Day 45: Medicine Bow NF to Steamboat Lake

Ride time: 6:19

Average:  9.1 mph

Distance: 57.77 mi

Dew was everywhere this morning--our stuff was soaked.  We packed up quickly, though, because we have a big day today.  We're doing the Columbine Alternate instead of the regular route.  We filtered water out of some creek that had a gigantic herd of sheep waltzing through.  I now know what sheep poop looks like...

Nate riding through Aspen Alley

Our ride was incredibly beautiful with aspen trees quaking as the wind blew, green shrubs everywhere and tall mountains all around us.  It's such a nice change of scenery.  We rode through Aspen Alley after filtering, and then rode along a creek for awhile as the sun heated up the air.  We wanted so badly to jump in the water, but the ranch fences went right up to the bridges, so it was impossible to get access to the water.

Heading into Colorado

Today ended up being very tough terrain--lots of rollers in some pretty intense heat.  We opted to do the Columbine Alternate instead of sticking to the main route.  It turned out to be up and then down, up and then down, repeat.  We were incredibly parched and ran out of water along today's ride. Brain yelled out, "Water?!!?" to an oncoming car, and they stopped and gave us a couple of water bottles. Nice peeps. Near the end, it was all up, up, up to Columbine where we bought ice cream and Brain treated us to Mountain Dews.  After that, it was a quick 5 miles to Steamboat Lake.  We ended up camping with two of the Bobs, so we split the campsite three ways.

View from Steamboat Lake Campground

I need to start researching how to clean a down sleeping bag--Nate's sleeping bag currently smells like a wet dog that rolled in a pile of Nacho Cheese Doritos.  Mine, of course, smells like roses and vanilla frosting.  Speaking of, bummer to hear about that grizzly bear attack outside of Yellowstone that happened this past week.

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 28: Grasshopper Inn to Dell

Ride time: 4:34
Average speed: 14 mph
Distance: 64.1 mi

I love flexibility.  The Cross Ranch no longer does "meals with the cowboys," which was what we were going to do today, so we pressed on like animals to Dell, Montana.  After eating so well at Grasshopper Inn, we were totally able to do this ridiculous 64 mile day.

We also had a super sweet tail wind on pavement that had us doing about 19 mph for the first 20 miles of the day.  We then headed south toward Bannack State Park, but decided to forgo the experience.... That might have been a bad idea, but oh well.  Nate had fun with the camera instead:

We then entered into what felt like wide-open country, and I had this feeling of being really exposed.  But there are telephone wires out here, so someone is nearby...

It was a beautiful ride, but we had to cruise along I-15 again.  And, of course, in complete Robyn fashion, about 3 miles north of Dell, I got my 3rd flat tire from a rock (??).  We changed it fairly quickly and pulled into Yesterday's Calf-A just in enough time for me to get the last roast beef dinner.  We then got a piece (well, the server was nice and gave us a piece and a half) of 4 berry pie a-la-mode.  YUM.

Next to the cafe is a saloon and there we met Joe and Randall, two locals with too much time on their hands.  Joe let us camp in the yard behind the saloon in exchange for some conversation. :)

Day 26: Butte to Wise River

Ride time: 5:32
Average:  9.5 mph
Distance:  52.64 mi

National Folk Festival + sleeping in city parks= not a good night's sleep.  There were copious amounts of drunkos being super loud and talking about peeing on our bikes at 3 AM, so we didn't sleep that well.

Heading south out of Butte, we biked along pavement and then turned on to a dirt road and crossed under an old ginormous railroad trestle.  Can you spot me next to it?

We then climbed over our 6th Continental Divide crossing which then opened up into a huge sage brush meadow.  There's something delicious about the smell of sage.  The scenery was beautiful and we took tons of pictures.  Isn't Nate a hottie?

We then dove down to I-15, and instead of doing Fleecer Ridge, we opted for the Divide Alternate.  What a gorgeous ride!  We stopped at Blue Moon Saloon and had nachos supreme.  Then we entered a canyon that had a wicked headwind, but the scenery was breathtaking, making the ride a bit easier to endure.

Black Hole River from Nathan Currier-Groh on Vimeo.

We wound along the Big Hole River, a popular spot for fishermen (and women--fisherpeople?).  We rolled into the Wise River Club, an RV Park, restaurant, saloon, and make-shift campground.  It was only $5 to camp, and that included a hot shower in probably one of the most bizarre places I've ever showered: a brick building that's a sauna in the wintertime with a broken window, so it was kind of like showering outside.

Future GDR Riders: The owner of the Wise River Club is super cool, and I would highly recommend staying there.  I can't say what Fleecer Ridge is like, other than I know I would have been walking my bike down the other side.  What we missed in climbing, was certainly made up in beauty as we did the Divide Alternate.

Day 15: Condon to Seeley Lake

Ride time: 2:17
Average: 11.5 mph
Distance: 26.57 mi

Finally, a reasonably priced breakfast!  We ate across the Hwy at Swan Valley Cafe and overheard some other local talking about waking up and finding a black bear in her backyard.  After our meal, we had some baking soda beverages to help dissipate the lactic acid in our sore leg muscles.  It tasted awful, but I have to say that I felt no burning in my quads on our ride today.  "Put me in Coach!  I've got fresh legs!"

Instead of following the route, we decided to book it down Hwy 83 to Seeley Lake--BAD IDEA.  There's little to no shoulder, and it's a very busy road.  We made KungPao noodles for lunch at Summit Lake, which was a scenic pull off for folks traveling on Hwy 83.  We were asked a million times by tourists where we were riding to.  I'm going to start making up stories about where we're going and where we've been.  Kind of like Mary does to strangers she rides the ski lifts with...

We rolled into Seeley Lake around 3 PM and set up camp at Big Larch campground.  It's very reasonably priced and has great big campsites (site #43 was a good pick for us).  We have a bounce box waiting here, but by the time we got to to post office, it was closed--they close at 4 PM. Hmmf.  We had to stop at a bank and get cash.  We're finding that not many campgrounds take credit card.

Peter and Lauren from California showed up and asked to share a campsite with us.  They're biking across the country to Maine.  We had a feast--grilled pork chops, portabello mushrooms, onions, red peppers, and a wild rice mix.  Plus, we had marshmallows, chocolate, and bananas for dessert!

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 5: Blue Lake to stealth camp outside of Sparwood

Ride time: 2:55

Average: 10.7 mph

Distance: 31.43 mi

We bums (we're still traveling with Ed) slept in until 9:30 this morning.  After a power ride to Elkford, we had a delicious lunch at Emi's Cafe (just in time, too--they had to close shortly after we got there because the afternoon cook was sick and couldn't come in).  We did not follow the map today because we took Hwy 43 from Elkford to Sparwood to save time.  This was the first day that we didn't have any rain!!  Woohoo!

Our tent was the only thing that blended into the forest.

We stealth camped in some wildlife preserve that is on the same road as the donkeys and ranchettes just outside of Sparwood.  Tomorrow, we'll bike a short distance and check into some sort of lodging in Sparwood and take a rest day.