89.08 mi / 6:57:07 time / 12.8 mph avg. / 31.0 mph max. / 1416 ft. climbing
Staying at Mud Lake Wildlife Refuge

Ok, after four days of lollygaggin’ around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, it was time to cover some ground once again. There did end up being a bit of rain last night, so it was another wet, cold (37 degree) morning. But the skies were clear, so the sun was warming things up quickly. That is, until I hit a stretch of the road that said “Low Visibility – Next 6 Miles”. And suddenly, a thick blanket of fog appeared, persisted for about six miles, and disappeared as quickly as it came. Very odd; there must be some kind of reclusive wizard living in the area, trying to dissuade people from seeking him out.

Shortly after the fog cleared, I think I exited some giant ancient volcanic caldera, because there was a 4.5 mile stretch of 5% downhill. And then, I was out of the forest, and into the flatlands of Idaho. Off to the east I could just barely make out the high wall of the Tetons, backlit against the sun (who knew those sneaky French named them after boobies?) At a gas station in Ashton, I took on the Little Debbie triple-attack: Cherry Pie, Nutty Bar, and 6-Pack of Chocolate Mini-Donuts. Plus a chocolate milk. It’s been a while since I had any Little Debbies, so I guess I was overdue. I also took the time to strip off and pack away some of my layers, since it had warmed up quite a bit. It turns out that adjusting clothing levels to deal with the dramatically varying temperatures takes quite a bit of extra time!

It’s good that I had the Little Debbie fuel-up, because there was a 15-20mph SSW wind blowing, and I was going exactly SSW. So it was a hard slog to St. Anthony, where I did lunch’n’library. After using the library’s open WiFi for a while, a librarian came and told me that I can only use the Internet on their computers, since they don’t have a WiFi policy yet. Weird. I said “ok”, and kept using the Internet on my own computer. Perhaps you should secure your network if you don’t want people using it!

From there it was more hard slogging to Rexburg, which was especially annoying, because US 20 is a divided highway at that point, and the Rumble Strip Fanatic must have been assigned to that construction job. The rumble strips stretched the whole width of the 8-foot shoulder, and more amazingly, they kept going right through the on- and off-ramps, so anyone entering or exiting had to cross over them. Sometimes I’d ride the white line to avoid them, and sometimes I’d just ride over them (luckily they weren’t too jarring).

Things got slightly better once I headed straight west on ID 33, but it still wasn’t a lot of fun. I didn’t see much scenery since I had my head down most of the time, but I think went past miles and miles of open sagebrush, under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. At least the temperatures were nice. Finally I turned north towards the attractively-named Mud Lake. I had to go a little farther off course than I wanted to reach the area where camping is allowed, but hey, it’s free, and like some of those nights in the North Woods, I have a whole lake to myself. Well, me and the birds. If I was a bird-watcher, I bet I’d be pretty excited about this place. Oh, and there are mosquitos too, so mosquito-watchers would be excited as well. I’d almost forgotten that they exist.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 1:00 pm 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.