- We had back-to-back taco nights in Grant village, but the feature was the lemon tres leches cake – so delicious that it wooed a sugar-skeptical Alice. We may have also eaten ocho churros.
- We rode to Grand Teton Park, and scored an amazing hiker/biker site at Jenny lake – losers who drive there need to reserve a site years in advance, but bikes just roll in!
- We met several other bike tourists on various adventures, and marveled at their palatial tents
- A black bear wandered through our campsite the next morning
- We took a day off to do a hike – we took the ferry across Jenny lake and hiked up into cascade canyon – absolutely gorgeous! One of the top five hikes I’ve done based on effort vs reward! Frigid dips were taken, marmots were spotted.
- We rode the bike path down to Moose, closed out the bar, and then rode back!
- The next day we had a big climb, which would have been fine except for the hordes of biting flies harassing us. We found a gorgeous spot to camp at 9000 feet just below the pass. We spent ninety minutes setting up the most complicated bear hang. We went to sleep to the strange sounds of an unidentified bird that went “wub-wub-WUB-WUB-wub-wub”
- We bombed down the pass and left the trees and lakes behind for the high desert prairie. We met several westbounders, including a man on an electric recumbent with an elderly cat in is handlebar bag.
- We visited the national bighorn sheep museum and learned that cyclists should gene splice with bighorns to get their 340 degree vision. Also, all the bighorns are dying from pneumonia
- We visited Sacagawea’s grave site, along with a fleet of model-t’s
- We visited a very cool bike shop in Lander that gave us ice cream and beer. Also there was a very nice city park to camp in
- The Jeffrey City bar didn’t have the same color that it had 20 years ago, but it was still a cool place to hang out, with a very sardonic bartender. Also, the cyclist hostel in the church is amazing and I could spend a week reading all the messages people have written on the walls
- Caught another killer tailwind on the ride into rawlins, ate some delicious Thai food, and sadly said goodbye to Anton, who departed via u-haul to catch the train back to California (after u-haul told him there was no truck available for his weeks-long reservation and he was preparing to bike 180 miles in 1.5 days like a madman)
- Had a very beautiful ride to Riverside, seeing dozens of pronghorns along the way. We stopped at Saratoga for a quick dip in the hot springs (before they cleared the pool due to lightning), and also went to a very cool cowboy festival/sing-along in encampment (with an acai bowl food truck if you can believe it)
- Had a killer eggplant -based lunch in Walden, then found a wonderful campsite just below willow pass. Alice and I have greatly improved our bear-hang game
- After a long descent, we stumbled upon an amazing all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet in Granby (with like 6 different pies!) we then rode to Tabernash to meet our amazing warm showers host, Bill, before Alice catches the train tomorrow morning
Holy cow that was a lot of catch up… I’ll try to be better about updating from now on. Here’s some nice pictures:
