Easy ride into the much awaited city of Missoula today. A good half of the ride today was on paved bike path, which is really nice.

Decided I’ll spend a day off here tomorrow. So, I’ll probably have more interesting things to say about the city then.

Ended up starting today going the wrong direction. 10 miles down the road I was talking to a construction worker who said he usually sees cyclists heading the other direction. Really should have checked my compass before I left.

Somehow ended up in Idaho for a brief time. Maybe for a few hundred feet. Still counts though — state 9!!

Had a really nice, long, scenic downhill coming out of the Big Hole area. Western Montana is a really gorgeous area.

Back out on my own today. Pleasant ride through what must be the Harley mecca of America. Saw a thousand of em.

Also climbed 2000 feet up to a 7000ft pass like it was nothing at all. Nothin.

Left Yellowstone after fixing a broken spoke on Dane’s bike and crossed into Montana (state 8)! Found a pizza place that offered touring cyclists half-price food and free internet. Excellent.

The ride into Montana has been absolutely gorgeous. Thick wooded mountains on all sides of the road, crystal clear lakes and streams, and perfect weather.

We were in good shape to have a nice downhill ride to Ennis, where a friend of Dane is living and we could stay for free. After a slip on some loose gravel, though, Dane fell and had his seat break right off his bike. No real injuries, but his bike is out of comission at the moment.

We were able to call his friend, Chris, in Ennis and have him pick us up at a little restaurant in the middle of nowhere. We got a couple of great couches to sleep on, some amazing mesquite beef raised right on the ranch, and heard plenty of great backcountry Montana stories.

From here, I’ll probably be setting off to finish the rest of the ride alone. Dane is getting a ride from Montana back home to Tennessee this week as he’s anxious to get back and too low on cash to make it to the coast. Will miss his good company on the road.

And so there was one.

Gorgeous day of biking through the Tetons and Yellowstone. It’s really something to be out here after so many weeks of biking through flat, unchanging plains. The scenery is really unmatched out here.

Saw a ton of elk/deer along the ride today. Then midafternoon we nearly ran into a bison walking straight down the middle of the road. Bison (or buffalo, I guess they’re the same thing) are apparently pretty tempermental and end up goring a numbe of Yellowstone tourists each year, so we decided to wait and flag down a truck to block us as we passed the huge beast.

Also went and saw Old Faithful go off. I was saying to Dane that I’d have probably soiled myself if I saw that out in the wilderness, but with all the hype, hundreds of people, and countless trinkets they’re peddling around that one geyser, I found it all merely pretty impressive.

It started getting late, and we found out all the campgrounds were full. We decided we’d pull up to one of them and try to sweet talk our way into the campground. Luckily, we found out that Yellowstone has a policy of never turning away hikers or bikers. Each campground has a special hiker/biker area that ‘never fills up.’ Score! Had a great night camping under the starry Wyoming sky.

Got up before sunrise to try to get some miles in before the Wyoming winds picked up. It worked!

Came into Grand Teton National Park late morning over a 9,000 ft pass to an unbelievable view of the Teton mountains. They’re unreal.

A lot of construction going on in the park, and we actually got picked up by a pilot car leading a caravan of vehicles through a one lane section of highway. It was nice to not have to bike for a little bit, but it was unfortunately for a good portion of the downhill side of the pass.

Got a campsite at Colter Bay on Jackson Lake for $7 (it pays not to have a car out here), and we ended up camping right next to a group that does group adventure tours. Turned out to be an awesome deal as they had tons of extra food at each meal and came around to find people to help them finish it. Try as we did, we still took with us a 6lbs leftover bag of lasagna. For reals.

Ran into another crazy cyclist, Kim, and we all spent the night sharing beers, a fire, and many adveture stories. Perfect night.

Nice ride through Wyoming. The winds picked up mid afternoon, but it was still nothing compared to the wind a couple days ago.

Ran into a recumbent bicyclist (or, rather, tricyclist) from Boulder headed to Seattle. His trike definitely looked comfortable, but boy did we smoke him out on the road.

Found some more cyclists at a KOA and shared a site with them. The campground was quite luxurious, with showers, an indoor pool, an arcade, a laundromat, and a huge elk statue. And split four ways, it was only $6 / person. Good deal.

After the brutal day yesterday through the wind, Dane and I took a nice short day into Lander, WY. It turned out to be a gorgeous mostly downhill ride with almost no malevolent winds.

Lander is turning out to be great, with free camping at a city park, a pool, a library and even a McDonalds! Score.

One of my favorite lines from talking to a stranger at McDonalds today was an old man explaining that Wyoming was always so horribly windy “because Nebraska sucks and Idaho blows.” Awesome. Should add that to the Wikipedia page.

We ran into some East-bound cyclists camping at the city park. Both rode out from Seattle, so they recommended a good route across Washington. I only have maps up to Missoula, MT, so I’m terribly happy about getting that squared away. It took them 20 days to get out here, so it should be safe to say I have about 3 weeks left to Seattle.

Whoooaa. We found out today how windy Wyoming gets. Unbelievably windy.

We had the wind at our backs in the morning and put a quick 12 miles or so in about 30 minutes. You could feel the wind pushing you up hills. It was great.

Then a terrible thing happened. We turned west, and the wind shifted toward the east. And became more and more unbelievably fast as the day went on. We spent 4 hours trying desperately to push through it, only making it about 20 miles in that time. By the end of the day, we were pushing our hardest and going 6mph downhill!

It was bad enough that we stopped and tried to hitch a ride a number of times with absolutely no luck. Wyomingites are apparently a hard breed to get to stop and pick up stranded bikers.

We made it completely exhausted to a rest area where we could at least get some water and perhaps try with better luck to get a ride into the next town. The wind was only getting worse, so there was no way we’d be able to make it the needed 40 miles down the road. Well, no luck on any rides. By this time, spirits were verrry low. Especially since we were running out of food and getting quite hungry.

Some time later, a Walmart truck driver stopped to talk to us, and ended up offering us these huge salads. Super nice guy, and very tasty Walmart salads. Spirits lifted.

Then a few hours at the rest stop, we realized there was a place to camp across the street!

It turned out to be a Mormon Handcart Historic Site–the Sixth Crossing. We pulled in to find some 50 people dressed in pioneer clothes! Apparently, groups come here to experience the same trip the old LDS church people made across Wyoming with handcarts many years ago. Pretty interesting.

As soon as we rode in, a woman ran right out to meet us, and straight away and made sure we’d eaten and had water. Even after we explained the salads and rest area water, she still brought us out a bunch of fruit, pudding, sandwiches and gatorade! Incredibly nice! We got to camp for free in a gorgeous spot on the plains. What a terrific turn of events.

Not a terribly interesting day today. Our maps took us onto Interstate 80 for a stretch, which was weird.

Ended up camping behind an old diner called Grandma’s. Not too bad.