Day Nine - Yellowstone Park

BATHROOM CRIB

My night in the bathroom went well -- no visitors, no nightmares. Maybe sleeping on the floor helps with my night terrors. ha ha. I got up pretty early on day nine and was on my way quickly. There was a steady 2000' climb over the next 50 miles to Yellowstone. Watching the sun come over the mountains in the morning is really a nice way to start the day.

Maybe 25 miles in, I found breakfast. They weren't technically open yet, but she let me in and showed me to the coffee pot. This nice middle-aged woman managed this camp site as a summer job with her husband. She explained that she had seen plenty of bikers lately and allowed them to use an old sea container in the back to get out of the cold at night. I wondered if that is where Benjamin had ended up. No bikers here now, I better get going.

The scenery was nice but didn't change much. Now I could see the allure of the river for fly fishermen as I spotted several casting their lines in to the Madison river.

LUNCH AND WORRIES

As I approached West Yellowstone on the wide roads with little traffic I, all of a sudden, found myself biking fast in the side gravel and grass. It took about 40 yards to turn the bike back to the road while avoiding some big boulders. Wow, that was lucky I guess. No idea why that happened. Did I doze off?

I met up with Russell Jones few miles out of West Yellowstone and we ended having lunch together. He had been camping in Ennis and told me that it got pretty cold. I'm glad I found my Lions den. This meal would be only the second meal that I shared with another rider to date. The company was good but the food was bad. We headed together to the Yellowstone Park entrance to pay for our passes. It was drizzling but what really worried me was the bad weather that was clearly visible in the park up ahead. There were 1500' more to climb to get through the park and I didn't have the gear. The talk in the town was that several inches of snow was on its way. I reluctantly told Russell to go ahead and turned back into town to figure out what I would do. I needed to get in front of his weather.

I grabbed a hot coffee, wrote and mailed a postcard home and decided to look into the stores for gear. Success! A camping gear shop was having a sale on jackets 50% off . Got a nice real rain jacket with liner made by Columbia and the coup-de-gras, was a big box in the back with $20 wind pants. Now, I'm ready to push into the park. Now I can survive the elements. The park roads are fairly narrow with little to no shoulder and there seemed to be plenty of traffic. And now the weather was sunny and relatively warm. At the first batch of geysers there wan't a cloud to be found. The weather was still being unpredictable.

I made it to Old Faithful and waited for 45 min, but it was not to be. Waited as long as I could while I ate some food and rested in the sun. On my way back through the visitors centre, I found a geyser clock that showed next predicted geyser in another 40 min. I certainly couldn't wait that long-- and I'm very glad I didn't.

BEAR ANGEL

There were many steep climbs coming up and not much by the way of accommodations up ahead. I need to get going. Even though my trusted maps showed only two passes to go over, I'm sure there were four by the time the day was over. As I was slowly heading up one of them, a van coming in the opposite direction slowed down and told me that there was a grizzly up ahead on the side of the road. I looked at him and said thanks, but that's the only way for me to get to where I'm going. As I continued to drudge uphill, he turned around and rode along side of me creating a van wall until we passed the bear sitting there eating something in the earth. I said thanks again and the van departed. Now I'm still on relentless hills, but all alone. It was getting late and traffic was real light. I hope there weren't anymore bears out there. My bear spray was at the ready.

THIS IS HOW MY BEDROLLS

Rolled into the campgrounds at Grant Village around 2200hrs. After the previous night in Ennis, I felt bolder to find accommodations on my own and found my second heated bathroom in as many nights. Not as clean as the Lions toilets, but it will have to do. I hid my bike in some bushes and set up my bedroll in the toilet, just then I started to hear the rumble of thunder. And then the sky really opened up. The storm lasted hours. This storm would cause several bikers to be stranded in West Yellowstone as they had to wait for the snow to melt. Luckily there was no snow happening on this side of the pass.

I have been learning plenty each day about long distance riding and adjusting to the conditions. Today, I felt that I had the day in control and not the other way around. Only 123 mile today.