Written by Chris

Day 26 – June 23 – 55 Miles, 3,060 feet climbing (West Yellowstone to Grant Village)

Today’s ride was billed as an “active rest day”. Only Dave would call 54 miles and approximately 3k feet of climbing a rest day. We left the lodge at 6:50 am with me (Chris) taking over Pete’s role as the last to be ready. I suspect I’ll retain this title for the duration of the ride. Pete, I already miss you!

We hit the entrance to Yellowstone before 7. Dave helped the gatekeeper’s education by making sure she knew that a “lifetime senior pass” is good for a total of 4 cyclists. She initially said that only applied to people in cars and that bicyclists had to pay separately.  Dave had already had this discussion with a couple of the rangers at the Visitor Center when he picked up his senior pass, so he was armed with the right information.  Only after checking with some of her colleagues was our ticket taker willing to accept he was right.

We headed into the park pleasantly surprised by the courtesy that most of the drivers showed us and a shoulder that varied between two and three feet. We thought that the first 14 miles would be boring. From a cyclists perspective it was amazing. The air felt great, the Madison River was beautiful, the flowers were out and we saw our first wildlife: elk, followed later by a baby buffalo, which put Curtis into tourist mode. That is, take every pullout, stop on short notice and snap pictures.

We took the Old Faithful route, which included a stop at the paint pots (the blue pool). Having seen it a couple of times, I stayed back to watch the bikes while the others walked the loop. I was entertained by the massive number of tourists walking by, people trying to get into the parking lot, and the general craziness of it all. The others came back excited by the view. And our luck continued – we made it to Old Faithful maybe 20 minutes before it erupted.

With our main objectives completed we headed to Grant Village where we will be spending the night. On the way we rode over the continental divide twice and hit a high point of 8539 feet! Personally I was a little light headed when we reached the summit. When we stopped at the 2nd continental divide sign we talked with a self proclaimed “old woman” (likely my age) who was doing an Astoria to New Hampshire ride. She is averaging 100 mile days on a carbon fiber bike with skinny tires (she volunteered that they weren’t very comfortable on these roads) and a RV supporting her. She was looking forward to getting out of diesel pickup country (sorry brother) and down to lower elevations.

We are all set up at camp and planning to make dinner here. We’ve been warned that grizzlies have been active in camp so we have to lock everything up in bear lockers and avoid food and anything with an odor in our tents.

We’ll post this tomorrow as we have no mobile service here.  Assuming, that is, that a grizzly doesn’t visit us during the night.  I have told Nancy that my snoring keeps us safe from the bears but she doesn’t appear to believe me.  Dave and Nancy have the bear spray in their tent, so I guess they’ll be the most likely to survive any nocturnal visits from wildlife.