Saturday, June 23, 2007

June 20th, day 19, west Yellowstone, mt. to west thumb, WY.

We started the day at 5:30 am on the cafeteria floor of the west Yellowstone school. Once up, it was bagels with peanut butter, cereal and bananas. We started off by waiting in line to get into the park, once in the park we took it slow.

I rode with Todd Wright, Nick Cramer, and my brother Jake. We held a smooth 13mph for the first part of the ride, it was mostly flat and we were trying to soak in the park. We stopped multiple times to take pictures, the first time it was for a pair of bald eagles and then their nest with chicks. Then there were multiple bull bison and small herds of elk to entertain us in our slow pace.


We eventually made it to a geyser basin where the whole team took a break and walked the trail around looking at all of the different pools and geysers. For me the most interesting pool was the painted mud pots, they looked like giant pools of boiling white paint. It wasn’t until after the geyser basin that we really got into the hills. These hills were tough, with constant and steep ups and downs. We actually crossed the continental divide three times.

Shortly after our third time, on one of many steep downhill runs we hit a spot of traffic, which in Yellowstone are known as bear jams. My pace line and I got off of our bikes so we could walk them on the shoulder past all of the traffic, trying to get to lunch soon because we knew the rest of the team was waiting on us, Todd and I were sweeps. As we approached the end of the bear jam we saw a few park rangers and a bunch of tourists looking and snapping pictures. We walked closer and saw that it was a female grizzly and her two cubs. It was an amazing sight but also a nerve racking one, I had just learned earlier in the day that a man, who had been mauled by a female grizzly rearing two cub, had died earlier in the week. We took a few pictures from a distance and called it good; we decided to let the “curious” people have the fun. As we were leaving we heard the ranger yell “NO RUNNING SIR!” when we all look over its Karl our historian scurrying around trying to get all of the pictures that he can, fifteen feet from the wild animal. We finally decide to get going, not wanting to witness anything tragic before lunch. It was a short ride from there to Grant Village where we ate lunch and got set for the night thanks to Yellowstone National Park Lodges and Xanterra. Most of the team got in the vans and headed out to visit old faithful as well as the other areas of the park before their all you can eat pasta dinner. I as well as Jake and Todd, the other two Washington State guys, are lucky enough to have a chapter brother giving guided horse tours in the park for the summer.

Jacob Turner drove along with the team all day and picked us (WSU boys) up after lunch and drove us to Roosevelt Corrals where we took a covered wagon tour of the immediate area while getting a history of the park. The tour stopped in a meadow for an all you can eat steak cookout. Then we took the wagons back to the corrals and watched the employees remove all of the saddles, and clean all of the horses. Jacob gave us a ride home by 10:30, and it was off to bed we went.


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