Wyoming: Yellowstone, Grand Teton

The next two days we cycle through Yellowstone National Park. After fifteen minutes in the saddle we already see a herd of bison on the plains next to the road, a fascinating sight. We fill our days with small hikes to insanely colorful geysers and pools.

We ‘watch the show’ at “Old Faithful” with hundreds of other tourists, impatiently waiting for the geyser to shoot its warm water tens of meters into the sky. We cycle next to the Yellowstone lake and take a very cold dip in it’s freezing water.

As we leave Yellowstone we descend next to a beautiful valley. It’s orange rocks make a nice contrast with the green trees and plants and 1000m below meanders the blue river that once created this valley. As if things haven’t been beautiful enough, the next National Park is already waiting for us: Grand Teton. In between the two parks we find a dispersed campsite in the vicinity of some hot springs. We decide to first check out the hot springs that we’ve stumbled across on Google Maps. There is a small sign pointing towards the springs. The road that winds next to the river gets too narrow and bushy for our bikes and there is nobody around so we decide to just leave the bikes there. We walk over a meadow and have to take our shoes off to cross the cold river.

There are no signs or route that lead us towards the hot springs so we just try to get to the Google Maps coordinates. When we get closer to the coordinates we see some stones on the bank of the river creating a little dike. We feel the water: warm! We dip into the water and open some cans of beer that we brought with us. The view is amazing, there is nobody around and the water is super nice. After 10 minutes in the water we see something in the wall of the river bank: are those scales (NL: schubben)? Yes and as we look closer we see it’s definitely a snake. And that, my friends, is how the pool party very abruptly ended. We find our way to the campsite, meet some fellow Dutchies, have dinner and some beers and at night we hear a pack of wolves howl.

Sleeping stats

I love stats. So here are some dreamy stats for you. Up to this point of my trip (only Canada and the US) I have:

The next day we cycle through the Grand Teton National Park. It’s known for it’s massive mountain range that sky rockets out of nowhere. As we get closer and closer to the edge of the mountain range the views get better and more surreal. We stop to make pictures of a massive bull elk next to the road and cool of by taking a dip in the freezing cold, but insanely beautiful Jenny Lake. The last 45 kilometers of the day we suffer a massive headwind and completely wrecked we drive into the town of Jackson. Time for a beer and a burger. We meet a lot of people and get some phone numbers from folks that invite us to pop by when we come across their home town.

We don’t really know what to do with sleeping tonight, so we cycle across town, away from the busy downtown. I spot a wooden deck across from a park and decide to check it out. Appears to be some kind of bird spotting platform hid from the road by some bushes and trees. We’re tired and don’t want to look any further and actually this is a pretty funny camping spot. We pitch our tents. Later that night when we’re sleeping we hear people walk up on the creeky old wooden deck. We scare awake and they scare from us. We both zip out of our tents and see a young couple stumble away. We might have ruined a good make-out session. After the adrenaline flows away again we sleep well.

We wake up with some bird spotters next to our tent, they don’t mind us, we don’t mind them. After our morning ritual we set off. The first stretch is a nice hilly bike path next to the highway. After that it’s just the highway. Again this strong head wind. We take turns to work against it. There is something oddly unsatisfying with head winds, something that really demotivates.

Rain passes by and you can wait it out, climbs are tough but also end at some point, but head winds?!They just go on and on, there is nothing you can do about it. You have to work so hard for so little speed and there are no signs that it will ever stop blowing. After reaching Alpine and spotting a nice campsite next to the river and a brewery we decide it’s enough for today. We’ll battle the wind again tomorrow.

From Alpine we take some nice roads south, finally no more highways. Small, paved roads take us through rural America. Small villages, lots of agriculture. People in robes taking the newspapers from their mailbox, just like the movies. We have our classic lunch routine in Tayne: looking for a supermarket, buying food and eating outside next to the shopping carts, being greeted by friendly people. After lunch we’ll have to face a big climb with very steep sections. I’m in my highest gear, the sun blazing in my face.

I put the visor of my hat down to not have it shine in my face. Drops of sweat form on the ridge of my visor. They dance a few times from left to right in the same cadence as my pedal strokes before they fall on the ground. I’d rather focus on the dancing drops than my burning legs. After reaching the top we descend to our free campground for the night. We take a shower in the river with a bar of soap and I feel like a new man. Corn and sausages on the campfire for dinner.

Today’s menu: three tough climbs on gravel roads. We take breaks and proteïne bars on top of every climb. The heat is killing us. At the end of our third climb we are relieved, most of the hard work is done today. We take a long descend into Georgetown and have lunch in the park town, patch a flat, and set off to a town called Montpellier for some groceries. I ask a local lady how she would pronounce her hometown: Mont-peel-yer. I thank her and leave her behind somewhat flabbergasted. It’s funny how Americans steal the names of European cities and Americanize the pronounciation.

Then we head off to Bear Lake which would be a nice goal for today and possibly a good camping spot at the lake. The last bit of gravel is all washboard and it makes me grumpy. When we approach the lake capitalism seems to have taken the biggest part of it: 20 dollars to get acces to the lake. No thanks. We go to a bar next to the lake run by a Dominican guy and order 4 cervezas. We tell the story about the 20 dollars and that we would like to camp at the lake. “Come back in an hour after the capitalists have left, I’ll leave the gate open, then you can pitch your tent here on the grass.” Awesome.