Day 31: Upper Lake to Madison @ Yellowstone (WYOMING!!)

Ride time: 5:04
Average:  11.1 mph
Distance:  56.32 mi

I'm glad that mosquitoes cannot bite through Gore-Tex.  This morning, they were horrendous while we were packing up camp.  It took everything I had to not lose it.  It was like black clouds of skeeters swarming around my head.  The torment was worth it for the delicious spring water that was available at our campground.

We crossed the divide (#7) relatively quickly, after my minor breakdown.

It interesting to me how my mind can talk me out of this trip.  It says that this trip is way too hard, or that we've got to be completely ridiculous to be doing this, or that my bed and access to a shower everyday is something that I cannot live without.  I had my meltdown, Nate slapped me around a bit, I laughed, and then we kept going.

The Idaho side is strikingly more beautiful than the Montana side.  We decided that we wanted to go through Yellowstone National Park instead of following the route maps.  We detoured north of Henry's Lake after we had a delicious lunch of stuffing, gravy, and cranberries.  We just needed a turkey.

The cows love us!  And I love them!

It was a good 18 miles or so with another divide crossing (#8) into the crappy tourist town of West Yellowstone.  What a stark contrast from the Montana Nice that we've experienced throughout the trip.  It seems as though everyone there is out to make fast cash from tourists.  Some guy wanted $36 from us to just pitch our tent in the driveway of the campground.  So, we booked it another 14 miles into the park after getting Subway sandwiches to eat and slamming 2 Mountain Dews (nope, no throwback).

It was $12 each for us to enter the park, and then another $6 each to camp.  The park has fantastic hiker/biker sites reserved for us non-motorized folk, meaning that you can just show up at a site without a reservation and they'll let you camp.  Pretty sweet.

Our ride into the park was along the Madison River:

It's best to try and look cute when I'm really not feeling that way...

Geographic mess: We started in Montana, rode east into Idaho, but onto the west side of the divide, then crossed back into Montana, and then entered Wyoming.

Right before we went to bed, there was a storm and a beautiful rainbow

Future GDR Riders: Even though the traffic can be overwhelming, the detour into Yellowstone was worth it.  You're right next to the park--go for it.  And ride right through West Yellowstone (but stop for groceries first).

Day 14: Bigfork to Condon

Ride time:  6:02

Average:  8.2 mph

Distance: 49.87 mi

Today was a near Double McCoy, considering we're only 8 miles from our next spot.  We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning in Bigfork.  We almost immediately began climbing out of the town and the scenery quickly changed to thick forests that smelled wonderful.  We were in the full sun throughout much of the day and it was HOT.  We sweat profusely while doing a near 6-mile climb.  The flies were quite irritating while we cranked out about 4 mph, which isn't fast enough to keep a breeze that would blow the bugs off.  Nate saw a black bear in a meadow, and then we both stumbled upon a black bear feeding on some vegetation near the road.  It was scared off very quickly, but of course, it took a toll on my nerves.

We finally pedaled into our camping spot, and as the book pointed out, it was swarming with mosquitoes.  So, I suggested that we book it to Condon, a town off of Hwy 83, about 10 miles down.  Here you go, Dan, a town and creek named after you:

We stopped at a grocery store on the way and slammed Gatorade to help replace all the fluid we lost on our ride--our 3-liter Camelbacks were drained.  We tailed a crazy thunderstorm much of the ride, but we we pretty lucky in that we were moving slower than the storm.  We came upon a patch of dense fog that came from a hail storm and the sight was pretty spectacular:

Hail-induced fog

I also ran over some ding-dong's "TO OUR CUSTOMERS" pin that gave me a nice flat about 1.5 miles from camp.  Thank you kindly for leaving your trash in the road.

Jerk.

I left the pin in it and rode carefully to Swan Valley Centre, a one-stop shop for just about everything.  It was just in time, too, because Mike, the mechanic, was just leaving for the night, but he let us into the showers, gave us a bathroom key, and told us where to camp.

Our humble abode

Day 9: Eureka to Tuchuck Campground

Ride time: 4:43

Average: 6.7 mph

Distance: 31.61 mi

After a huge breakfast at Jax Cafe again, we departed Eureka and began climbing.  We stocked up on groceries before we left at a pretty cool organic store in town.  You can see that our average speed was lowered significantly, pointing to the fact that much of the day's ride was uphill. 

We climbed like maniacs all day long, making me grateful for the fact the we had done Canada before getting to this day.  It's like Canada was the training for the beginning of the US section.  Whitefish Pass was pretty brutal, but stunning because of how remote we were.  Because we're in mega grizzly country (McCoy's book points out that this area is known for being the spot where wildlife officials relocate unruly grizzlies--kind of like a detention center, I guess), we cooked dinner about 4 miles before we hit our camp.  We were going a bit insane from the mosquitoes that wanted to eat us alive.

Eating dinner while the grizzlies watch us

Future GDR riders: hit up Montana Market before heading out, and the organic market is just south of there on the same side of the road.