Started the day riding the bicycles (of course). We have been religious with bike riding as we are part of the EndoMondo Bike Challenge, which is why we are carrying this @#$% folding bike. It is a clever contest in that if you ride your bike even 1 mile you get 20 points for the team. Every mile you ride is a point so 1 mile = 21 points, 10 miles = 30 points, etc. We have 3 young hot riders (their riding is hot that is) (James, Keith and Seth) who are religiously riding a lot of miles every day combined with us old duffers riding 1,2,3, etc miles per day. So far we are #1 in the state. Really fun!!
So anyway, the day started with riding the bikes, then continental breakfast with a real mixed bag of people. The leathered, tattooed Harley guys are ironically the sweetest guys around kids, as I saw this morning. We loaded up and headed toward Jackson Wy. We climbed up the Bighorn Mountains and the temperature cooled off nicely. This was a nice break from all the hot flat grasslands (pretty dead grass at that) we had been riding through. People here say it has been hotter and drier than normal. I was thinking this was the end of hot flat dry country, but we had another long stretch before we finally saw the Tetons off in the distance. They are huge and inspiring. We stopped in Riverton for lunch at a local place that was packed with, you guessed it, locals. Waitress was pleasant and busy!! They have smoking and non-smoking areas which is a throwback for us Vermonters. I think Wyoming has a way to go here. I did see a great billboard showing the classic Marlboro cowboys in relief against the sunsetting sky and the subscript "I miss my lung, Bob". So they are working on it.
Somewhere in the flat hot part we went through Thermopolis. What a great name for a town. Sounds science fictiony to me. They have what appear to be public hot springs and big sculptures in the park which are mineral deposits of some kind, kind of bizarre.
There seems to be a lot of new road construction in this area in the mountain passes. The cool thing is they wave us motorcycles to the front of the line (red carpet treatment). I assume it is so we do not have to contend with the dust from the previous cars. So lots of hanging out with the flag people. They certainly have a nice place to be a flag person. We also saw some huge trucks and front-end loaders working these jobs.
The Tetons are huge, especially after seeing nothing but flat for the last few days. Jeff had a close encounter with a mule deer today. He was rubbernecking and didn't see it standing in the middle the road, but the deer and Jeff figured it out at the last minute.
We ran into a threesome, recently retired, from California and had a nice long chat. Random people are really nice to chat with and we sort of stick out being from Vermont.
When we found a good picture spot, we pulled off to get the above shot of the bikes and the Tetons (and Dave and Jeff). I chatted up a couple from North Carolina and they insisted they get a picture of us for their brother in law who has a bike. Really nice folks.
We met another couple on Harleys who were locals from Riverton. They had been out for a loop to a local lake and gave us some tips on restaurants in Jackson.
Jackson, as we knew it would be, is a tourist trap. Lots of really trendy looking people, cars and shops. We checked into the hotel and walked around town until we found some dinner. I had 2 pints of beer, since we were walking, and that will explain anything unusual in this post tonight.
So it looks like we are going to Great Falls Montana tomorrow via Yellowstone, which we kind of decided at the last minute. We are feeling like we have lots of time so can go a bit far afield. Everybody says nice weather for the foreseeable future so we will see.
No comments:
Post a Comment