8/18/15
Fortunately, the railroad tracks that went past my tent never produced a train. Took my time getting out of Ashton this morning, taking advantage of some good cell coverage to update the blog and read some email. Had a fairly uneventful ride through ID farm country on paved roads with the exception of a dog that had a serious issue with me passing his house and figured he would run me off.
A few miles after the route turned to dirt I stopped for some lunch at a nice lookout. I warmed up some soup sat on a huge rock and enjoyed the view. Only a couple bites into my lunch decided that I needed something off the bike. When I stood up, accidentally kicked over the soup that I had JUST started eating. Well, good thing I picked up two cans in Ashton.
Traveling through Idaho farm country
A few miles later I crossed into Wyoming and would ride a trail that skirted the south border of Yellowstone National Park for several miles. On the trail, you pick up all kinds of information from various people, well-meaning individuals, other riders, etc. Well, the so-called information that was on my mind all day was that southern Yellowstone is where they relocate the “problem bears”.
Have had other well-meaning people tell me the best way to traverse bear country is to make a noise like talking and singing. Since I typically only have enough breath in me just to peddle this damn bike I certainly wasn’t going to waste any by singing out loud or talking to myself. What I did instead was get out the iPad and turn up the speaker volume as high as possible and cycle on. Figured too that playing Ted Nugent would put a little fear into the local bear population as well.
Immediately after crossing over the Grassy Lake Reservoir dam the trail climbs. While making the climb I came across three Divide riders camped for the night just a few yards off the trail. Stopped and talked with them for a while and even though I had intentions of making a camp about another 10 miles or so up the route I decided to camp with them for the night.
While talking with this group we could hear a couple bikes making the climb up the hill going past camp. Either they had not talked to the same self-proclaimed bear experts I had that ‘bear bell’s’ are worthless or they choose to ignore the science because that was the telltale that cyclist was approaching. They were a Dutch couple wearing matching cycling jerseys and lycra shorts. They didn’t stay too long as they had the same intentions that I had… To make it further up the trail for the day.
Welcome to Wyoming
The guy responsible for naming the middle two trails must have been having a bad day at work.
An interesting bunch I choose to camp with for the night. Learned the one guy with a strong Russian type accent had joined the other two several days earlier. His name was Flavio (sp?) and joined the other two when he couldn’t keep up with his original riding partner. It was very obvious he did not want to do this route alone and he didn’t think I should be either. Think this was a self-serving point for Flavio just in case he needed to find a different riding partner.
The other guy was older also with an accent that I couldn’t quite pin down and who’s name I never picked up. The third was a woman also speaking with an accent and was pulling a trailer. Her name was Giesa (sp?) Interesting group this was. But hey my chances of getting eaten by a Grizzly for the night just went way down with three other dinner choices people in camp.
Camp at Grassy Lake
