Day 4

Day 4: 6/22/10

Start: Jackson Hole, WY
End: Bozeman, MT

Today's miles: 273
Total miles: 1046

Marriage status: Slightly more testy, but still having moments of smiling at each other and saying what an amazing trip this is.

Passed through: Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks

Today's Notes:

Well our luck with the weather took a slight turn today. We got a later start than we had hoped for this morning, and as soon as we were ready to get on the bikes and go it started to rain. So we broke out the rain gear for the first time so far this trip and headed to Yellowstone through Teton National Park. Almost right away we had our first major wildlife sighting (other than the antelope I almost hit), a moose! There was a huge Moose chowing down by the side of the road in the Tetons and we of course pulled over to take some photos (due to the rain I did not use my camera phone so those pictures will come later).

After getting into Yellowstone we drove straight up to Old Faithful. Which has basically turned into this massive tourists herding process, but a cool thing to see if you have never seen it. We waited for about a half an hour as the rain subsided until finally Old Faithful erupted, and then went to the cafeteria that is pretty much right next to it for lunch. The food at this place was fairly good, but the process of getting your food was a chore. There was a huge line, and you would think the workers would be moving their asses with so many people waiting, but seeing as we had Ben Stein from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" as our cafeteria server, timely service was not in the cards. About an hour and a half later we were done with lunch, and decided to drive pretty much the entire loop that takes you through the southern half of Yellowstone to take in the sites from the bike.

This was truly a beautiful drive. Much of it was next to the massive Yellowstone Lake which was gorgeous, and we saw tons of Bison on the ride. We also saw several deer today, and a bear! Now for those of you that know me from Colorado Springs you know that I have desperately wanted to see a bear for some time now. So as Tomme and I were driving we noticed traffic on the road had pretty much stopped and lots of people were out of their cars taking pictures. Immediately my hopes were up for a bear sighting, and Tomme was ahead of me on the road and I heard him say "It's a bear". Now I'm so excited I rush up there to look, and Tomme precedes to try and point it out to me for the next couple of minutes to no avail. Finally I do see a moving black dot in the distance, but he is so far off you can hardly call it a bear sighting. So Tomme grabs his binoculars and hands them to me and just as I get the bear in focus he moves behind the brush. Needless to say that after two years of yearning for a bear encounter this was pretty anticlimactic. But I am still holding out hope for a closer view on this trip.

After our drive through Yellowstone we headed up to Bozeman, MT where we had a reservation at a campground. We got to the site pretty late (It is 12:31 AM as I write this) and we really didn't feel like setting up the tent, so we caved in and sprung for a cabin. I have to admit that I was ready for a break from the tent and the self inflating air mattress so we reserved the cabin for tomorrow night too.

Mediocre tip: Appropriate gear is key. Staying dry in our rain gear today, and staying warm with my heated vest (it plugs into an accessory outlet on my bike) made the rain today a minor inconvenience instead of an all day bummer.


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