Wild, Wild, Wyoming.
Our first experience with Wyoming was a short hop from the Black Hills into Newcastle. While it was only 9 miles of riding, it was a wild ride as we had a massive tail wind, lots of downhills, and a few tornadoes in the area as well. The people in Newcastle were great and made us several different pasta dishes as well as several other dishes.
From Newcastle we traveled to Gillette, a ride which wasn't nearly as impressive as our previous day, but did give us a view of Devil's Tower for about a minute as we were climbing a hill. The church in Gillette was pretty nice to us, and while they didn't provide a meal, they did have some nice facilities.
Out of Gillette we had a 65 mile ride down I-90, which seemed daunting at first, but ended up being very cool as we saw our first snow capped mountains at mile 17. Our ride that day brought us to the base of the Bighorn mountains which we would parallel on our way up to Ranchester the next day. Arriving in Ranchester, there was a creek in town that while quite cold, served as a wonderful way to spend an afternoon, along with a rope swing which made for an excellent entry point.
The next day would be an early wake up as we planned to conquer the Bighorn mountains. After a grueling 18 mile climb to the top we had to battle a headwind as we traversed the mountain top. Eventually we made it to the other side, but before we could descend we needed to take a team photograph in front of the coolest sign we'll ever see, 18 miles of down hill. What took us 2-3 hours to climb would only take us half an hour to descend.
From Greybull, we would travel to Cody, the last sign of civilization that we would see until we reach Montana as our next stop would be in Yellowstone National Park. To get there however would be another long climb, though not as steep and over a much longer distance. It was during this climb unfortunately that my camera decided to stop taking pictures, so most of my day into Yellowstone would be left unseen by others.
The following day, would be a rest day and we used it to do some exploring of the trails around our campsite. My group decided to hike the Elephant Back trail which would take us some 800 feet higher where we could get a good view of the lake and cell phone reception. Upon walking down and returning to the campsite, I decided to take another look at my camera and found that whatever was causing it to not work the day before, was functional again, so I spent the rest of the day taking as many pictures as possible.
We would have one more day in Wyoming where we would be riding out of Yellowstone into the town of West Yellowstone MT. We spent much of this day exploring the geysers and hot pools along the western edge of the park. We also crossed the continental divide twice that day and saw a small lake which drains into both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Wyoming ended up being quite a cool state, much better than I had ever expected.