60.16 mi / 5:12:21 time / 11.5 mph avg. / 33.0 mph max. / 4264 ft. climbing
Staying at Norris Campground

It rained a good bit last night, which I think is the first rain since that rainy first week. It was nice enough to stop sometime during the night, so things were relatively dry in the morning, and I made it out of camp at 8am, winning the award for first cyclist on the road.

The route I rode today took me up in a loop through the northern section of the park. The campground I’m staying at is only twelve miles from where I was last night, but it was a lot more interesting to take the long way.

Yellowstone is even more amazing than I expected it to be. The zillions of visitors it gets each year from all around the world don’t come just because of its name or history. This is no marketing gimmick; if anything, I’d say the park and all its features are undersold. If I was any other natural area in the country (or maybe even the world), I’d be crying foul because Yellowstone just has so much to offer that nothing else can compete. First, you simply have the geography: the mountains, rivers, and lakes that change in character so abruptly and dramatically as you move through the park that it’s almost like having a dozen different lands all jammed into one area. Then you add in all the thermal features: the boiling mud, the steaming pools, the travertine terraces, and the geysers. Finally, you add the wildlife. I haven’t seen any bears yet, but I’ve seen moose, elk, and bison roaming around. And while seeing the animals is nice, simply knowing that they’re out there, sharing the same environment with me, would be good enough too. I think Yellowstone should definitely be on any list of “Places to See Before You Die”.

I’ve had absolutely no problems traveling around here either. I got several warnings about the senior citizen rookie RV-drivers coming in post-Labor Day, but I haven’t had any issues with drivers at all. And I’ve found the much-maligned roads to be perfectly rideable too. Sure, they generally have no shoulder, and there are some rough patches here and there, but it’s no worse than many other parts of the country. I’m guessing it would be worse at peak summer time, but there are still quite a few people in the park. Unlike most other places, where you’re almost guaranteed to be alone if you go off on a moderately difficult trail, here there are people exploring everything. It’s interesting that I go at almost the same pace as people in cars. There was a couple yesterday that I must have crossed paths with at least eight times, and I always get people saying “hey, we saw you at…”

While the morning today was beautiful, with white puffy clouds almost at the same altitude as me, things got worse after I stopped for lunch at Mammoth Hot Springs. A light rain, and even a little thunder, which then stopped, but started again and kept going for my last ten miles into Norris. I ended up setting up the camp in the rain, because my only other option was to stand around and freeze to death. As it was, I could barely lash the tent poles together because my fingers weren’t quite working right. Of course, then the rain stopped for a while once I got everything dried off inside the tent. So I was at least able to go out and cook some dinner (unlike last night’s campground there isn’t a store/restaurant right next to it). But the skies remain threatening, with an occasional drizzle keeping me inside the tent.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 2:07 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.