Riding in Yellowstone and other adventures.

I awoke the next morning to a beautiful day. One of my neighbors had the coolestcamperever which is exactly what it's called dot com. I have a 71 mile ride planned around the northern loop in the park. 

 Thanks Teddy, the gift of the the National Park Service and Yellowstone in particular is the populist gift that keeps on giving. You deserve your place on Mt Rushmore.

 I thought this one was fake and then it moved.

 Old school cycling in Yellowstone.

 Coyote hiding in the grass chasing chipmunks.

 Another stop the car moment. Fortunately I can bypass the traffic jam and continue on my way.

 This ride had a looooong climb up to Dunraven pass at 8,700 feet which is by far the highest elevation I have ridden to. The views were magnificent and at times I was grateful for the forest fires that cleared out the sight lines in addition to perpetuating the natural ecology of this forest ecosystem.

 As the afternoon drew on the storm clouds started to build so I stopped in at Norris Geyser Basin to wait it out. I love all the geothermal activity in this area. yellowstone is home to 10,000 geothermal features or slightly over half of all of those on the planet. It contains the largest, the hottest and the tallest geysers on earth.

 Getting darker but time for a stroll through the geysers.

 This is Steamboat Geyser. It last erupted in 2005 and that was the tallest geyser eruption ever recorded at 380 feet. It rarely has a major eruption, ranging form four to fifty years so don't expect it to happen anytime soon.

 Ok I have to skip ahead in time. 26 hours after this picture was taken, Steamboat experienced a major eruption reaching around 280 feet in height or roughly 3 times the height of old faithful. I got there 20 hours later when it was in it's steam stage. It was magnificent and brought out a huge contingent of devoted geyser gazers. I didn't even know there were such people. Here is the same area 2 days later.

Back to real time and it is getting real for sure. It's getting stormy between me and the car and it's a stunning backdrop to the geothermal features here.

 As the storm blew through I hid out with the rangers as they explained how rare a major eruption is at the soon to erupt Steamboat Geyser. Another storm was on the way and the roads were wet and it was still lightly raining. Worse was it had gotten surprisingly cold so I jumped on the bike and pedaled my butt off. It was a very exciting ride with the storms all around and wildlife scurrying and zooming past countless steaming geothermal features. I had 21 miles to go with 2000 feet of descent and I did it in less than an hour. It was exhilarating and I would have loved to get more photos but while it was raining I had to keep the iphone put away.

 The day ended appropriately and there was even a large cow elk in my campsite as I turned in for the night. More surprises awaited me when I awoke.