The West

Trees! Forests! I have never been so happy to see such sights.  Growing up in the northeast, I have taken our natural forests and abundant shade for granted.  The Black Hills of South Dakota contained literally the first natural trees we had encountered since eastern Minnesota.

From Rapid City we biked to Custer State Park.  We rode out with Fred, our host in Rapid.  He took us up the (steep) back roads for a while before connecting with the main highway.  We went down a huge hill after connecting with the main highway and then started a 5 mile ascent into the hills.  We were generally heading toward Mt. Rushmore, but after getting into the town of Keystone and asking a few people, we learned that the road up to the monument was a 2 mile steep climb out of our way.  We decided to skip it, although a man who worked at a helicopter company offered to take us for a golf cart ride up to where the helicopter launches so we could at least have a good view of it from afar.  It was a sight to see- those faces are huge!  But I couldn't help thinking about the greater meaning of the carvings.  The black hills were originally native american lands and were recognized as belonging to them in the 1863 treaty at Ft. Laramie.  Gold was discovered in the hills in the 1874 and settlers rushed over hoping to strike it rich.  A few years later the US government unilaterally confiscated the land, and to this day there is a legal dispute between the Sioux and the government over the territory.  In creating Mt. Rushmore, they literally created a (publicly funded) permanent carving of white men's faces into rock- a symbolic gesture of their "ownership" of the hills.  

So we biked out of Keystone and headed up Iron Mountain road, which is a famous road for its "pigtail bridges" that loop around to connect tunnels that were designed to give people a clear view of Mt. Rushmore as they rode through them. The tunnels were created by blasting through the rock, and they have low clearance and narrow widths that only can accommodate one car at a time.  It is not uncommon for RVs to get stuck in them and have to get force pulled out with tow trucks.   You are also supposed to honk before you enter them so other cars coming from the other direction know you're coming.  On bicycles, this problem was solved by us screaming "honk" really loudly as we were about to enter.  

It was quite a steep climb, for the road actually summited the mountain.  It took us 1.5 hours to go 3 miles, with many switchbacks and loops.  I saw a motorcyclist mouth the word "crazy" as they passed us going the other way.  That has been a common comment we receive, and to be honest it gets tiring after awhile.  I think pulling an RV across the country and getting 4 MPG is crazy (and polluting!)  It is all perspective.

We were in Custer a few weeks before the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, SD, a town in the northern hills on the interstate.  We had originally planned to go through there but changed our route completely to avoid the rally, which attracts over 50,000 bikers from all over and makes it hard for cars to drive on the road.  I would be terrified to be on a bicycle during that time, especially with so much drinking going on at the rally.  

So we found ourselves in Custer State park instead, hanging out with Zoey's awesome friend Alice who has a job as a naturalist there for the summer.  Her dad took us all out to dinner at a fancy restaurant that night, where I ate a yummy buffalo burger.  The next day we drove Needles Highway, another famous Peter Norbeck creation with beautiful views and dangerous curves.  The most famous of the Needles (which are a series of rocks that stick up towards the sky) is the Needles Eye, which looks like the eye of a sewing needle.  We parked there and I did some impromptu rock climbing, scrambling in the footsteps of some younger kids.  As we tried to pull out of the parking area hundreds of corvettes were riding the highway and not letting anyone through.  Fed up of waiting for the traffic part, I got out of the car, stopped traffic with my hand and waved Alice on to pull out.  Clearly the drivers were upset, and one recognized Alice's license plate and shouted "You're from Sioux Falls!".  Apparently stopping traffic isn't something that a South Dakotan would do.  Well, its definately something a New Yorker would do.  Alice turned to me and said: "Gaby, South Dakota isn't ready for you!"  Maybe not.

Later in the day we went swimming at beautiful Sylvan Lake and went hiking up a trail called little devils tower.  It was great to exercise some different muscles, for a change.  We learned about the ponderosa pine (the most common tree in Custer State Park).  If you smell a Ponderosa Pine tree, it smells like butterscotch!

In the evening Zoey, Alice and I cooked dinner (fried rice with silken tofu) while listening to Fleetwood Mac.  Music is something that we sorely miss and realize is very taken for granted.  It was starting to rain so we sat on the porch of Alice's dorm and watched the thunderstorm.  As dusk approached we took a drive on the Wilderness Loop, a road winds through lands where the buffalo roam.  It was thundering and lightning and the sunset was fantastic.  Custer SP is well known for its carefully managed herd of 1400 buffalo that live within the park.  The buffalo have the right of way on all the roads, and people are warned not to get out of their cars or approach the buffalo.  Since it had just rained, the buffalo were out on the road drinking water out of the pools that had collected in the potholes and the wheel grooves in the road.  They were so close to us!  

The next day we set off towards Newcastle, Wyoming.  We had to climb out of the park, but once we were out we had a nice decent through Hell's Canyon in Wyoming.  We got to Newcastle by noon, and  though that was our original destination for the night we decided to keep going and do another 30 miles to the small town of Upton, whose tagline is "The best town on earth".  I'm not sure about that one, but the people were really nice.  We pulled up to the bar in town, and started talking to a couple sitting outside, Mike and Vicki.  We needed a place to stay for the night, and they volunteered the bartender, Joy, who graciously let us stay on her lawn.  We found a cozy spot under the tree, but between the coal trains running every 30 minutes and the drunken people being really loud at 2 am we didn't sleep very soundly.

Eastern Wyoming is a huge coal and natural gas producing area.  In fact, the next town we stayed in, Gillette, is the energy capital of the US, producing 30% of the coal in this country.  The coal trains that passed us while we were riding would be empty going towards gillette and would come back full, with identical piles of coal in each car.  These trains were at least a mile and a half long, and ran extremely frequently.  Its hard to believe we use that much coal, but we do.

We had set up a warmshowers host for that night in Gillette, Steve L., but couldn't get in touch with him that day.  After waiting around for a call back for over 2 hours, we just decided to be creepy and ride to his house.  It turned out that he was en route back from a 3 day backpacking trip in the Bighorn Mountains and did not have cell service.  His family took us in and set us up in their camper to sleep for the night.  While browsing through their cycling guest book I noticed Tom and Miguel had been there a few nights before.  Steve was thinking about riding cross country and had just bought a new bike to ride on... a Trek 520 (my exact bike)!  His other bike that he would have ridden on except it was a bit big for him was  Shogun GT (Zoey's exact bike)! It was a funny coincidence.  Another funny coincidence was that while hiking, Steve met a couple, Frank and Judy, who we had chatted with in the Badlands.  When Steve mentioned that he was about to host 2 girls riding cross-country Frank mentioned that he had just met us in the Badlands... what a small world!

We discussed with Steve and his family the best way to get from Gillette to Buffalo, our next stop.  There are 2 ways to go- one way is on the interstate, a stretch of 70 miles with one service stop in between.  The other way is 100 miles on a small highway, with almost no services and no people.  We decided to go on the interstate, mainly because it was shorter.  Surprisingly, it wasn't that bad of a ride.  There was a large shoulder, and many of the trucks even attempted to switch lanes and move over for us.  The noise was grating after awhile, but we had awesome views of the snowcapped mountains of the Bighorn Range on top of every hill.  Nonetheless, we were happy to get off the highway in Buffalo. We had arranged to meet Liza, a woman from warmshowers, for Ice Cream.  Liza was a recent graduate of Bard College in upstate NY and was interning at Ucross Arts Foundation.  She picked us up in town and drove us to her house 20 miles away.  She was close to our age and lived in a 3 bedroom house that she had all to herself in a town of 25 people.  The house was free as part of her internship.  She had done a bike trip with her friend (also two women self-supported) from Seattle to Santa Fe.  She cooked us a delicious vegetable keish, and we had a great time talking about experiences from our bike trips and reading funny New York Times articles.  We were talking about how it is impossible to love every minute of the trip- there are just some days that are miserable and the last thing you want to do it bike.  Rainy days, hot days, and days you are just exhausted.  But these kind of trips you remember forever.

In the morning Liza drove us back to Buffalo, where we started riding.  We had a long day ahead of us- we had planned to do a 65 mile day up and over the big horn mountain range.  100 feet after we set off Zoey realized her back tire had a flat- our first flat of the trip.  We quickly fixed it and kept going.  The Bighorns were not a joke!  The pass was at 9,666 feet, and Buffalo was at 5,000.  To say the road was steep would be a vast understatement.  We were also completely unprepared for those sorts of hills.  The first 15 miles were a straight uphill at an 8% grade or so.  Then we finally hit a peak and dropped down 500 or so feet, only to have to climb it again.  That was the worst part- I wished we could have just gone straight up!  We met Kyle, another biker, who was doing a supported tour across Wyoming with his mother sagging him in a pickup.  He offered for his mom to help us out by taking our gear to the pass to make the biking easier, and she would probably come by in an hour or so.  

We were about halfway up (from Buffalo to the pass was 35 miles)  when we pulled over and rested.  Zo was in tears and I was feeling sick from the altitude.  We knew that there was a lodge very close to us, so we decided to go on and discuss at the lodge what to do.  The lodge was only a quarter of a mile from us, and they were great to us.  They let us refill water but mostly they just encouraged us to keep going- "You can do it" they said.  As we left the lodge Kyle's mother Melanie pulled up and took some of our stuff.  We didn't know if we could make it to the top, so we decided to have her drop it off 10 miles from where we were because we would definitely make it that far.  We made it to where our stuff was lying and very soon after that a pickup pulled up next to us and a DOT worker offered us a ride because there was road work ahead.  Wyoming DOT is the best!  He took us to the end of the road work, which was at the pass.  

On our way up we also met Ben, who is going across from Portland to Virginia with his buddy Skott (imonabike.com).  Ben was super awesome to talk to and really lifted our spirits!  He had buckets as panniers and stickers that read: "Human Being" and "Three Feet Please".  He was clearly a west coaster, Zoey and I thought.

The ride down the Bighorns was beautiful--there were some slightly rolling hills but mainly it was a straight 18 mile downhill through a gorgeous canyon--Gaby said it was the most beautiful sight she'd ever seen. We met a kind-of crazy cyclist, Matthew, on our way down--he is criss-crossing the United States, has done 9,000 miles in 4 months, and is aiming to do centuries almost everyday. We also met two other cyclists, John and Paul, when we stopped to get food (Gaby immediately thought of the Beatles). They ended up sharing a campsite with us and we had fun talking about our parent's crazy stories, other cyclists that we had run into, and different towns we'd passed through. They were also going to Portland but at a much slower rate, so we said goodbye to them the next morning and continued on. 

We rolled through Ten Sleep, WY at around 6 in the morning, when the town was still sleepy and the sky was still dusky and everybody was waking up. From there, we biked into an area filled with rolling sand hills crested with sage. We saw our first antelope on the first climb of the morning. Right before Worland, WY we met another helpful WYDOT team who shuttled us over 3 miles of unpaved road. It was a bit chilly in the morning, and we wanted tea, so we decided to stop at a cafe in town and had a delicious breakfast of omelettes and french toast. We also discovered a health food store and a bike store nestled next to one another, to which I said "This little section of this town looks like it should be somewhere besides here." (There is a big cowboy culture and coal/oil culture in Eastern and Central Wyoming). The rest of our day consisted of a flat ride along a river, where we met a cyclist going into Ten Sleep--her name was Annie and she wanted to see the Great Lakes and Mount Rushmore. Gaby explained to her how to fix a flat tire. 

We knew we were in Thermopolis, WY when we saw a sign spray painted on a hill reading "World's Largest Mineral Hot Springs". We followed its arrow down into a State Park with a public bathhouse, where we got to soak in a pool-like portion of the 102 degree water for the prescribed 20 minutes. We met a couple from Seattle Washington who had our exact same panniers and were heading East. We commisserated about how it is sometimes hard for people we meet to understand vegetarianism. This is something that Gaby and I have been talking about a lot (more on this in the Montana section). Gaby thought of Janie because she planned the Wyoming part of the trip and was really looking forward to Thermopolis. We talked to her later and fortunately she still got to swim in Hot Springs on her trip. We still miss her a lot though, and Gaby is looking forward to seeing her soon! 

We stayed with Chris and Jen P. in their spacious house that night in Thermopolis--we got to sleep in their family movie theater, which was pretty cool! They graciously acommodated our vegetarianism by making us a plain tomato sauce option and we ate lots of tasty pasta. We met their daughter Maggie briefly and talked to her about her plans to attend BYU in the fall and major in business to become an art director. Jen and Chris also told us about their family cycling tours on tandem bikes through the years, and we got to see their collection of sweet bikes! They had a lot of helpful advice about Yellowstone, and were great hosts overall. One interesting thing about staying with them was seeing all of Maggie's hunting trophies--growing up in the city has definitely kept us very removed from this world (before this trip, Gaby thought a taxidermist had something to do with taxes). 

We had a milage heavy day planned the next day--84 to Cody. From Thermopolis to Meeteetse (about the midway point) was a 1600 feet climb over 52 miles. We had been hearing rumours about a chocolate shop in Meeteetse for a few days, and so we decided to check it out. The truffles were really good (we tried some unusual flavors like huckleberry, sage, and focaccia), but unfortunately the lady behind the counter was pretty rude to us and glared at Gaby when she refilled our water bottles with the fancy water they had out for customers (it also tasted like focaccia bread, which was kind-of gross, but Gaby liked the rosemary flavor). Having had a customer service job, one of my biggest pet peeves is when workers in that industry aren't friendly to customers, as that is essentially 50% of the job description. Thinking about this and being irritated by it helped me pedal faster to Cody though! One more cool thing about Meeteetse is that we met our host Alex and her husband Mike by chance at the gas station. They were going to a music festival in Laramie, WY and letting us stay in their house even though they were away. They had a one year old daughter who was sleeping in the car, and Alex jokingly said "Baby's First Music Festival". 

Cody is the last town before Yellowstone, so it is pretty busy and there were lots of people and cars.  Its also the site of the famous Buffalo Bill Historical Center, which we ended up skipping. But we found a health food store and a farmer's market! After buying some veggies, we had fun talking to some cool farmers from Montana about their farm and our trip. They reccommended that we go to the rodeo, but it was $12 each and late at night so unfortunately we missed it. Riding out of the market, Gaby told a rancher how much she had enjoyed a sample of his yak burger and he gave her a whole one for free. A great image from this trip is Gaby riding one-handed out of the farmer's market while chewing on a yak burger and simultaneously sighing, "Cody is a great place." I cracked up. We arrived at Alex and Mike's house to find a bright message saying "Welcome Couchsurfers!" on the sidewalk in chalk. Mike is a musician, and I was so happy to see guitars and a piano, and strummed some songs--I hope he doesn't mind. Gaby made us farmer's market cabbage moo-shu! Later that night, we met Wes, a friend who was housesitting, and talked about Cody and tourism and NYC pizza. 

The day into Yellowstone was also a climb, but each curve in the road showed us a new vista more beautiful than the last. At one point, Gaby turned around and said to me "Wyoming has stolen my heart." It really is gorgeous, and in a very varied way--we've seen pine forests and both sandy and limestone canyons, natural hot springs and plains and lakes and antelope. We met two German cyclists going the other way who warned us about a steep 6 mile hill into Yellowstone. By the time we got to the gate we were beat from a 50 mile gradual uphill, and decided to try and hitch a ride. The gatesperson said the park couldn't help us out, told us that we should be carrying bear spray (which we weren't), and didn't seem to know if bear activity was high or low this year. A little bit worried about both the impending nasty uphill and a possible impending grizzly bear attack, Gaby quickly biked up to a pick-up truck when she saw it park just past the gates. It turned out to be owned by a really nice family from South Carolina who were very willing to give us a ride. They were taking a road trip around the country, seeing spots like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, and were in the park to try and see a bear and its cub that were causing a traffic jam on the wildlife loop. Both the girls were horse back riders and we learned that they had a farm at home where they raised Texas longhorns. They dropped us off about two miles from the campsite. Riding along Lake Yellowstone (which was pretty magnificent), dark clouds gathered and it started hailing! We'd heard stories about snow in the summer at this high of an elevation, but were surprised nonetheless. Fortunately, it stopped once we pulled into the campsite, where a great ranger from Massuchusetts helped us get a cheap hiker-biker campsite and told us that bear activity was low this year. We still put our food in the provided bear locker for the night before collapsing into our sleeping bags. 

Growing up in New York State gives you a skewed mindset about state parks and wilderness areas: that they are pretty small, contain only one campground and are easily transversible by foot. Unfortunately, Yellowstone is a national park in Wyoming, which means it is huge, a little precarious to travel by bike or foot (because of the huge influx of people every summer, it's very car-centered), and there are tons of campgrounds. We had planned to take a rest day in Yellowstone, but figured out that just getting across Yellowstone was going to take a whole day. It was poor planning on our part, and it resulted in us not really having the rest day we wanted.  The first 16 miles were rough for both of us, because mentally we knew we weren't suppossed to be biking but physically were still pedaling. Grumpy and discouraged, we reached our first geysers, which completely switched our moods. They were amazing--some were a translucent electric blue while others were more of a murky copper, and steam flew from the smooth surfaces. In the gift shop, I found some cool WPA National Park postcards from the 30s--they are my first and probably only souvenir of the trip. Gaby and I have been tempted by other things, but have realized that bike touring is a great way to not collect too much because we don't want to have to carry it all! 

We were hoping to thumb a ride to Old Faithful, and had tried the old fashioned roadside method for awhile with no luck. Then, we started looking around the parking lot for pick-ups, and ended up finding another great family from Utah who said we could have a ride as long as we sat in the back with bikes (they already had 7 people in the car). We really enjoyed the ride and watched two passes over the Continental Divide slip by without moving an inch, which made us feel a little bit more like we were having a rest day. 

The parking lot for Old Faithful was the largest stretch of partioned asphalt I'd ever seen, and almost every spot was full. After getting off the pick-up and thanking the family, we bought some bread and cheese and ate sandwiches while we waited for 4:04 pm, the next Old Faithful "eruption". Hundreds of people flocked down the tree-lined pathway to the geyser--Gaby and I ended up sitting cross legged in front of a bench next to a cyclist from France who was going to Calgary, Canada. A family was sitting behind us, and once the geyser started spewing, I heard one of the boys remark "This really isn't as cool as I was expecting." Gaby and I talked about how sad it is that some peoples' capacity for wonder has been dulled by all the technology in our world--to us it is beyond amazing that a small bit of lava pocketed deep in the earth can send a trail of water 30 feet into the air. 

Our ride to the second campsite had almost no shoulder, and later we had a conversation with an understanding ranger about how unfortunate it is that Yellowstone isn't more bike-friendly, since the staff really supports sustainability, and making a park very bike accessible is a great step towards that goal. Hopefully enough cyclists will give constructive criticism, and maybe a day will come when it will be easy for bikes, cars and pedestrians to move around Yellowstone! We soon found out that bikes aren't the only thing that tangle with traffic in Yellowstone. When the cars in front of us started rubbernecking, we worried about a bear. Instead we rounded a corner to see a single bison at the head of a mile-long string of cars. I slipped between a big van and the bison and worried about gory outcomes while Gaby snapped its picture from the lane right beside it. Luckily, it was too busy heading traffic to care. Seriously, Gaby thinks Yellowstone is the rubbernecking capital of the world.

The road to the second campground was along a loop of geysers: we saw a huge one, the Grand Prismatic, which was deep blue in the middle and gradually changed to green and yellow before fanning out to orange at the edges, some cool little ones (one of which looked like a pot of pasta boiling), and the painted pots, clay mixed with hot water that bubbled into little mounds. Yellowstone was really cool to me because it is a unique geological environment--the lava from the core of the earth is close enough to heat all of these bodies of water, and even the river was steaming. 

Our last sight in Yellowstone was Firehole Falls, a waterfall collapsing in lacy gusts over a wall of granite. Legs aching, we rolled into Madison Campground, and were happy to find water, more bear lockers, and some friendly faces--Hannah, Courtney and Andrew, cyclists from Eugene, Oregon. Hannah and Courtney were going to Minnesota following some ACA routes and some personal mapping and Andrew was doing the entire TransAm. We map-shared with them over dinner, and gave them some of our highway maps. They told us about how beautiful Oregon and Idaho are, something we've been hearing a lot. We were a little apprehensive about how many mountain passes we had to get over in Montana, but Courtney gave us some good advice. "I just think, 'I could do this all day," she said, "but then it never ends up taking all day." 

We rode out of Madison Campground early in the morning, bundled up in all the warm clothes we had (it was in the 40s or 50s!). We meandered along the Yellowstone River--at one point there was a sign for "Riverside Drive", which made both of us a little homesick (its the name of a boulevard along Riverside Park in Manhattan), though admittedly this river was lot cleaner and surrounded by bright greenery. We crossed into Montana, went through the West Entrance gate, and then apparently crossed into Montana again, as there was another sign for it right after the gate. A gas station attendant in West Yellowstone gave us some bad news: that every morning in Montana was as cold as this one. We also had a pleasant surprise though, a great supermarket that had hummus and organic kale! We met an enthusiastic couple from Wisconsin outside the store who told us that our ride for the day would be beautiful, which it was. For about 10 miles we rode alongside a lake that had been created by an earthquake--the thin skeletons of trees crosshatched the blue water. 

After 50 miles, we stopped in front of a fly fishing shop for lunch, and talked with one of the owners, originally a Brooklynite. When we asked him how he got to Montana, he said, "One day, I decided to go fishing, came here, and never left." Fly fishing is a big sport in Montana, and he explained to us about how fishermen need to become finely tuned with nature to know how insects vary with time of day, sunlight, and weather conditions. Last semester I read "A River Runs Through It" for an English class, and it was really exciting to see the rows of plastic boxes clustered with feathered and striped flies, and the fisherman knee deep in the water in rubber boots, lofting their lines in the air and letting them float out over the current. 

For the last 20 miles (of a 90 mile day) into Ennis we caught a strong tailwind- we were cruising at 20 miles per hour, with all our concentration going towards keeping our front wheels straight and staying in between the 4 inches provided for the shoulder between a nasty rumblestrip and the curb!  Rain started as we got to Ennis.  Our campsite was along a river, and as Gaby swam and I skipped stones, we saw many fisherman coming in for the evening. We also met a cyclist from Australia, Ed, who was going West to East, and we ended up both warning each other about passes that were coming up. He had swum in the river before we did and told us that when Australians see a body of water, they have to swim. 

We're using ACA (Adventure Cycling Association) maps for the Montana through Oregon part of our trip, and have discovered their many great qualities: cyclist approved roads with less traffic and more shoulder and lists of grocery stores and campsites. One weak spot they have, however, is topography. On their smaller maps, they show peaks but no contour lines, and their elevation profiles on the back are deceiving. Leaving Ennis, we prepared ourselves for the steepest climb in Montana: about a 2,000 foot elevation gain into Virginia City. Contrary to the vertical line on the map, it was actually only a 6 or 7% grade near the top, though still a hard climb. 

More specifically, from West Yellowstone until Missoula, we are following the TransAmerica cycling route, a route created in 1976 for the "Bikecentennial", a 200th year commemoration of the declaration of independence that attracted over 4,000 people from around the world.  On this route specifically there are a ton of cyclists- we have seen tourers basically every day, which is awesome!

Gaby was very excited to discover that Virginia City was a historical town--it is the sight of one of the first gold discoveries in Montana, and early settlers flocked to it. Its also the sight of a battle for justice: in the 1800s vigilantes banded together to try and rid the town of its outlaws and thus its crime. A great lady, Julie, in an antique shop gave us this brief history of the region, and encouraged us to visit a building where the outlaws had been hung, which, admittedly, was a bit macabre and creepy. She is a huge supporter of cyclists who pass through, always stopping for them on the pass and offering a ride if they look tired.  She also gave us 4 slices of bread because we were out and there was no food shop in town.  We had huckleberry jelly, a regional specialty, and some great ice cream from a store that still uses wooden barrels and ice to create it! Riding out of Virginia City, we met two cyclists from Kentucky, Drew and Steve, who told us about a great bike camp in Twin Bridges, the town we were headed for. They had a small radio strapped to the back of one of their bikes, a great innovation in my opinion. One thing Gaby and I have both missed a lot on this trip is the ability to listen to songs, though we do sing them both aloud and in our heads. 

Twin Bridges Bike Camp was one of the coolest things we've seen so far. A simple gray building perched next to a river in the City Park, it contained a small library of literature, National Geographics, biking magazines and highway maps, as well as two picnic tables, electrical outlets, and posters with the hours of local businesses. There was also a shower, a bathroom, a bike stand and a grill. Cyclists from all over had written on a couple of white boards mounted on the walls, and in a red spiral bound notebook. We explored it a bit before heading into town to do laundry, then watched a sunset through the mesh window of our tent, and read about a crazy family in Alaska who biked a gravel road constructed for oil tankers with 20% grades in the tundra where the sun never goes down. After that, our trip seemed tame and extremely doable.  Whenever we are tired biking up passes we remember that article.

Having climbed one pass to virginia city, we now had three mountain passes ahead of us in Montana. We had planned to do them in three separate days, but after talking to Drew and Steve, decided to try to do two in one day so we could make it to Missoula on a Thursday and catch Gaby's friend Sarah who was leaving for the weekend early Friday morning (for Portland, ironically). While both were still easier than the ACA maps made them look, we caught a rough headwind and were exhausted by the time we got to Jackson, MT, 75 miles later. Two nice ranchers saw us and invited us to stay at their daughter's ranch, but unfortunately it was 5 miles out of town. They also urged me to eat meat three or four times, which was slightly awkward. A lot of times on this trip, I've felt bad because it seems like people have taken my vegetarianism as an insult to their livelihoods and their beliefs. I wish that people could just see it as a personal choice: while I personally don't want to eat animals, and don't like the way that some animals are treated and some factory farms/feedlots pollute the environment, I definitely don't look down on other people for making a different decision. Gaby and I have talked a lot on this trip about the importance of being able to accept that people are different from one another and not try to force your beliefs on others, and about how it is a hard but essential balance to respect other peoples' ideas but still have your own opinion.

After learning that the lodge in Jackson charged $30 a night for camping, we decided to camp in front of the elementary school. A wooden fence and a concrete overhang extended a few yards from the front door, and we decided to set up our tent right in the doorway to avoid rain, sprinklers, and being visible from the road--it was a small space but we succeeded in squishing in the tent. We'd bought goat cheese for sandwiches earlier in the day, and when mixed with rice, beans, kale, onions and our curry spices, it was one of the most gourmet trail meals we'd ever had. Washing our dishes out behind the school, we saw the sun skim over the Bitterroot Mountains, trailing light like molasses. Our tent was dark, and every time a car went by, the slats of wood in the fence darkened against the wrinkled nylon, and thin yellow lines of light wove across the tent floor. 

Wisdom, MT was a mail drop location, and so twenty miles into the next day, we stopped in front of their post office. The postmaster was so friendly, and reassured us that the pass we were going over that day wasn't too bad. She also gave us tons of letters , and two packages. While we talked to her, we heard mooing that kept getting closer and closer, until we turned around and saw hundreds of cows walking down the main street...a cattle drive! The postmaster was amused by our excitement. Leading and following the herd were cowboys on horses, followed by dogs that tangled in and out of the horses legs. We sat for a little and sorted our mail--we were surprised and happy to get letters from people we'd met much earlier in the trip, a group of women we'd met in Ohio and our Pennsylvania couchsurfing friends Thaddeus and Melissa, as well as from college friends and family. 

Riding out of Wisdom, we passed two hitchhikers and stopped to talk. They turned out to be hikers on a trip up the Continental Divide--they'd stopped in Wisdom for showers and food restocking and were trying to get back to the trail. We joked about how if we didn't have bags we would put them on the backs of our bikes, and were impressed with how lightly they'd packed (they had a backpack each). One of them was from Portland and gave us good bike advice about the city. We were sad we couldn't help them out, but were happy when they rode by us, smiling and waving from the back of a pick-up. 

Right before Chief Joseph Pass, there was a state park commemorating a tragic battle in Montana History and the struggle of the Nez Perce Native American tribe. It was a really cool exhibit because you could tell it had all been curated by the tribe and not by outside historians. The ranger at the desk gave us a great oral history, and wished us luck on our trip. The pass itself turned out to be pretty gradual until the end. At the pass we crossed the continental divide, finally.  I saw a moose through the trees before we coasted for 7 miles down a winding highway through the valleys of the Rockies. 

It was a hot, tiring 95 mile day--one highlight was cooling off beneath an agricultural irrigation system. The second was reaching Hamilton, where we stayed with a couple named Terry and Carl T. who have been hosting cyclists for four summers straight and are the only warmshowers hosts actually listed on the ACA maps! We stayed in a warm bedroom, and Terri fed us lots of vegetables and some of her amazing homemade bread. Tom and Miguel had stayed with her 3 days before as well.  We also enjoyed visiting with her and hearing about her son's bike trip and other cyclists who had passed through, as well as petting and cuddling with her dog, Molly. In the morning, she made us delicious pancakes, and we set off, excited to get to Missoula. On the way there, we met a cyclist going from Glacier to Yellowstone who had biked the Pacific Coast with his college roommate many years ago (he looked to be in his 70s). He also was traveling really light--his bike was only 55 pounds (little did we know that when we weighed our bikes, mine would be 75 and Gaby's would be 90--I'm obviously not pulling enough weight. But literally). 

We biked a thin highway that twisted around canyons into Missoula, which was on the ACA maps but also pretty scary. But Missoula was so worth it.  It is a cute little city, kind of a liberal haven in the middle of Montana.  We ate lunch at this delicious pizza place called The Bridge, and the pizza we ordered was named "The Brooklyn".  After, we biked over to the adventure cycling office.  There we met Melissa, who was working in the maps department on a new ACA route on old route 66.  She took our picture, and gave us each a free 1 year Adventure Cycling Membership.  When we inquired about weighing our bikes, she introduced us to Greg, one of the founders!  He was interested in interviewing us for his National Bike Touring Portrait Collection so he had us write short narratives about our trip and talked to us for a bit.  We are really excited to be a part of that project!

After leaving ACA Headquarters we rode to freecycles (freecycles.org), a community bike shop in Missoula.  Outside of Freecycles we met Matt and Alex (bicycletraverse.wordpress.com).  They were riding from Maine to Seattle, but their trip had been stalled for a week because their third rider, Andrew, had gotten injured in a nasty crash.  While he was healing Matt and Alex had been chilling in Missoula, staying with friends.  Matt likes it so much here that he is thinking about moving here after the trip.  We have had a great time hanging out with them over the past few days.  I think the purpose of our two trips are very similar, and I would recommend reading their mission statement on their blog.

Yesterday we attempted to tube down the river in Missoula, the Clark Fork. Zo and I were astounded that the river is clean enough to swim in!  But we ran into leaky tube problems and Zoey's tube actually exploded as we were trying to hitch a ride up stream.  We ended up just swimming in the river, still a really fun afternoon.  Later we met up with Matt and Alex at a small organic and local cafe called Buttercup Cafe, owned by Matt's dad's college friend.  A woman who we chatted with there remarked that if this was a movie, we would all change our plans so we could travel the rest of the way together as one big group.  Part of me wishes that could happen, but we are on a time constraint and they will be waiting around for another week before they start biking again.

We went back to Sarah's house, and I started writing this post while Zoey cooked a delicious dinner of Shakshuka, roasted potatoes and kale chips.  At 12 am I was still writing and feeling really stressed about the blog, so Zoey took over.  This is our first co-written blog post, so forgive the changing possession of the "I".  We decided at 2 am to take another rest day here so we could sleep in and finish this post.  I have so much to say and write about but clearly not enough time to put it all down.

Lately we have had a great time singing songs while biking- some of our favorites are Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby Stills and Nash and the Fleet Foxes. "....I've gone to look for America..." is the chorus of one of our favorites.  Another thing that we have been realizing lately is that although we set out on this trip as a way to proclaim our independence, we have been dependent on people throughout our whole trip.  It is impossible to be truly independent in this world- we rely on people, technology, corporations, government, shopping, just to survive.  We are carrying some things on our bikes, but are in no way self-sufficient.  And it isn't something to feel bad about, but rather something to embrace and cherish.  I love that we have gotten help from so many wonderful people.

Tomorrow we will head out and climb our last mountain heading up to Lolo pass.  It is a climb of about 2000 feet over 35 miles, a gradual ascent that ends at the border of Montana and Idaho and the border of the Pacific and Mountain time zones.  It is supposed to be a beautiful ride.  We have approximately 600 miles left until the end of our trip- it is the last leg of our ride.  If you want to send any letters or packages to Portland, we would love to get them!  Please send them to 

Gaby Waldman Fried or Zoey Memmert-Miller

c/o Peter D'Auria

2823 SW Rutland Terrace

Portland, OR 97205

Old Faithful

The crowd at Old Faithful

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Buffalo in the road, Yellowstone NP

Getting too close...

Geyser flowing into the Firehole River, Yellowstone NP

Firehole River, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Geyser, Yellowstone NP

Painted Pots, Yellowstone NP

Firehole Falls, Yellowstone NP

Madison River, Yellowstone NP

Rocky Mountains

Avalanche Area, MT

The storm following us to Ennis, MT

Historic Virginia City, MT

Historic Virginia City, MT

Drew and Steve, from KY

The Bike Camp in Twin Bridges, MT

Big Hole Pass, MT

Our tent spot in the doorway of Jackson Elementary School, MT

Cattle Drive outside the Post Office, Wisdom, MT

Cattle Drive outside the Post Office, Wisdom, MT

The BigHorns, viewed from I-90

The Needles in Custer SP

Alice and Zoey

Coal train in Newcastle, WY

Buffalo Drinking from the road in Custer SP

The Eye of the Needle, Custer SP

Buffalo, Custer SP

Custer SP

Hot Springs in Thermopolis, WY

ACA HQ, Missoula

We made it to the ACA HQ in Missoula, MT

Sunset over the Bitterroot Mtns, Jackson, MT

WYO-DOT pickup ride

Zoey examining the rocks in The Black Hills National Forest, SD

The Black Hills

Custer State Park

Zoey playing guitar in Cody, WY

Looking towards the rockies, Cody, WY

Mt. Rushmore from Afar

"Welcome Couchsurfers!" Cody, WY

The Black Hills

"Adopt a Highway Litter Control Next 2 Miles: Optimist Club of Cody".....?

Ascending the Bighorns

TenSleep Canyon

TenSleep Canyon

......

TenSleep Canyon

TenSleep Canyon

Matt, crazy cyclist in TenSleep Canyon

Hiking in Custer SP

Mt. Rushmore

Wyoming

Mt. Rushmore and the tip of the helicopter

Harney Peak, Black Hills

Iron Mt Road (pigtail bridges)

View of the Needles from the top of our hike, Custer SP

Tunnel on Iron Mt. Road, Custer SP

Shoshone River outside of Cody, WY

Tunnel heading up to the East gate of Yellowstone from Cody

Buffalo Bill Reservoir, Cody, WY

Buffalo Bill Reservoir, Cody, WY

18 Mile Downhill after Powder River Pass, Bighorns

Ride into Yellowstone

TenSleep Canyon, WY

Free Hot Springs! Thermopolis, WY

WY

WY

Canyons in  WY

WY

WY

Sage Brush, WY

Custer SP

WY

Zoey Tubing on the Clark Fork River, Missoula, MT

Zoey Tubing on the Clark Fork River, Missoula, MT

The  Black Hills

Clark Fork River, Missoula, MT

Gaby and Sarah

Alice and Zoey, Sylvan Lake, Custer SP

Riding in the Black Hills

Custer SP

Custer SP

On the Interstate, Bighorns on the Horizon, WY

Yellowstone Lake

Custer SP

Ride to Yellowstone, WY

Ride to Yellowstone, WY

YEAH! Bighorns, WY

Hell's Canyon, WY

Bighorns