[Editor’s Note: Some new pictures are up. Also, I’m now heading into Yellowstone for two or three days, so there might not be any updates for a while (really, this time. maybe.)]

85.36 mi / 5:41:32 time / 14.9 mph avg. / 41.0 mph max. / 2360 ft. climbing
Staying at Cody Motor Lodge

I guess climbing that mountain must have really worn me out, since I slept for nearly nine hours last night, which is quite a bit more than I normally sleep on tour. Maybe it’s because I had to concentrate on keeping the wheel straight while moving so slowly, so I could never slip into the zoned-out waking-sleep that normally allows me to cheat a couple hours of real sleep during the night. It never got too cold, and for the first time, every bit of the tent was entirely dry in the morning, woo!

To begin the day, I gave a few pushes of the pedals to get out of the campground, and then coasted down the giant hill for miles and miles. The surroundings were spectacular; much more impressive than the ascent, which worked out nicely because it’s a lot easier to stop and take pictures during the descent (though it’s still not that easy – it takes a long time and there is a lot of brake squealing!) The difference is that the road going up the east side of the mountains was just carved into the side by the road builders, while on the western side, it follows Shell Creek down through its canyon (or at least it attempts to; it would be impossible to make the road actually descend as fast as the creek). I took my time on the way down, making a lot of stops, including the interpretive site at Shell Falls, where I finally found out what is “sage” and what is “juniper”. Compared to Spearfish Canyon, everything just seems about three or four times more massive and hulking.

And then suddenly, I’m out of the mountains and into the Bighorn Basin, the hot, dry, flat land between the Bighorn Range and Yellowstone. A few miles into flatlands, and whoosh, there goes the rear tire again. This one must have been the bottom of a broken beer bottle or something, because it made a pretty big hole without getting stuck in the tire. It sucks losing confidence in my tires, because then every strange thing I feel on the bike makes me look down and check them, and I’m constantly expecting them to go flat again. Actually before I got the flat, I’d already decided that I’d stop at a motel in Cody instead of going on to Buffalo Bill State Park (due to my late, slow start, and the holiday weekend), so the delay caused by fixing the flat only confirmed that decision.

I stopped for a quick lunch after 30 miles in Greybull, which is at the bottom of the descent. From there it’s a very slight, steady ascent for 50 miles into Cody. It was hot, straight, and boring, although the mountains on the other side of the Basin are a lot more interesting to look at from a distance than the Bighorns. I made a stop in Emblem (population: 10) which luckily had a Pepsi machine sitting forlornly outside its Post Office (which had an open door and cooler air inside). At one point a guy driving past stopped and asked me for directions, so I also cooled off a bit inside his air-conditioned SUV.

For the last fifteen miles or so, I think I hit the confluence of just-eaten energy-food, a new smooth road surface, a downhill slope, and a tailwind, and suddenly my 14mph speeds changed to 24mph, so that was a nice way to end the day. Cody is a nice town, and, in a rarity for towns out here, appears to be perfectly healthy (presumably it gets tons of money from Yellowstone tourists). I took a walk across town to Dairy Queen, but it was closed, so I had to make do with gas station ice cream.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.