Jellystone... Yabbadabbbadooo

It seems like it has been quite a while since i sat down to write anything in this blog, but in reality it's probably only been a few days. Busy ones though.

Not least of which was the slog out of Lima, sandy tracks sucking my tyres down, while headwinds blew us backwards. But that was all worth it for sunset at the red rock lake campground. For those of you who know me on Facebook and have seen the cover photo I put up, I know from the comments that you thought it looked special too. I will attach the photo to this blog also.

But the trip to red rock was memorable for two animal encounters. One I knew nothing about the other a real highlight.

Having had a few warnings about snakes (as if bears and cougars are not enough), such as the gun toting barman from my previous entry asking if I had a snake bite kit (I don't), I thought I should keep a good look out from now on. Of course the problem with riding hot, dusty, fifty mile days, is that your concentration tends to flag. So I was a little surprised a few miles from making red rock camp when Chris stopped me and said a three foot snake had just managed to wriggle out of the way of my front tyre. I must try and be more vigilant in future!

The other encounter was first thing the next morning. In an avalanche chute right above the campground two large bull moose were feeding. I managed to get within about thirty metres of them without them seeming too worried.  What immense, yet somehow stupid looking creatures. They ooze a sense of power and size, with huge horns. But their faces just look as if they find everything a little quizzical. It was special for me though, my first real big animal sighting of the trip, and a change to the incessant games of chipmunk chicken.

One thing that has happened in the last few days is that I have at long long last made it out of Montana. Climbing up the relatively short climb to red rock pass, we crossed over into Idaho. The irony of this is ,that after thinking the moment would never come, we decided the next day to make a detour up to the west gate of Yellowstone, and rode right back into Montana. However once out of west Yellowstone town, a complete tourist trap, and into the park, you soon cross into Wyoming. That also made it three states in one day, check me out. Also Yellowstone may be a detour but we climbed to our highest point yet and crossed the divide three times in total, so in some ways it seems a more true route.

I should mention that crossing the Idaho border, a photographer stopped us who adds all divide riders he catches to his website. I will have to look out for when we appear!

Anyway, Yellowstone. I will try and let the pictures do most of the talking, but it really is a cool place. If you want to see the big attractions it will not be a wilderness experience though I guarantee you that. Essentially  highways roll in a loop round the park with a constant stream of RVs and Harleys running round them. There is plenty of backcountry I'm sure, but we were trying to see as much as we could on our way down to the south gate. But the animals don't really seem to care one bit about the traffic, it's as if they know what the rules are in the park and they rule.

I can now add herds of elk and buffalo to my sightings, which makes me happy. But the buffalo/bison sighting that will remain with me is the bull who wandered out of a Bush and came straight towards me. My mind flashed to the 'many visitors are gored by bison' sign I had seen a few hours earlier in the campground. However he merely snorted at me, steam pouring from his nostrils in the early morning air, and took the direct route to where ever he was going and set off down the highway menacing a few RVs into slamming on their brakes.

Elks I saw plenty of, but what i will remember is their Bugling in the night. A sort of high pitched eeeeeeghhhhh sound followed by a low grunting one. This had me and Chris giggling in our tents like school boys.

Our route through Yellowstone took us right through the geyser fields it is so famous for, such as old faithful. Check out the photos I guess. All I can say is I was a giddy bouncy kid when I first spotted steam just coming up all over the place out the ground as I was riding along, and by the end of the day I was completely geysered out. Impressive stuff though, and some of the moon like landscapes are just so bizarre.

Today we rode out of Yellowstone and into the grand Teton national park, camping at Colters Bay on Jackson lake. The scenery is spectacular, proper mountains once more with glaciers sliding around on their summits. And the waterproofs were at last required today. The temperature dropped, and a spectacular storm raged on the peaks across the lake, lightning exploding onto exposed ridges, and thunder growling down the mountain slopes and out over the lake towards us. Deeply majestic and menacing.

And today also marks my last real day of riding with Chris. It has been great to have a partner to help push me along, and the feeling of camaraderie has been a joy. But tomorrow he peels off towards Jackson hole and a flight home to San Diego and his wife. I wish him all the best and I know he will be pleased to see his beagle too, whose howling he seems to constantly imitate while riding along. But for me it feels a little daunting to be setting out on my own again. However all I can do is relish the challenge and adventures still yet to come as the path climbs ever upwards.

N.b. I have also included photos of a musk rat from big springs...a cool little water born critter, and I should mention I also spotted beaver hard at work on the way out of Lima. There are also photos of the mountain house food that is amazingly lightweight and tasty freeze dried stuff. A God send when I can find it. And I found an amazingly powerful cordial concentrate which is small enough to take with me and has made me very happy!

The truth of Kyle

In my last post I had just arrived in Butte, pronounced b-you-t. However there are plenty of reasons to pronounce it the other way, which I will touch on, but despite what I'm about to say let me also express that the city has some real character and an interesting old part of town, left over from its days of, in its own words, "hell roarin".

However it's also home to Berkley pit. Essentially Butte made its money from mining. A lot of money. Indeed the town sign welcomes you to the richest hill on earth. However most of that hill is now Berkley pit. And that is something worth seeing even though it is the antithesis of why I was so excited to do this ride.

Berkley pit is an open mine, that was flooded when mining ceased, producing an enormous toxic lake well over a mile wide and several thousand feet deep, right next to the town. The scary part is the water is rising, so they need to make sure they have water treatment facilities in place before it reaches the critical level and contaminates their local groundwater resources. The lake is about as acidic as vinegar, and for all you serial killers out there apparently an excellent place to dump a body.

However Butte is four nights of camping out in the back country behind me now. The country has been varied, and changing. This included riding fleecer ridge, which is infamous on the route as being the hardest downhill on the whole route. But actually it's not all that. Nothing you might not find in good old Blighty out in the peak district, and not as technical as the previous boulder strewn descent on lava trail I talked about. It's just very steep and loose. Now for those who are dragging a trailer round with them I can see why it would be terrifying, as the slightest mistake and you would be turned around backwards and probably not stop rolling and somersaulting till you hit the bottom a quarter of a mile below.

The campsites along the way have generally been great. I have to give a big thanks to two guys separately (Terry and Paul). These guys at seperate campsites saw us roll in sweaty and tired, and just came up and gave us a couple of cold beers, which was mighty generous and tasted mighty fine. I also should say thanks to the Scottish owner of the wise river club who as we were brits gave us free ice cream, yum. The other highlight of camping is I'm still riding with Chris until he has to go back to California, and he has his iPad with him. So we have been having outdoor evening cinema showings of Monty python films. We are the bike riders who say nih!

The forest fires out here have continued to be pretty bad though. I have tried to show a picture of it but I'm not sure you can really see. Most of the fires are actually in Idaho, but the smoke a couple of days ago was just blowing right into Montana, and obscuring the views dramatically, with everywhere smelling of smoke, and a fine dusting of ash on your tent in the morning. The strange thing was riding all day in what felt like a constant sunset.

And in a smoky prolonged sunset we rode into Bannack, a true ghost town. Bannack was the state capitol founded on a gold rush, and is straight out of the westerns you watched as a kid, frozen in time. Wandering round there is just surreal, especially reading the stories of the real outlaws who frequented and frequently murdered each other in the saloon, with its bar and barber's chair in the corner still remaining. What did make me laugh though as we stayed in the adjacent campground, was the discovery in the morning just before we left that despite no one having lived there for decades if not a hundred years or more is that Bannack does however have WiFi!

The next couple of days riding took us into some very remote country. So different from the verdant trails of Canada, this part of Montana has endless mountain ranges and plains full of arid sage brush. Cowboy country if ever I saw it. Today after being chased off our mountain campsite by the first real storm I have encountered out here (i have put pictures on showing the rain we were escaping from and the almost dawn like sun covered vista we were running to) we rode through some stunning canyons, filled with caves. The trail was in fact the route for the long gone Bannack stage coach. In my head I could still hear it rattling along, and imagine every cave in the canyon as a perfect hide out for ambushing bandits.

And then we popped right out of the canyon into the present day and onto interstate 15. And on it we have added an additional 16 miles to the day between finding a motel to take us here in Dell, and a laundry to do our clothes further up the route in Lima where the motel is full.

Speaking to my brother the other day he said he was enjoying the blogs as they were very 'Shannon family', meaning that there was a focus on food. Well he should love the laughably named calf-a here in Dell, I ordered a cheese burger with a side of chili. But despite nearly passing out from hunger and exhaustion at the end of yesterday there was no way I could eat all of what they brought out. The side of chili was a meal in itself. It all tasted great though... And we did sneak back in the evening for pie!

My motel is something a bit special too. All the rooms are themed, and as the owner showed me the huge colt revolver he keeps behind the bar (yep very definitely in Montana still), and my room is called trapper, I shouldn't have been surprised to find a wolf staring down onto my bed from the wall. In fact looking round there are furry things everywhere in here. I'm not sure if all the howling last night at the campsite was my room mates long lost buddies celebrating a kill or coyotes, but I feel a little for him.

So what does the title of this post have to do with anything. Well yesterday was a pretty tough day. Head winds meant that even though 46 miles is not the longest day I have done, nor by any means was it the steepest, the constant effort left me with nothing in the tank, and once off the bike I was pretty unsteady on my feet until I managed to get my dinner down me. However just the incredible views and sense of isolation and remoteness of our campsite (read small patch of flat ground on the side of a mountain by a small stream) made it worth while. I can't remember if I mentioned him but Kyle was a guy I met on my first day out for all of five minutes. He was on his last day having done the route in the opposite direction. It didn't mean much at the time, but he told me you will have some great days and some bad days, but in the end they will all be great days. Now with more or less a third of the miles done I think I'm just beginning to really understand what he meant.

Radioactive Super Powered Cycling

So goodbye Helena and hello climbing. But before leaving Helena I had a little shopping to do. For those who read the Vaseline incident and about my chafing issues, you may also have seen i was recommended to get some antiseptic cream etc. Anyway I discovered the wonderful but strangely and grossly named cream 'jock itch'. On this occasion I was relieved not to be arrested for suspected public masturbation in a back alley behind a sports store, after having to get my hands down my pants in the open once again to apply. I can happily report though it does the job nicely.

Apart from one little downhill yesterday we climbed all the way out of Helena for somewhere between twenty to twenty five miles, eventually reaching over 7000 feet. It was a long tough grind, with the slow speed being the most frustrating factor. However I would have to also describe it as a great day. The achievement of getting that high felt good, and the last two miles were over some ridiculously boulder and root strewn ground, with some sections completely unridable unless you're one of those nutters who can hop your bike onto the shed roof and do a 360 off for fun (and I would like to see you try it with 20-30kg or so on the back in panniers). And the equally technical downhill on the other side was just great, slipping and sliding your way down in between boulders.

And once all the climbing was done the reward was a speedy descent for five or six miles down a gravel track to the strange and ramshackle town of Basin. And what a fun descent, racing a flowing creek down the side of a mountain, intermittently crossing over it on barrierless bridges as it gurgled on below.

Once we hit Basin, we enquired about the local campground and we were directed to one of the strangest experiences of the trip so far. The merry widow campground is a health mine. A what now!? Essentially it has a mine on site, which is a failed uranium mine, but has plenty of radon, which despite being just a little radioactive, entices people to come drink and bathe in the mine water in their droves. Particularly from Korea it would seem. The lady on the front desk was very pleased to meet her first Brits and let us stay for free. She also told us how the FDA had been hiding a cure for cancer since the twenties and proceeded to show us a grizzly catalogue of horrendous looking tumors the radon infused water had apparently cured and popped right out of people's skin. Anyway you make up your own mind if it's a myth, scam or miracle, and whether I will be ok after drinking the water there!

While we were making dinner a nice young girl called Jenna on a cross country trip through various parks such as yellowstone grabbed the pitch next to ours. She made us laugh with her habit of not sleeping in her tent, but sleeping on the picnic table in her sleeping bag with her tent wrapped round her instead. Although she seemed pretty comfortable. But she also had the coolest dog, Ivan, who's photo had to make the blog as even though he is apparently a Russian Samoy or something, he is best described as a cross between a wolf and a big cuddly teddy bear.

Talking of animals I also have to mention the chipmunks out here. They are such little characters and more than a little suicidal. The furry critters are constantly running out into the road just in front of my wheel. It's like they are all playing a big game of chicken or something.

And onto my favorite animal subject of bears, I got some crushing news... literally. As I have been sleeping with my bear spray in reach, I have been imagining that if a bear does decide to drag me from my tent to eat me, that maybe it will be polite and use the zips on the tent so I can ask 'is that you bear?', and when it goes 'grrrrrr' promptly spray it in the face. So when some guy said it will just rear up on its hind legs and smash the crap out of my whole tent and me in one movement, with no warning, it was something of a disappointment.

Anyway riding today to Butte it was a long boring stretch on which I felt rubbish, even though the terrain was much easier than the day before. Maybe it was the radon! I should mention to sign off I met nice guy called Rick who is doing the route the other way, coming from the south, on an off-road motorcycle. Somehow, considering I'm not even a third of the way there yet, it seemed unfair he was a day from finishing after starting last Monday. Bah, his loss! Haha!

Ghost Town

Well the last post I wrote how I was getting stronger. I still think that's true. But the last couple of days have been levelers. I guess there is a cumulative effect, but 2 of the last 3 passes really took it out of my legs, with some real steep climbs, parts of which were just too steep to cycle and were pushers. But I'm still pedaling and still getting there. Oh and riding through small rivers makes me absurdly happy for some reason too!

I have found when it's really tough though plugging into my music (even if it means I can't hear the charge of a flesh hungry bear or cougar) really helps, and gives me a rythym. There is an old electronica type track by Fischerspooner, Emerge : stone cold mountain pass killer.

However sometimes when you get to the top of places, there isn't much to denote you're at the top. But as the picture demonstrates, when we got to the top of priest pass the Montanans had courteously only shot away half the sign.

Anyway I made the choice in the end to go to Helena. Rick decided to head straight for Butte and have a rest day there, and Chris came with me. But we got here with time to explore on a Sunday afternoon, and it was eerie. Hardly a soul to be seen on a pleasant sunny afternoon. No one in the suburbs, no one in the town, and this is the state capitol. There must have been a big game on or something. It was like the opening scene of a deserted London from 28 days later. I was tempted to knock on a door and see if any zombies answered. I also debated with Chris what should be our weapon of choice if the town had been overrun by zombies. I had to explain that a cross might be fine for vampires, but you need something with some skull splitting power for zombies. Amateur!