You Say Hello and We Say Goodbye

July 26, 2022

We woke up early today to get into Yellowstone before all the craziness got started. Good plan, but the craziness never seems to end. I did a bad thing this morning and cut in line to enter the park. I figured folks would be accommodating to cyclists…yeah not so much. The woman driving the car I cut in front of shared her displeasure with me and ended our one sided conversation by calling me an a-hole. I take responsibility for my actions, and I hope I didn’t ruin her day.

We cruised pretty quickly through the portion of the park we visited yesterday. Took a few more pictures but tried not to be redundant to yesterday. We saw some Bison again. Dan actually hid behind an RV because he thought the Bison was coming his way. Me, I didn’t even see it and couldn’t understand why we had stopped riding.

For the portion of the park that was new to us, we stopped to take some pictures and check out some of the cool sites. I’ll add some to the end or beginning of the blog. I seem to have little control as to where they end up.

We were worried about the traffic and road quality, and there was also a bit of construction that we needed to navigate. In the end, it all worked out well and the construction was our friend as the workers timed things perfectly to keep the traffic pressure down.

The title of the blog refers to the Yellowstone Park folks saying hello when we entered and us waving goodbye as we left some 70 miles later. So yes we rode through the park in a single day…in the west entrance and out the south. Clearly there’s days, weeks, and maybe years worth of things to see, but we were following the TransAmerica route and we’re committed to being in NC in September.

As we left the park we jumped onto the Rockefeller Memorial Highway. If the civil engineers who designed RT 287 in Montana were boring, the ones that designed the Rockefeller Memorial Highway were masochists…but it is beautiful and I like climbing 😳.

Stopping point for today was Colter Bay in Wyoming and in the Grand Teton National Park. We cover 92 miles and got a day ahead of our plans. So tomorrow we’re going to get up a little later, go to Jackson Lodge for breakfast and then ride to Jenny Lake and hike, etc. So we’ll end up riding about 30-35 miles and seeing more of the Tetons, but not making any forward progress (no complaints from either Dan or I as were looking forward to sightseeing and taking pictures).

I forgot to mention that we crossed the Continental Divide three times today. So one of the signs will be the sign of the day. No surprise, but there were no barns or Bee Boxes. Might have to think about developing a new fetish. I also forgot to mention that we continue to run into lots of touring cyclists. Today’s highlights were 4 young ladies who are doing the TransAm together and a guy named Mike who started the Continental Divide trail with his 35 year old daughter who bailed on him after only 750 miles (I’m joking because that’s really impressive!).

All of our belongings are now safely stored in a Bear Box and we’re getting ready for bed.

Pictures to post and then sleep time.

Night.

Ian