Well, we've pedaled through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho and now finally we entered Montana! We still have 630 miles to go (Montana is a big state and we're going the most indirect route possible) but for the first time, the end is kinda in sight. Right now, assuming I don't get sick again, we can make it to the border and back in Kalispell, MT so I can catch bus in time for my conference in Canada so that's exciting to us. So far, sick days have consumed a total of 13 days in the trip! 3 in Silver City acclimating in altitude, 4 in Del Norte, CO after drinking bad tap water, 4 in Breckenridge, CO so I can eat by way back to health, 3 days Pinedale, WY after my food poisoning.
But all that aside, we've seen some pretty amazing things since I last wrote in Pinedale. Out of Pinedale, we rode up a river valley and found ourselves in the misquito and fly infested woodlands over Union Pass. The scenery was still great and the bugs just encouraged you to pedal faster. We ended up camping on a brillant deep blue lake by the edge of the woods and the other three sides just open field allowing you to see out at the sorrounding mountains while sitting in the shade. We made the decent from Union pass the next day down into another river valley and it was hard to stay on the road because the look down into the valley as you decended was so incredible we kept getting distracted but somehow, we managed to keep the rubber on the dirt.
The next day we rode up and over Towgotee pass. Wyoming passes are very strange. It all three passes we summited in Wyoming, the official "pass" is not the actual summit. In other words, you get to the sign that marks the "top" of of the pass and then you continue to climb like another mile. What gives Wyoming? Is this some sort of cruel joke? Regardless, when we actually go over the real top of Towgotee pass, I saw my favorite sign. The sign shows a truck going downhill with a sign that said "6% grade next 17 miles" 17 miles! oh yeah! So we screamed downhill to see the Teton mountain range in the distance. Eventually at the bottom, we entered Teton National Park and rode on the highway of death through the park to our campsite in Colter bay on a lake with a view of Mt. Moran towering over the lake. The highway of death is full of everyone in a great big hurry on their vacation so they can relax. Lots of traffic, big motorhomes swerving around (I mean, come on people, if you cannot control you vehicle perhaps you should get a smaller one!), SUVs full of children driven by parents that lack respect for other people's children riding their bicycles along the roadside. There is little to no shoulder leaving no room for us to ride off the road pesenting a situation that led to one RV getting upset and attempted to knock us off the road with his trailer. We caught up to him trying to check into the same campground we were going to (yep, really saved a lot of time didn't he). The whole thing ended with park rangers getting involved and he recieved a written warning for attempted vehicular manslaughter (they couldn't really charge him b/c the rangers didn't witness the event). The next morning, we left out real early and finished the death road with little traffic and no other incidents.
We got back on dirt in Flagg Ranch and rode through the woods, through an area damaged by fire, by a huge lake (great for swimming) and eventually out of woods after long steep climbs and got to enjoy a decent all the way to a campsite with views of the backside of the tetons. One of the neat parts of this trip is to see a really killer mountain range off in the distance and by the end of the day, you're staring at the base, by the end of the next day, you see it behind you.
The next day we rode up an old railroad bed. The tracks and ties have been removed leaving a base of very loose sandy volcanic soil. Loose sand makes progress extremely slow and requires a lot of energy to plow your bike through it. The initial scenery made up for this as we climbed up the side of a rocky canyon with the warm river cascading beneath us. This culminated in an old train tunnel that was built around 1910 and is slowly deteriorating. You could still smell oil and steam inside the tunnel as you hoped the decaying roof stayed intact while you journeyed through the darkness heading for the other side. It really made you appreciate the difficulty and challenges the railroad workers must have faced to build this track back in the early 1900s. The workers left lots of graffiti chizeled into the rocks around the rail bed with dates from the 1880s to 1920s. A lot of work for a now inactive railroad only to be used by an occasional cyclist and ATVs. The sand made riding extremely difficult (like 4 mph on level ground) and we eventually left the rail bed and took an alternate once our trek led us away from the scenic canyon and into ranchland. We eventually made camp after riding through a hailstorm in the odd town of Macks Inn, Idaho. Odd because, well, the whole place just felt weird. We were happy to leave it the next day when we pulled a short day over red rock pass and into Montana to camp at a beautiful lake that is a protected habitat for trumpeter swans. The lake was covered with these big white birds and behind the lake was this towering rocky mountain that still had snow on its peak. One side, mountain, the other, lake full of swans. The scene was something out of a novel. The only not included in the novel was the swarms of misquitos and flys that kept us more in the tent then looking around.
Leaving the swan lake, the scene turned back into wasteland. The mountains subsided into large rolling hills and the trees gave way to scrub. The wind picked up and we pedaled hard all the way to Lima, Montana on I15. Having the opportunity for a bed, shower, and full meal is always good encouragement to suffer through wind and heat for 57 miles.
We're staying at the Mountain View Inn, a fantastic little motel run by folks that love cyclists. In fact, they're so nice, that they are letting me borrow their labtop so that I can type this right now.
Tomorrow, we head out into the woods again and ride through a canyon on our way to Butte. We should arrive in Butte by the 15th.
Lee
In case this post isn't long enough. I needed to add some things from when we were in Steamboat Springs, CO about two weeks ago. I forgot to say that during our rest day, my buddy Carl Weber came up and we toured the MOOTS titanium bicycle company. THese guys make EVERY little piece of the bike by hand and then weld it all together. You can really get a sense of the craftsmanship and attention to detail that the pour into each custom bicycle frame they build. I can now understand why they cost so much, but I still cannot afford it.
Also, the guys at MOOTS pointed us toward some killer singletrack trails. At long last, I was able to drop the trailer and enjoy some really really fine mountain bike trails! Later we met the folks at Big Anges (the company that made our tent) and one of the girls that worked their told us that all of these bike trips are "Brutiful" in that they are brutal on the body but so beautiful to the eyes that it makes up for it. She is completely right!
So Steamboat Springs is a killer place full of nice people and thousands of mountain bikes but its a bit pricey to live there.
That's all I got, y'all have a great day!
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