Today the ride was dedicated to the woman we met yesterday in Yellowstone. After learning about our organization’s mission, she informed Michaeline and I that the reason she was in the park with her two sons, was because her husband had originally planned the trip. Unfortunately, he died of colon cancer earlier this year in April.
Sorry for going incognito on all the daily readers out there. We have been camping in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone the past three days. I know I have made this claim about more than one state before, BUT Wyoming was definitely the best state we have passed through so far. (don’t let dissenters Phil and Tyler tell you otherwise). While in Dubois we met a dude who was completing a world tour on his bike. He plans to ride from Miami to Portland, take a freight boat to China and Kazakhstan, through Europe, and back to the US. He thinks the trip will take around 3 years. If interested, look up ChefAustinHarley on Instagram. Even though his riding style did not exactly match ours, he was an exceedingly interesting man to converse with.
Most of us had not heard of the Tetons before this trip but they were absolutely amazing. For those of you who also were unfamiliar, picture snowcapped mountains with jagged tops and a pristine lake below. We even spent a few hours wading in the lake during our rest day.
We spent yesterday biking 80 miles through Yellowstone. We got to see Old Faithful erupt and turquoise hot springs. To be honest, most of the way in Yellowstone I was counting down the miles until we would finish because of the excess amount of cars and people made riding on the shoulder a little scary. However, it was really cool to see all the wildlife. We witnessed a stoic buffalo (fun fact buffalo and bison are synonyms), a family of elk moving across the road, and an eagle in flight.
Leaving the campsite this morning after three days of sleeping in a tent, I think many of us were thankful that we have the luxury of a roof over our heads for a majority of the ride. Since we were in bear country we had to lock up all of our food while we slept. Some of the team even claim to have heard wolves in the middle of the night yesterday. Although cooking hotdogs and s’mores over the campsite was fun to switch it up, it would be hard to be camping every night. Don’t get me wrong camping was super fun, but I am glad we did not have to do every night like the founding I4k team did. You guys are the true bada**s
Today’s ride was ideal. Instead of riding over mountains like we have been doing lately, we got to bike in between them and mostly downhill for 70 miles. Two state lines we crossed, Idaho for about 10 miles and then back into Montana. We even had a tailwind towards the end. We got in at around 2 PM and the whole team tackled cleaning the post-camping messy van. Since one bowl of pasta didn’t cut it for most of us, we invaded the local gas station to stock up on snacks.
More tailwinds please
MB