Day 46: Twin Bridges to Jackson

Our pre-breakfast ride was slightly chilly (in a very pleasant way!), mostly uphill, scenic, and educational. The highway we've been following is part of the Lewis and Clark Byway and, as such, includes informative "historic sites" every 10ish miles. We've been thoroughly enjoying these semi-regular stops, and are rather tickled by the broad definition of historic, literally including everything from the geologic formation of the landscape to the preservation of rangeland and wildlife for future generations. One sign even included philosophical musings on the meaning of life and the responsibility of an individual to contribute positively to society. Awesome.

View from an historic point

We had an extended brunch at Safeway (gas points should be on some Nuechterlein card!) and filled up our waters for the upcoming desert. Two passes, 48 miles, a crazy headwind, a brief rainstorm, a dearth of trees/tree diversity, and a few historic sites later, we arrived in Jackson, MT. Population 38. As a cyclist had warned us the previous night, there wasn't even a gas station in the tiny town. There wasn't much besides an expensive hot springs that charged you to camp there. However, there was an elementary school (with an outdoor spigot and a beautiful view of the mountains!), which we ended up camping behind. Before we ate dinner at our campsite, we stopped at a little cafe and enjoyed a glass of iced tea on the porch.

That night, each of us stumbled out of our tent to pee and were met by the sight of a million sparkling stars, milky way and all. The sky was so big that it was like being at sea! Alix even saw a shooting star. Overall, we were rather pleased by our stay in Jackson.

Day 45: Bozeman to Twin Bridges

Instead of backtracking to Ennis (up the beautiful canyon), we decided to loop around from the north to check out some new roads. It was a great decision! One, it's always nice to be on totally different roads and, two, the mountains, rivers, and canyons were beautiful along most of the ride.

For the first time since the south, we took an afternoon siesta, escaping the intense sunshine by sprawling on the cool concrete outside the Lewis and Clark Canyons. Though this meant we got into Twin Bridges kind of late, escaping the heat of the day was pretty delightful (and we got to see the sunset as we rode into the campsite!).

Riding into Twin Bridges

The view from our campsite!

The campsite was pretty amazing. The folks in Twin Bridges have built a little shelter, complete with shower, toilet, sink, outlets, and couches, solely for touring cyclists. Amazing! Of course, it helps the town, too, since cyclists staying in town tend to also spend money in town. (Well, we didn't, but most would.)

It was crowded at the campsite that night, 4 cyclists were there when we arrived: two French men doing a world tour, a guy from California heading east on the trans am, and another guy heading west. When we found them they had settled in and were sitting at a picnic table, hanging out, smoking, and drinking whiskey. We headed inside to escape the mosquitoes, and the guys followed shortly. It was interesting to hear their stories, especially those of the French guys, who were just a year into their three year journey.

As we often do, we asked all the cyclists what they ate every day. As they often do, their responses made us happy that we eat the way they do (although carrot and peanut butter sandwiches do sound pretty awesome). (But maybe not literally every day for lunch for six months...) We decided that we eat more vegetables than all of them combined. They also noted that they were impressed by how much we ate!

Being proper gentlemen, the guys set up their tents and offered to let us sleep on the couches inside (even though they were there first). So we slept rather well that night! In the morning, the more talkative Frenchman told us that not only was he impressed by how much we ate, but also how far we ride, how energetic we are, and how well we get along! This was nice to hear. :)  (It seemed he was also getting along great with his companion, although they had recently bought another tent so they didn't have to sleep in the same one!)

We are always so grateful for places like the campsite in Twin Bridges and left the town feeling quite content with humanity.

Day 44: Bozeman Explorations

Though we'd originally been planning on only spending one night in Bozeman, we changed our plans after a pleasant morning in town. We spent a few hours in a coffee shop, made some phone calls, and enjoyed walking/biking around the city. The food coop was an excellent place for lunch, and to resupply on a few goodies (dark chocolate covered ginger, Brazil nuts). Our second real rest day! (Though we did still bike about 20 miles around town.)

Olives: a fabulous addition to our usual culinary habits

Don't you normally make benches out of ski lifts?

Bozeman seems like a touristy, slightly collegey, outdoorsy place. Generally pleasant and interesting, if not our favorite place we've been to (it's rather expensive/boutiquey). Lots of people on bikes. It also has excellent cocktails and LOTS of coffee shops.

We made a new friend!

We've decided that cocktails (and other drinks) are really interesting because they can offer flavors that you couldn't otherwise find in foods. The beet (lemon, tarragon, egg white, gin) cocktail, an excellent example. 

Can't beat that color... ;)

Bourbon, Drambuie, grapefruit bitters, Laphroaig. Also excellent.

We decided that not paying for camping is a good way to fund our drink exploration :)

We watched a movie in the evening--that was a fun and different activity! We chose a French movie from Netflix called The Kid with the Bicycle (couldn't depart TOO much from our touring theme), which we don't necessarily recommend. Parts were enjoyable, poignant, etc, but it lacked substance (i.e. a decent plot or ending). Oh well, still pleasant.

Authorship

A brief note about authorship: We know it might say Alix or Sonja has written a given post; however, this has no basis in reality. All that tells you is who originally created that post...but we both edit, post photos, add captions, write, etc. all the posts. (If you can guess who wrote certain bits, well, that's certainly possible, just not correlated with stated authors.)

Also, today was gorgeous. Beautiful mountains, rivers, rocks, sunset.

Day 43: Island Park to Bozeman

Total mileage: 111

Last night, we realized we had extra time before we needed to be in Missoula. We had been hearing a lot about Bozeman, MT on our trip, so we decided to detour there. This meant a lot of riding today, but we decided it would be worth it.

The beginning of our ride was beautiful, but unfortunately took us into a headwind.

Morning view

We stopped at a bait and tackle shop to get water, and met lots of nice people there. It was nice to get out of the hyper-touristy areas closer to Yellowstone.

In the bathroom of the very nice bait & tackle shop we stopped in for water

We were running a bit behind schedule (ugh, wind), so we ate a quick (and scenic!) lunch in Ennis outside the grocery store and continued on our way. We took a gorgeous pass over the mountains on our way out of town.

Looking back after the steep climb out of Ennis. Big Sky Ski Resort is somewhere back there, but we couldn't pick it out.

The rest of our ride proved to be equally gorgeous, and we were happy to be detouring. In fact, it proved to be one of the more scenic rides of our trip. Along the way, we rode through Norris (which we heard has lovely hot springs) and through a cliff-lined valley along the Madison River. We were pretty jealous of all the people drifting slowly down the river on their inner tubes/rafts.

Several biggish climbs later and we were almost to Bozeman, where we had found a Warmshowers host with whom to stay the night. We were pretty tired by the time we rolled into town.

View from a hilltop

We had showers and a nice dinner with our host before calling it a night. 110 miles is tiring!

Day 42: Madison to Island Park, Idaho

Total mileage: 33 (+6 miles hiking!)

Evidence of paying for camping. It felt rather luxurious.

Daily vitamins: a Brazil nut (for its selenium, Google it!), and a Tums (calcium, for the altitude, according to Barbara) 

We slept in and still had time to go hiking! We chose a less-traveled trail up a mountain that was just a quarter of a mile away. It turns out that our Toms are entirely capable of hiking 6.5 miles and 1500 vertical feet. The view from the top was excellent and we saw lots of wildflowers along the way. We were a bit nervous, since the several people we saw on the trail had holsters of bear spray attached to their hips, but we saw exactly 0 bears. We did make sure to talk most of the time to warn the bears of our approaching.

Unidentified wildflower

You can kind of see the Tetons in the background towards the left (we rode all the way from them in a day!)

It looks like pink asparagus! Any ID ideas?

Peaceful, enchanting trail. (Would've been more relaxing if we hadn't been stressed out about bears!)

After hiking, we traveled to West Yellowstone and then 20 miles south to a Warmshowers place. Our ride took us up a pass and by a top notch rest area. 

One of the most restful rest areas we've been to, complete with potable water from a mountain stream and lovely little trails back in the forest.

Our route traveled along the Nez Perce trail, so there are some interesting memorials along the way.

The view in Idaho, land of "famous potatoes" (and nicely paved roads with wide shoulders!)

The Warmshowers place itself was both wonderful and bizarre. This was the view from the outside. 

Once inside, we found everything we could need: washing machine, quasi functional dryer, food, 5 beds, shower, snowmobile. The guy who owns the place lives in Idaho Falls and doesn't go out there much, but lets touring cyclists stay for free! He just texted us the key code and we let ourselves inside.

Basically, it was a giant garage + house fused into one!

Kitchen

The living area, with flat screen TV and our clothes drying everywhere

Thank you, Travis!

Day 41: Geysers are so cool! (Colter Bay to Madison)

We woke up early to get ahead of the Yellowstone traffic, but Alix was too cold to ride further than the parking lot. (Out was legitimately cold outside!) So we grabbed a coffee, walked around a bit, and admired the view from the marina in Colter's Bay.

We got on the road after it had warmed up a bit and enjoyed a twisty ride along a river far below us. It turns out that Grand Teton roads are much better suited for cyclists than are Yellowstone's, so we spent an annoying amount of time being wary of traffic.

Essentially, all of our morning ride was uphill! We climbed over several small peaks before we finally got to ride downhill to our afternoon destination: the bike path to Lonestar Geyser. Our Warmshowers hosts from Newton, Kansas had just been to Yellowstone and had advised us that this was the geyser to see. We just had to be willing to wait for it to go off.

Unfortunately, the "bike path" to the geyser ended up being a bizarre combination of road surfaces - the path alternated randomly between asphalt, gravel, sand, and mud, with plenty of potholes thrown in for good measure. Oh well! At least we both have good tires (and 0 flats to prove it!). At the beginning of the path, people had scrawled the last times the geyser had gone off, in a very informal system of record keeping. We had been told that the geyser geysed approximately every three hours. A couple walking back down the trail told us the geyser had just gone off an hour before.

 Our "bike path" ended in a clearing by a river, with a large geyser cone in the center and several signs warning visitors about the thermal activity. It was quiet for the time being, so we relaxed in the shade, spread out our lunch, and waited.

It wasn't too long before the geyser started to spit and bubble (part of its extended pre-eruption performance). We chatted with two friends motorcycle-touring from Canada as we watched it warm up.

Despite a couple of substantial shows of steam and gurgling water, it wasn't until the predicted 3 hour interval that the geyser finally showed its true colors. In a fantastic eruption that lasted for 15 or 20 minutes, the geyser fountained an immense amount of sulphury water into the air. It was pretty darn cool. We must admit, it was cooler than we thought it would be. Definitely with the wait!

Lonestar Geyser in action

Luckily, while we were waiting we got to talk to a geyser enthusiast who answered our many questions about how geysers work. Apparently, geysers need silica to function, because it coats the tunnels underground, forming a watertight seal and allowing pressure to build. Some geysers go off less predictably than others because they are connected underground to other geysers. Geysers are somewhat of an "endangered species" of geological phenomena because any sort of drilling (even test drilling) nearby can extinguish them permanently. And, our enthusiast explained that Yellowstone sometimes has as many as 1000 active geysers in a year, making it the largest geyser field in the world. (The second largest is in Russia and much less publicly accessible.)

A geyser rainbow! Apparently this is a standard phenomenon near erupting geysers, which makes sense.

The steam at the tail end of the eruption

After the show was over, we biked back down the path, bought groceries, and rode 16 miles to an actual campground in Madison. The people working the entrance to the campground were still there, which meant that we paid for camping for the first time this whole trip! Truly a momentous occasion. We were very happy to 1) support the national park service, and 2) have a bear box conveniently located near our tent (this was the biggest impetus to paying for camping). It was a great experience, though - the staff charged Alix's phone at night and served us complimentary coffee in the morning from the staff break room. We also met another cyclist who had toured from Delaware, taking a roundabout route so as to travel by as many breweries as possible. Not a bad trip idea, we think!

Day 40: Jackson to Colter Bay

Total mileage: 65

What a perfect location for a church. Shepherd of the Mountains is both aptly named and beautifully located. It was a treat to wake up with this view out of these elegant windows.

Alix's future place of work (Teton Science Schools outside of Jackson)! Everyone was super nice, the campus is beautiful, and we are both excited for her fall adventures here. We took a roundabout path back to Moose so as to experience something different.

The view from the upper deck of a restaurant in Moose! Recommended to all if you visit (no need to buy the food, though, since it was crowded)

Peach something and a margarita (not amazing drinks, but the view and the wifi made up for it)

After walking barefoot down a sandy path, we went swimming here after lunch

Different lake! We swam out to that rock you can see poking above the trees. It was chilly, refreshing, and excellent.

After our swim and mandatory sprawling in the sun, we rode up the road and over to Colter Bay. We had tentatively planned on continuing on to another campground after a grocery shop, but by the time we'd shopped and chatted with a family of bikepackers (on the great divide mountain bike route), we decided it made more sense to stay at that campground. Luckily, it was too late to pay for a site, so we just pitched our tent in the grass by the bathrooms, and shared a neighboring family's bear box.

Day 39: Into the Tetons (Dubois to Jackson)

Continental Divides: 1
Breweries: 1
Miles: 99

We started off the (very chilly) day warming up in a local coffee shop. It turned out to be a great decision (good inexpensive coffee, good conversation). Then we headed off towards Togwotee Pass and Grand Teton National Park.

The gentleman who took this photo said that Dubois was the perfect spot for his "final quarter" of life, and that he was glad it couldn't be "ruined" by resorts and skiing 

The climb over the continental divide was pretty gradual -nothing to write home about. The view also wasn't great from the top, but the little mountain lake near the peak was picturesque!

After a long descent into some fairly strong headwinds, we made it to the entrance to Grand Teton. We paid our fee (good for Yellowstone, too!) and rode south toward Jackson. In our quest for shade, we ended up eating lunch outside of a staff dining hall along the way. It turned out to be quite a fortuitous circumstance, since we got all the insider info on the best places to visit in the park.

Not a bad spot for lunch!

They recommended that we go for a swim in Jackson Lake, so we took a dip before continuing our ride. The beach they sent us to was absolutely gorgeous!

Sonja in the water

It was rather challenging to drag ourselves away from the dock we were sunning ourselves on post-swim, but somehow we managed to. Even though we had to battle a constant headwind, we enjoyed riding on bike paths almost all the way into town.

We rode straight to the Snakeriver Brewery when we got to Jackson (how could we miss out on an opportunity for good beer?). We ended up ordering food there, as well, thanks to the generous sponsorship of Sonja's uncle. Both the food and the beer were tasty, although we still like the beer we tried back South the best!

After making a grocery run, we arrived rather late at one of the local Lutheran churches, who had offered to let us sleep there (thanks to a request from Sonja's mom). We were too tired to blog and headed straight to bed.