DuBois Wyoming

Boy, I wish we could do this more often. By the time we come to a town big enough to have a place to access the internet, we've had so many adventures they're hard to keep track of.

We last updated when we were in West Yellowstone, Montana. We rode from there into Yellowstone Park, where we stayed at the Madison Junction Campground. The down side was that it was one of those USFS campgrounds where they have no showers. Yuk. But the upside was that we met some really neat people in the Hiker/Cyclist camping area. They were Lorraine (4th grade teacher) and Peter (1st grade teacher) Cambell, Bob (school psychologist), and Linden (6th grade teacher). They were friends from all over the country, and met in West Yellowstone, parked their cars, and were planning to spend the next few days riding around the park. As you can imagine with a bunch of teacher-types, we spent the next many hours talking around the campsite. We exchanged addresses, etc. and they promised to let us know when and where they plan to get together again so that we have an opporutnity to join them. The bad part was that this was our introduction to mountain nights. Beginning that night, and continuing since, it's been in the low 30s by the time we wake up.

We left the next morning and did the "tourist run" through Yellowstone, stopping at the geysers, riding through Fire Hole River Canyon and finally ending up at Old Faithful. My first exposure to Old Faithful was in those Saturday morning cartoons (which apparently Bob never watched), so it was actually pretty exciting to see. The only negative thing was the amount of traffic on the roads through the park. At least the speed limit is low, so the RV's and trailers weren't barreling past.

We headed to Flagg Ranch Campground on the J.D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway, a connector between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. How nice of Mr. Rockefeller to donate a five-mile x eight-mile stretch. This campground had hot showers, which we took advantage of and a nice restaurant at the lodge. I felt obligated to try the local trout on the menu. To all the trout fishermen in our life: stop throwing them back!!!!!!!! They are delicious.

The next morning was the record low for the trip: 29 degrees. The clothes we'd rinsed out and hung on the bike to dry froze. My stiff shirt made for an interesting picture. I put everything in the dryer in the camp laundry to thaw and dry while we rolled up tent and sleeping bags. Pulling out of the campground toward breakfast at the lodge, we stopped to talk to a gent from England who was doing the Yorktown, VA to Astoria, OR TransAm trail. He was able to fill us in on terrain, etc. because he had just passed through where we were headed. We've met up with many folks doing the long-distance touring thing; some we've even run into more than once.

That night we spent about halfway up to Togwotee Pass at the Togwotee Mountain Lodge, but camped behind it in another Forest Service campground. The Lodge provided not only hot showers, but hot tubs, so it was a little more luxurious than the last time.

This morning we finished the road to the top of the pass (9, 682 feet) our highest climb to date. We went up for 17 miles, but were rewarded by a wonderful dowhill run with a great view of the Tetons. We even stopped to make a snowball by the side of the road just before descending. At the top, we stopped to talk to two young men who had started out in Maine this spring and were headed for the west coast. They had the same packs on their bikes as we have, so we spent some time comparing equipment and talking about the routes, they telling us about what we would encounter going east and we filling them in on the westward situation.

We ended today early in DuBois because towns are getting farther apart in this part of Wyoming. There was really nowhere else we could reach today that had either camping or other accommodations, so we got a really cute cabin/motel room and are taking half a day off to get ready for a long ride tomorrow: about 75 miles to Lander Wyoming. The terrain has changed again to the red rock kind of scenery that I usually think of in Wyoming. The man who owns the restaurant where we at lunch said that this continues for about 20 miles and then changes to rolling lower hills with some more greenery.

It's been challenging, but every time we meet someone else touring we are reminded why we do it. What a great way to see this part of the country: really up close and personal. Wait until we start to torture you all with our pictures.