An Excellent Adventure

Day 39 We woke up in John and Lucy's lovely cabin, packed our things, then ate breakfast and did our prayer and Bible reading on the porch of the cabin. We rode on toward Pinedale, where we had reserved a room in a bed and breakfast for the night -- our first planned indoor lodging since the Man Cave a little over a week ago (John and Lucy's cabin was not planned far in advance, and being indoors then was a pleasant surprise!). On the way, we stopped for a lunch and postcard-mailing break at the Cora, WY post office. It turned out to be a very cool place one of the only buildings in Cora, this post office used to be a general store, and it still has historic general store merchandise and decor in the front. That afternoon, we arrived in Pinedale, WY, a big small town with our first grocery store since West Yellowstone. Historically Pinedale was a big cowboy town, and it still has a lot of that character today. When we arrived, we made a trip to the laundroma...

Day 36 We packed up and got ready to leave Grand Teton National Park, but as we were packing, one of my bike's shifter cable housings got tweaked, which threw the shifting on the rear side out of whack... poor Buttercup... (Buttercup is the name of my bike). I threw on some good ol' electrical tape and then took the opportunity while I was adjusting stuff anyway to finally install the shiny new derailleur hanger I had picked up at the West Yellowstone bike store. It was great! My bike shifted like new again! After our late start, we rode out of the park east along U.S. 26 then turned off onto Buffalo Valley Road. On the way, we picked up some more HEET at a gas station to power our alcohol stove. We still had some iso-HEET (red container), which we had nicknamed "atomic HEET" because of the large fiery ball and copious soot it creates when you cook your food over it, but we were growing tired of cooking over a fireball, so we wanted to switch back to the yellow ki...

Brief update: We made it out of the desert a few days ago, stayed in Rawlins, then the Medicine Bow national forest, then last night the Brush Mountain Lodge. We are doing great! Today we plan to stay in Steamboat Springs after climbing the daunting Watershed Divide. We now have about a week before we get back home, which is bittersweet, because we are having an awesome time. We are still running behind on posting photos and stories, but will try to get caught up before we get back!

Day 31 After a good night's rest following a great Yellowstone vacation, we spent a long morning at the Man Cave re-packing our things in biking mode as well as doing various chores on the internet. We finally left around 2pm and rode to the Warm River Rail Trail where our journey continued southward. The rail trail was an old railroad bed that had been converted to a multi-use (bike, hike, equestrian, snowmobile, atv) trail. Originally built in 1908, this was the railroad that took passengers from Salt Lake City to West Yellowstone via Ashton to access the park. Remember the old railway station in West Yellowstone? This was the railroad went there. The railroad was later owned by Union Pacific who operated it through 1979. A cool old tunnel along the rail trail At the end of the day, we camped at a nice National Forest campground called Warm River. Apparently the river was not all that warm (like 50-something degrees); it is just warmer than some other rivers, especiall...

Day 26 With backcountry permit in hand Jonathan and I packed up at the Yellowstone Canyon campground and set off for three days in the woods. We planned to spend five more days in the park and would spend the first three on a hike to "4B1," a backcounty site at the Joseph's Coat hot springs. To get to the site we (1) hitchhiked to the trailhead, (2) hiked 8 miles down the Wapiti Lake Trail, then (3) bushwacked for  2 more miles off trail. This was my first ever experience with bushwacking (map + compass) travel-- I somehow never managed to go on the map and + compass hikes our college's outdoor rec program (ORGT) hosted. Jonathan had been to this site before when he worked at Yellowstone in the summer of 2009 and is versed in map + compass so he lead the way, and I learned a lot. We successfully arrived at Joseph's Coat that evening after a fun day of hiking and set up camp where we would stay for two nights.  It was a really special place-- both because Jonath...