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.

Headed to Idaho errr I mean Yellowstone National Park

I packed up and headed out of Deadwood headed for the southern part of Wyoming, south of Yellowsone and planned to swing west through Idaho on my way to Glacier National Park. That wa the plan until I checked the weather forecast and saw 60-80% chance of thunderstorms every day for the next six days in that direction. When i checked the north end of Yellowstone the chance was only 30% so even though I had no interest in riding with the crowds of tourists in Yellowstone, that's the way I headed. I was told to check out Devil's Tower so I headed that way first and it was so surreal to drive along and suddenly it springs up in the middle of nowhere. Did I mention that Doug climbed this thing? That's also a little surreal.

 

 Along the way I met Eli who is traveling for Oregon to Montauk, NY and is getting paid to do it as a research grant on various perceptions of the wilderness experience. I hope he's not staying in the same campgrounds that I am because that is about as far from wilderness as you can get. I was further from my neighbors in NYC. Eli seemed like a great guy and after tightening his handlebars, filling his water, turning him on to electrolytes and cleaning and lubing his chain, I sent him on his way. Ride Eli Ride!

 This one is for Kimberly!

 It was getting late so Kimberly came through yet again with the Marriott rewards point and I scored a nice room in Billing MT. After a good nights sleep and a bit of planning I headed to the park. The idea was to use the northeast entrance and use a site I reserved in a corporate run campground that had 430 reserveable sites. It wasn't ideal but the first come first serve sites fill early in the morning. I figured I'd get up early the next morning and move to a better site elsewhere in the park but once again, good fortune shined it's light right through my plan and cme up with something better. The road to the northeast entrance had road construction and being impatient and late, I headed for the north entrance at Gardiner MT. When I got there I stopped at the first campground just in case and was told it was full and handed a list of nearby places to camp outside the park. I found a real gem. High up on the mountain above Gardiner was a national forest campground where the sites were 150' apart and the view was great and there was cellular service so I could call home, Score!

Spearfish Canyon with Doug Muir First we go up and then we come down

This is a short one. I met Doug on the road yesterday and we instantly hit it off. I think I just love amazing people. He is a strong cyclist but that may be because he is also a climber and an ultramarathon runner. I ride 100 miles. Doug runs 100 miles and he does it in 18 hours. I drive to Devil's Tower. He climbs it. I like people like Doug because it makes my adventures seem so tame in comparison. Doug was here with his mom and while she did a little shopping and reading we went for a little recovery ride. Doug picked the route and it was a great one. Spearfish canyon is an 18 mile uphill run at a shallow consistent pitch. When we got to Cheyenne Crossing we turned left and the climb went to 7% for 3 miles where we topped out at 6,200 feet and turned around to head back to the car. The descent was smooth and the curves were open so we sped along happily at 43 mph only using our brakes to stay below 45. At Cheyenne Crossing we turned right and put the power to the pedals to fly on down and back to the cars. It was a fun and relaxing ride with light traffic that allowed for good conversation. We will definitely be riding together again, probably on this trip and also perhaps on the Colorado Epic Ride. The funny part came later when I took the wrong road out of Deadwood headed back to my campsite. I started going down this steep hill and thought how I was grateful I hadn't chosen to ride in to meet Doug because this was a really long steep hill. Then I got to Cheyenne Crossing and realized that I had indeed climbed this hill already and not only that but coming down it in the car, I had only been going 38 mph. Gotta love the bike.

 This one is for Kimberly