.  We even picked up a can of bear spray in Billings: a worthy weapon that blasts 30 feet of pepper spray toward any overly aggressive furry intruder.  I’m happy to report zero incidences so far.
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Keep your camp clean!
The next morning, wet and cold but with high spirits we set off along the western end of the highway.  The camera was flying as we passed under high pines and jagged peaks.  Pulling into Cooke City, Montana, our ride across the scenic Beartooth Highway came to an end.  Four miles further down the road crossed into Yellowstone National Park.  It was time to see what all the fuss was about.
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Breakfast after the rain cleared
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Riding under the shadow of Pilot Peak
For some reason, I had categorized all my pieces of information about the park over the years into a simple representative summation: Old Faithful geyser.  Boy, was I wrong!  We spent nearly four days in the park, and my favorite part was actually the deep valleys of the north.  Nearly as soon as we entered from Cooke City in the northeast, we were greeted by a herd of over 1,500 bison.  Quite a sight to see!  Not to mention, the 2,000 pound beast can also raise the heart rate of any cyclist when any one (or usually many) of them defiantly plods a path directly on the road in front of you.  At one point we had to use a camper as a blocker as we passed one hairy gatekeeper in the middle of the road.  Just awesome.
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Ready to ride with the beasts
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We had to use a camper as cover to dodge this behemoth
We spent an evening in the northern end of the park and caught an interesting Park Ranger Talk about the return of wolves to the territory; the next day, we were down into the heart of the park.  I say “heart,” because much of the park’s unique geologic formations revolve around the grand Yellowstone caldera, the still active remnants of a roughly 40 mile diameter supervolcano that sits poised to blow big again sometime in the next 100,000 years.  Much of the park’s scenery – the geysers, hot springs, deep canyons, mountainous ridgelines – are a result of this geologic feature.  We first enjoyed the stunning formations in the deep canyon and falls of the Yellowstone River.  The next day, we picked up over to the western end of the park to visit a more barren land of geysers, cauldrons, and hot springs.  To get to Old Faithful and back we crossed the Great Continental Divide (Atlantic-Pacific) four times; it looks to be the first of many crossings – I may keep a tally.  The geysers were cool; even better, however, was the eerie watchful eye of Grand Prismatic Spring.
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Stunning Yellowstone Canyon
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The watchful eye of Grand Prismatic Spring
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Old Faithful selfie
Yellowstone definitely exceeded expectations.  The environment was beautiful, and we shared campsites with plenty of other friendly, interesting hikers and bikers from Iceland to New Zealand to Idaho.  There was only one negative element to the park: traffic.  The park has no shoulders, mountainous roads, and ornery vacationers hustling about for wildlife – a perfect storm for the weary cyclist.  In fact, Yellowstone had, unfortunately, the worst drivers on the whole 3,600 mile trip so far from Boston; we even received a couple lovely profane-laced jeers from passing drivers (a bit different than the encouraging cheers from Beartooth…).  I just smiled and waved at the passing simpletons, twisting whatever few points I could into their certainly already intolerable blood pressure levels… haha.  Alas, the roads and traffic improved significantly as we pedaled south through the Tetons, including some newly paved bike trails.
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Relax people, take some time to smell the flowers
After our meandering tour of Yellowstone, we cross the Great Continental Divide a fifth time (our legs appear to have strengthened since we left Boston…) and bound down south into the unmistakable Tetons.  I doubted it could get much better than the idyllic Beartooth high valley and Yellowstone’s geologic wonders, but mon dieu!  Grand Teton National Park was a great cap to the week.

Coming down into the valley east of the Tetons (much of which is known as Jackson Hole), we spent the first night alongside calm Jackson Lake.  Ten million years ago, tectonic movement on the Teton fault caused the western plate to rise while the eastern valley floor simultaneously dropped, a displacement of some 30,000 feet.  Over time glacial erosion crafted the magnificent mountains we find today.  The amazing thing about the Tetons is that because the valley is so low and flat, we are treated with an unhindered view of the mountains in all their glory, touching down to the lakes of the valley below like giant sentinels.  Our first evening in the park, we went for a short hike and grabbed a refreshing swim in the lake.
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Silent sentinels
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Sunset swim in Jackson Lake
The next morning, we were up riding by 7am, pedaling down to vividly clear Jenny Lake.  The ride was only 20 miles, but I think we took more photos than any full day previous to that.  Locking in an excellent campsite near the lake, we fit in a 12 mile hike that afternoon up Paintbrush Canyon to Holly Lake, sitting high between two of the Tetons.
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The Tetons!
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Campsite with a view
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Late lunch up high at Holly Lake
Instead of resting in Jackson, we decided to spend one more day in the park.  We biked to Mormon Row – remnants of historic settlement in the valley, passed by Ansel Adams famed lookouts, and read alongside Jenny Lake.  The camera was flying yet again.
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Admiring an old Mormon barn
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Pink homestead in the valley
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Bison were out and about again
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A fox hunting near our campsite in the evening, he later came running back with a groundhog
Travelers on the great open road, it’s always time to keep moving on.  Finally we rode downhill further into our most southerly point on the trip: Jackson, WY.  It was another wet morning, but we were treated with a bike path all the way down into the city.  Upon recommendation of another cyclist we met on the road, we decided to check out the National Museum of Wildlife Art on the way into town.  Cory and I spent over two hours there, soaking up hundreds of years of art depicting the animal cousins we just spent a week pedaling alongside; it was a really great museum.  At 3pm, we finally cruised into Jackson.  Having only eaten two granola bars and some pretzels on the day, we instinctively found a Chinese buffet and ate until we were sick (no joke, I left half a cookie on the table because I literally could not finish it).  We were back into cell service and civilization for the day.  Later today, we will be back in the saddle and up over the daunting Teton Pass into Idaho.  More mountains await.
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