Half-Done Entry: the Pictures are Good

CLICK ON ANY PICTURE TO EXPAND.

I've ridden through Yellowstone three times. Triple AA marks "scenic" highways
with green dots. In 1999, I pedaled out of the northeast exit from the park, through Silver Grove.
In 2007, I exited through West Yellowstone, and headed north up 287.

You can hardly go wrong!

Make time to see the Buffalo Bill Center in Cody.
Excellent Western art.

THERE’S NOTHING like a long bicycle ride (3385 miles so far) to clear the head and clean out the arteries and remind you what’s important and how rich with experiences every day of life actually is.

I spent most of a day pedaling down the Gallatin River Valley.

I’m closing in on my goal, to raise $10,000, and that’s important to me. I know how hard it used to be to deal with diabetes and I’m thankful for all the progress made, through research, because that means our daughter Emily and every other type-1 juvenile diabetic has a much-improved chance of leading a long, healthy, happy life.

I’m also constantly reminded how many nice people there are in this world. I haven’t met a jerk yet on this trip and it makes me wonder. Are there more nice people out there than I sometimes realize? Maybe the jerks are a very tiny minority; but they just stand out because ... well... they’re jerks. I was talking to another bicycler a couple of nights ago and we both agreed: We were being treated with kindness all along the way. 

We posit this theory:

JERKS ARE A MINORITY ... OR JERKS MUST NOT LIKE CAMPING AND CRABBY PEOPLE DON’T GET OUT MUCH IN NATURE.

It’s the only way we can figure it. I know I’m meeting all good folks.

If I’m not updating my story much lately, blame population density, not me. Wyoming is 2 1/2 times the size of Ohio but has a population of only 550,000. So I’m not hitting a lot of big towns with libraries ... or towns, period, in some cases. The first day in this state, for example, I rode along Interstate 90, perfectly legal in many parts of the West, and had one stretch of 67 miles with NO services. The second day, I went up and over the beautiful Bighorn Mountains, 33 miles up and over and then coasted 30 miles down, into a tiny town called Ten Sleep. At the campground there (only $12 for a tent and very nice) I met a group preparing for a music festival the next day. Ken Gerow was an affable professor of physics; and his son Eugene, 13, is a prodigy on the banjo, having played with many adults. Ken, himself, is trying to be daring and has taken up the guitar; and his friend, Shawn Kelly, is daring, too – trying to make a living as a musician, which is his one true passion. He was accompanied by his son, Joe, a funny young man, and when we weren’t talking about music, I watched Eugene and Joe wrestling like young cubs.

My bicycle is pointed the wrong way - I'm headed up the Powder River Pass.
You gain almost exactly a mile of elevation over 33 miles.

It took me seven hours!

Our discussions started when Ken brought me over a beer and sat down at my campsite picnic table to talk; and soon after we were joined by Mike Smith, fresh home from a tour in Afghanistan, and a veteran of two tours in Iraq. Yes, America. We’re still at war. Mike hasn’t had it bad, hasn’t been hurt, and actually volunteered for his last tour overseas because the pay was better (and I think because maybe his marriage is hitting a rocky spot). Now he’s out of the regular army and only in the reserves and riding a motorcycle around the country for a vacation.

I’d have liked to hear Eugene play; but I had miles to go and took off for Cody, arriving late the next evening after a 100-mile day. Then it was up early again and over a beautiful mountain pass and into Yellowstone by the eastern entrance. The scenery in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, the park just to the south, has been spectacular, including the river valleys I traversed to make a “little” side trip up to Bozeman, Montana, to see the Staebler family.

Sam, some random cyclist, Sidney.

I’ve mentioned them before; but this was my first chance to really get to know them, after meeting them last February, down in Florida. At the time Dan and Rebecca and their two children, Sidney, 7, a type-1 diabetic, and Sam, 4, were just wrapping up a two-year odyssey on the road. Dan works on computer programs, and could do his job from inside a van, and Rebecca home-schooled (van-schooled?) Sidney along the way. Now they were home and invited me to visit – and riding 78 miles down the Yellowstone River valley and then up and over the Bozeman Pass was well-worth the time invested.

 
Rebecca saw my JDRF bicycle shirt and we had a nice talk.
She invited me over to their campsite to meet her family.

That was inspiring.

Dan and Rebecca own a little farm, I guess you’d call it, where they raise five pigs, sheep, goats, a llama (to scare off coyotes), twenty-five chickens, and their two great kids. Sidney and Sam are polite and responsible, helping with many chores, and both are creative thinkers.  Sam, for example, has a pig named “Slugbutt.” Sidney starts second grade in a real school this fall and she’s a little nervous; but I predict she’s going to be a star. She’s an avid reader and you can tell she has an active mind, as does her little brother.

Sam is into Monster Trucks and has a wooden train set in an upstairs room that looks like it takes up at least an acre.

 

Curses ... I’m on a limited time at the library in Jackson, Wyoming. So I may have to pick this story up later. I was also lucky to meet Tim Bradshaw and Mary Lynne Wilmore at the Staeblers. Like Dan, they work on computers, and they took a separate but similar two-year journey around the USA. I found it refreshing to talk to these four because they don’t want to live a boring life.

Rafters on the Gallatin River.

Pedaling in Yellowstone Park is a rush.

I like this picture because it was right off the side of the road.

Grand Prismatic:  the largest hot spring in the world.

Grand Prismatic: Take II. 

I would head north out of the park and aim for Bozeman.

Thermophiles love hot springs.

Firehole River.

If you've never seen Old Faithful Inn,
it's an amazing piece of work and all wood.

Tourists relax at the Inn.

Not everyone liked Old Faithful.  This teen was sullen.

Robert Van Derkroon: A Dutch cyclist going coast-to-coast.  
He says Americans have been very friendly.

I love this picture of Sam and Sidney; the library guy is giving me the stank eye.
He's going to tell me to get out soon. 

Lupine growing near the bridge.

German tourist balances on railing.  She looked like a gymnast.

David Rothschild, 23, riding across the USA from Santa Cruz, California
to Maine (or someplace in the east.)  

Yep, ladies, he's a cute young man.  
He's also very bright and well-spoken.

This is cool:  you can see the Grand Tetons (center) from 40 miles away.

Taking a break at the Cascades in Yellowstone.

Relaxing, before heading south to Grand Teton National Park.
I was headed for Salt Lake City, then across Nevada to Yosemite.

I'd have lunch in Grand Teton National Park later that day.