Ennis, MT

Alrighty, so this is going to be another completely non-comprehensive, photo-free post for the moment, but hopefully I'll be able to get back on later this evening and at least put up some pictures!

So, made it out of Lander, eventually. That town has a very strong vortex! After the last post, I ended up wrecking my bike while still in town - warped the front rim pretty badly, scratched up the bike a bit (mostly handlebars and saddle,) got some road rash (left knee, elbow, and hip - neither too bad,) and a series of little punctures from the chainring on my right calf. Fun stuff! Moral of the story - don't hold on to moving vehicle while on a loaded bike...

Anyways, I had to wait around all day Sunday and into Monday until the bike shops in town opened up to buy a new front wheel. Fortunately, one of the shops had a suitable wheel, and the other one (where my friend Ben works) had some available space for me to get the bike straightened out! Got everything put back together and re-adjusted, had lunch with Ben, then bought a new helmet (somehow managed to loose mine in town) before finally getting out of town around 2pm.

After Lander, it was a long day of riding with strong headwinds and very few resupply options before the next town. Eventually made it in to Dubois, WY by 10 pm or so, just a little after dark and stopped into the bar to get some food and figure out a place to crash. Found out where the town park was and that there was a fire crew camping there, which was somewhat fortunate as the town park wasn't listed as being a camp site. Probably meant that bikers usually can't stay there, but I figured there wasn't any harm if a lot of people were camping there already :). Found the park, setup, and slept.

Tuesday had a lot of road construction, including 4-5 miles of dirt construction site where there had been road. Cars were being led through by pilot vehicles, and cyclists were being shuttled in the back of pickup trucks. So, long story short, I had to ride in a truck for a part of the coast-to-coast journey. Not too concerned about that though, it's only .1% of the total distance anyways :).

Anyways, I've got 2 minutes left on this round, will see about getting more posted later!

....and back after a short break. Posted some random pictures - time frame on those is roughly from Breckenridge to now. Haven't had a chance to look through them and pick out the best ones, just posted a few that caught my eye :).

So, I'm in Montana now - crossed the border yesterday evening. Spent the last couple days rolling through Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. The scenery was pretty neat through both, but the traffic was hellacious and I was pretty glad to be getting away from that today. Lots and lots of vehicles in general, and a very significant portion were RVs or huge trailers. Plenty horrible driving to go along with the heavy traffic too, and it wasn't usually people being put into bad situations by other traffic. Bad drivers, plain and simple. I don't like RVs.

Did get to see some neat stuff though! The Tetons were very scenic, would definitely like to come back at some point and spend some time hiking/climbing around in them. Yellowstone wasn't quite as interesting as I would have anticipated, but the geothermal stuff was pretty cool. Got to see Old Faithful go off twice - rolled in right before it went off, then wandered around for an hour or so and saw it go off again before leaving. Also saw some big wildlife; a couple moose in Grand Teton, and some big elk in a few different places in Yellowstone. No bears, but lots of little rodent type stuff.

Speaking of bears, my first night in the woods in "grizzly country" got off to a funny start. I think some of my stupidity from Lander was left over. Was cooking up some dinner (one of those Lipton side dish things) and first off, without thinking about it, I opened up a big pack of tuna and dumped that in. Wasn't planning on cooking up a bear magnet first thing. So, after feeling a little stupid about that one, I managed to spill my pot of tuna noodles. Brilliant. Didn't loose too much dinner, but that table sure was fragrant by the time I was done with it! Cleaned up things (after eating, of course,) and didn't have any problems by morning.

Montana has been beautiful so far. I've only been riding in the state for ~80 miles (5 yesterday, 75 today,) but it's been nice rolling terrain with lots of stuff to look at in the distance. Service stations and towns have been a bit more frequent than they had been, but it's still much less populated than the eastern part of the country. Looking forward to more riding around here, and getting into Idaho soonish! I'm planning on nailing down a return date and buying a plane ticket when I'm in Idaho - want to see how this rafting trip pans out first. My next big stop should be Missoula, MT where Rubberbandman, a friend from the AT, lives. The Headquarters of Adventure Cycling is also in Missoula, so I'll stop by there and check it out too. With any luck, I'll also have a chance to check out Big Sky Brewing :).

That's all for now!