2022: The First Leg

A good first day. We had tried in our schedule planning to find the sweet spot between the snow melting off the shoulders of the roads in Yellowstone Park and the start of the RV / camper/tour bus season which is challenging for bikes on the park’s narrowish roads. We achieved these objectives and the park’s is still pretty mellow, but it’s quite cold and very windy. We had the wind at our back most of the day and the sun periodically poked through the clouds racing overhead – which felt like a good omen .

Chris again showed himself to be an ideal biking companion by throwing open the curtains to our room in West Yellowstone revealing dark tumultuous clouds, high winds and temps about 40 degrees and exclaiming “looks like a great day!”

Given the impending wind chills both of us had to make choices on what to wear. My getup featured several colors which should never be near each other, other perhaps than in sorbet, Chris chose a new ensemble featuring woolen tights under cargo shorts which gave off a Merry Men of Nottingham vibe. Chris thinks his new look more evokes Hamlet. But in any case both of us were grateful to our respective family members for giving us some high tech clothes for the ride, which really served us well when the temps fell in the afternoon and the winds continued to pick up. Without them we may have worn clothes we bought in Vermont in the 1970’s. We never saw a single biker the entire day.

The forecast from here for the next few days is not encouraging, with nighttime temps in the 20’s and daytime highs in the low 40’s but we will take one day at a time, and are grateful that all worked out logistically to get us, our bikes and our equipment all here on schedule, that snow forecast for today never materialized beyond a few flakes, and that we were able to see so many wonderful sites in the park without traffic jams. We travelled upstream on various rivers all day and due to the strong wind at our backs had the lovely surreal feeling that we had so often last year that we were going downhill even though the river racing downstream next to us showed we were climbing. A wonderful feeling, and a wonderful day .

It’s early spring here- the rivers are running full and fast, the bison and their new, buckskin-tan calves are out in the openings along the river cropping the new grass, and the sunny ground next to the road is carpeted with tiny white flowers (“Spring Beauties”).

For you EB White fans, we also passed a pair of trumpeter swans in a slow stretch of the Madison River- one of them looked like it was starting to make a nest. Along the way upstream along the Firehole River to Old Faithful we saw lots of smaller hot springs and geysers- several with orange and yellow fringes caused by heat- tolerant Archaeobacteria. Despite the cold gusty winds folks from all over were stopped with us admiring the bison and peering into the steaming pools. For a chilly day the traffic was still pretty busy, but thankfully the road surface was good and the shoulders consistently between 2 and 3 feet.

At one point we stopped to read a sign about Chief Joseph and his group of Nez Perce, that travelled across this area on 1877 trying desperately to elude the US Army and reach Canada. with the big shiny pickups and campers roaring by enjoying this spectacular part of the West, it was tough to envision the lengths this group of native Americans went to to inhabit a small piece of it freely.

We have a tougher day tomorrow … we hope the snow holds off again!

Today was a good day full of amazing sights. We remain on track despite some weather challenges.

Somehow we wound up with a room at the Old Faithful Inn that looked out directly at the geyser, so when it went off it felt our windows were like a big television screen. We awoke to the geyser spouting!

It was about 25 degrees out and had snowed some overnight but it was clear and bright.

We have gone from heat being a major factor last year to cold this year. Our strategy last year to beat the heat was to start very early. This isn’t an ideal strategy thus far because the roads are intermittently icy. We climbed up and over three continents divided today. Approaching the second we found ourselves in a snow squall which was starting to stick on the road and was seriously reducing visibility. Winds were high up there so we flagged down a pickup with a young couple, and his parents in another pickup just behind. Apparently the last thing the driver said to his wife before he saw me flagging him down was, “Bet you’re glad you’re not those guys!” They were a wonderful family, and similar to the angel in the white pick up last year, offered to shower us with Power Bars and cookies after driving us down a few miles below the storm. We must have been quite a sight up there. I realized when we climbed in the truck that Chris and I looked like Shackleton crew members with all the ice in our beards. I have some paying it forward to do for all the highest May angels who have appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

We made it over the third continental divide without incident and began a gradual and gorgeous descent out of the Park. A highlight was seeing the Tetons in front of us, totally stunning and totally unexpected at that point. After leaving the Park we rolled mostly downhill to Jackson Lake, with the Tetons to the west. They were so clear and luminous – a benefit of the unusually cold air which holds so little moisture.

A wonderful and memorable day overall. I am feeling very lucky to have this opportunity.

Notes from Chris: Today we saw all of the weather predicted: bright sun, steady north wind, cool temps and some snow. As we climbed out of the geyser basin surrounding Old Faithful this morning, a few flakes gradually got close to a blizzard around 8,300 feet, and after lunch we gladly rode down out of the storms. There was a big snow difference today that’s likely due to where the hot groundwater and buffalo grazing on new grass at 7,200 feet near Old Faithful … and two feet of snow still in the woods at the same elevation, but 30 miles south.

We were worried before the trip about both the shoulders and the traffic in the parks, and both have been better – except for a few hairy miles in the snow today, there’s been plenty of room for us along with the trucks and campers. And the traffic, although busy even so early in the season, has been giving us a lot of room and even a few honks and thumbs-up; reassuring!

We have met some friendly fellow travelers and lots of energetic waitstaff where we’ve stayed. We spent a great half hour with some avid birders this evening watching elk and sandhill cranes move through the broad marshland at the edge of Jackson Lake , and had a good time with the college students in the restaurant this evening/ from all over the country, and apologetic about running out of some things on this their first night open this season.

Tomorrow we have to climb east out of this spectacular valley and over a 9,000-ft. pass (hope we are done with the snow), but the good part is that we’ll have the Tetons to look back on as we climb gradually up to the pass.

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A day full of adventure and memorable experiences, today started in awe as the sun shone on the snowy Tetons. After we began riding east, Chris spotted a man’s wallet and rode it back uphill to the lodge – as he said, a karmic contribution hopefully in payback somehow for all the people who have been so wonderful to us on the trip.

The next fifteen miles of early morning riding eastward as the Tetons shone on the horizon to the west was some of the most beautiful and restful riding I have ever done.

Today’s route included going over the Togwatee Pass, at 9,600 feet, by far the highest pass on our route and the second highest in the entire TransAmerica route we have mostly been following since the Pacific. The vertical rise is almost 3,000 feet above the valley shown in the photo of Chris here.

The ride went very well and we were both encouraged by how we were dealing with the altitude. The snow in the terrain next to us got deeper and was about five feet deep near the top of the pass.

At 9,000 feet, Joe changed gears on his bike and had the chain jump off. With the torque required to keep moving forward on such a steep grade up, there was some damage to the gear changing mechanism on the bike. Enter a snow angel in a white pickup named Bryce who transported us the rest of the way to the top of the pass, and then stayed with us as I assured the bike was again rideable. His help was invaluable as a snow squall blew in and Chris and I rode downhill about 10 miles through a storm with dense pebbly snow/hail.

When the snow cleared, a moose appeared across the road and made eye contact. We then rode about 25 miles downstream along the Wind River through some interesting terrain into Dubois, happy from a full day that we’ll not forget.

Note from Chris: The start and end of of our ride today included a lot of vivid greens- at just below 7,000 in the Jackson Lake basin, the elk were out in force grazing the riverside meadows, and cattle, horses and mules were doing the same in the pastures along the road. Luckily the shoulders were wide and the traffic light as we pedaled gradually uphill towards the pass, because we spent a lot of neck and mental energy scanning both sides of the winding, rising road for the grizzly mom and her cubs that both store owners and digital road notices had warned us were “on the road.” Alas, we didn’t see them, and before long our determined pedaling had gotten us well above the warming green hillsides and into the snow and timber.

After our downhill pedal through the pelting snow pellets on the east side of the pass, we rode for an hour or so through the upper reaches of the Wind River Valley, where the snow had left so recently that the landscape was still brown: chalky flowing water coursing through sagebrush and charred trees from a decent fire. It wasn’t until the valley widened above the small town of Dubois that there was enough flat ground and diverted stream water to support bright green irrigated fields. At one point, we rode along next to two dozen mule deer as they sprinted and bounded over fences between fields, and watched a small band of horses clambering and galloping over striped orange and gray/green rim rock, as if exploring again the favorite parts of their range, after a long winter fenced very close to the barn.

We continue to be so impressed by the friendliness of strangers out here. Across the street from our motel, a young owner of a bike shop/women’s clothing store spent a half hour diagnosing Joe’s derailleur issue and fixing it when I rolled the bike in 10 minutes before closing, and I shared a great conversation and a coffee with an older gentleman at the Cowboy Cafe next door, who invited me to sit down with him at the last open booth. When I told him about our ride across the Coast range in Oregon last summer, he told me about his grandfather who had delivered food and supplies to small settlements on the range with a team of horses in the late 1800s.

Tomorrow we have no passes to traverse as we follow the Wind River downstream to the larger town of Lander – maybe out of the snow country?

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Message from Chris: We had a beautiful ride today down the valley of the Wind River from Dubois to Lander. The surrounding countryside changed dramatically during the day. At the top, the river ran through a narrow channel hemmed in by cottonwood trees just starting to leaf out, and beyond the river on either side greening pastures and hayfields ran up against bright bedrock cliffs. And here and there you could see up a side canyon to the snow- covered ranges far above. At 8:30 on a cool Sunday morning, we had the road largely to ourselves for the first hour or so.

But pretty quickly the valley got much wider (the big ranges on either side annually dump a huge volume of water and sediment, giving the river plenty of scouring power) and the road climbed up onto a broad bench south of the river, flat enough to support big pastures for beef cattle and horses, and cut often enough by tributary streams to give us some regular uphill warm-ups to balance the cool downhills.

Message from Joe: No pelting by ice pellets! No white outs! No self-destructing bike parts! Today was a quieter day for us, and at 75 miles with a steep vertical climb from one drainage to another, one of our most challenging of the trek. Almost the entire ride today was through the Wind River Indian Reservation, a large tract of varied land which often looked like the mythical West of Roadrunner cartoons. The wildlife visible was amazing: pronghorn sheep, elk, great blue herons, all in stunning quiet because there were so few cars on much of the route. The floor of the High Plains were green bluish from the flora growing after the recent snow melt. Very beautiful in an austere way.

Chris keeps me laughing. In one particularly remote stretch, he was interrupted by a text from the Holiday Inn we had reservations for in Lander, with the message “You’re ready to check in!” Given that we had at that point about 40 miles of challenging riding remaining, Chris said he was thinking of sending them a reply “Please don’t send any more messages unless it’s about a Holiday Inn pickup truck on its way bring us to town.”

Lots of time in the quiet of a ride like today’s to think, and I was thinking about how blessed I am to have friends and family like I have …

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First, a quick update on my bike: A good bike store determined that my derailleur was shot. The whole drive group will need to be replaced back in Minneapolis. They did not have quality parts in stock but installed a lower end part which will hopefully do the job for the rest of this ride. Fingers crossed.

Today was a rest day in Lander. Chris and I are loving the town: which seems very down-to-earth and outdoors oriented. NOLS, the National Outdoor Leadership School, is headquartered here and there’s lots of focus on outdoor activities, including biking.

Tonight we had a lovely dinner with Izzy Marshall, her husband Jeff, and their three beautiful children, Paul, Bess, and Sophie. Izzy is the daughter of dear friends, Sarah and Paul Marshall. She practices Internal Medicine on the Wind River Reservation. Jeff is both general contacting and contributing his own engineering, design and handyman skills to a big multi-level renovation of their spacious vintage home.

Connecting with Izzy and spending time with her lovely family made for a poignant and wonderful evening. I can remember very clearly spending lots of time with Izzy when she was as old as her children are now. I hope it doesn’t sound cliched to say that an evening such as tonight makes one conscious, in a good way, of how the wheel of life is turning. Lots of warm memories tonight of very special times.

We ride from Lander tomorrow into the remotest stretch of the trip and might not have service to update the blog on a daily basis, but will do so as soon as we can.

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A really good day. We rode 60 miles from Lander and experienced biker heaven for the last 20 miles or so: a long steady downslope, a great shoulder, beautiful scenery heightened with late afternoon sun, blue skies, and a steady 20 mph wind at our backs. There was a dreamlike quality to it all, like flying in a dream.

This finale of the ride was preceded by a thousand foot climb over about five miles to Beaver Ridge. The views from the top were dazzling and strong winds and several nearby rainstorms added drama to the scene. Montana was smart to appropriate the Big Sky Country slogan, but based on this week at least Montana has nothing on Wyoming in terms of the expansiveness and grandeur of the skies.

Chris and I agree that despite the cold and occasional snow, and lots of snow in the passes, this is a great time of year to tour Wyoming because the landscapes have a lot of green in them, and tourist season isn’t in full swing yet so there’s lots of solitude.

Today we saw the second and third bikers we have seen in the nearly a week we have been riding on Adventure Cycling’s TransAmerica route. We were high up on an isolated stretch up on top of a ridge, and they swooped over from the other side of the road to talk. They were a young couple from Southern France in the process of riding from Mexico to Canada along the spine of the Rockies. Even after all the miles they’ve ridden, they both seemed pumped up and inspired by the beauty up there, one so different because of the treelessness and expensiveness, but dazzling and moving nonetheless. I tried for the rest of the ride today to see the sights as if I were from another country seeing the Western High Plains for the first time…

We are staying tonight in the semi ghost town of Jeffrey City – until the 1980s a bustling Uranium mining town. Apparently the U.S. uranium mining industry went bust at that time and the mine closed, so the town was soon abandoned by all but a few hearty souls, several of whom we met tonight and are doing several jobs to make ends meet. In the conversations we’ve had with people we’ve met on the trek here in Wyoming, we get the sense that Jeffrey City is something of a cautionary tale about the boom and bust nature of mines.

Tomorrow we are scheduled to ride 67 miles to Rawlins. We hope the wind direction holds steady out of the northwest. Chris and I cannot imagine what our ride would have been like today if that strong wind had been in our faces instead of at our backs. We have been so lucky with wind on so many segments of the transcontinental journey.

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Message from Chris: We had a good ride today, through a beautiful part of the Wyoming Basin. After fresh coffee that our host Lisa put out on her front porch for us, we headed southeast at 7 soon after the frost burned off. With no wind and a warming sun, we made good time across mainly flat terrain – enjoying the cool air and grass near the road were beef cattle , antelope and a few wild horses. We spent a few minutes reading the info at the site of an old pony express station – switching horses often they were able to travel 15 miles an hour across the sage and rocks.

We finally reached our breakfast spot 25 miles along – knowing the gas station/store would be our last chance for food or water for 40 plus miles, I had 2 breakfast burritos, coffee and juice, while Joe had a decidedly smaller meal (we have very different systems).

After breakfast we pushed uphill toward a height of land and into a headwind (pretty rare for us this trip), but after crossing a low part of the continental divide, our route turned more easterly and suddenly we were being pushed across a broad, 20 mile wide basin at 15-20 miles an hour. That midday sail was a huge morale boost and energy saver, allowing us to pedal up and over a higher part of the Continental Divide without too much trouble. (With few trees and sandy soil, Wyoming does a great job of making their highway climbs gradual and consistent. At one point today Joe asked, “So when do you think we’ll start to climb ?” and I pointed out the height that we’d already gained!

Again this afternoon we were blessed with a long gradual downhill and a tailwind at the end of our ride – in this case carrying us into the large town of Rawlins along Interstate 80.

Tomorrow we’ll head east for a bit before climbing south into the mountains again on our way to the Colorado Rockies. We feel very fortunate that we crossed the least populated section of our trip over the past two days without any problems , and were actually really impressed with its beauty. With the green grass and sagebrush against the rock outcrops and the cool temps, we both agreed it was an ideal time to bike across this part of Wyoming.

Message from Joe: We had a great day and are in a good rhythm now, having had days to acclimate to the altitude and for Joe to get back in full shape (Chris is always there). We covered 70 miles, and crossed over the continental divide twice after significant climbs. Coming downhill for perhaps five miles to our breakfast stop we had the experience we had discussed yesterday: facing 20 plus mph winds head on. It’s a very strange feeling to be moving at 5 or 6 mph, with lots of effort, when one is on a steep hill down. There are no trees on this part of the route, so the wind is relentless and literally in your face; it’s hard to think of anything else when faced with it, and we didn’t know if we water going to face it for the remaining 50 miles of today’s journey. Fortunately the wind shifted to a more prevailing trajectory and we were soon jet propelled across a huge flat basin, as Chris describes. Especially with no wind breaks as in this part of Wyoming, wind trumps incline big time.

For the second afternoon in a row we ended our rides by coming off high passes and then being jet propelled for 20 miles or so to our destination towns with almost no pedaling required. These are surreal experiences with the beautiful scenery unrolling before us.

We have been SO lucky with wind on this transcontinental tour, including the Pacific to West Yellowstone segment and the Albany to Brooklyn segment. Just one of so many things to be grateful for on this tour across the country with friends.

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Comments from Chris: We travelled today from the broad valley of the North Platte River up into a high lush valley of one of its tributaries. In just 60 miles and 600 feet of elevation, it looks very different.

By 7:40 this morning we were riding a tailwind east out of Rawlins, first riding parallel to the Interstate on a state road which our receptionist at the Hampton Inn called “the bike path” and then merging onto Interstate 80 itself for 13 miles. After exiting unscathed at 9:30, we were grateful for the smooth, 10-foot wide shoulder, the gentle grades and the alertness of all of our fellow (75 mph) travelers at that early hour.

Next we climbed gradually south across a high grassy plateau bordered on the east by a high range topped with snow. For the next 20 miles the shoulders were great, the traffic fast but giving us plenty of room and the wind starting to build. At one point, we were passed by a truck and trailer hauling two saddled horses out of the huge green pasture on our right – at 30 miles in I was wondering whether their saddles might feel more comfortable than mine.

At a bit before noon we found a great sandwich shop in the small hamlet of Saratoga, and rested and ate. Climbing out of town at 1:00, we proceeded to peel even more of our warm clothing off – which felt great at the time but we are now noticing some definite sunburns on our arms and hands.

We were cheered in the early afternoon by the sight of large snow – covered mountains ahead of us, and as we steadily gained elevation we began to see more trees along the distant river channel and more irrigated hayfields on either side of us – fed by the melt waters from the mountains ahead.

After a long 5 mile ride at top speed into town, my front tire tube had waited until my bike was safely parked in the shade to explode.

After 60 miles we descended off a high table/land onto a broad park and pedaled steadily towards the confluence of tow mountain streams: the North Platte and the Encampment River – named for a large gathering of fur trappers and Native Americans that took place here in the early 1800s. At the outskirts of the town (Riverside) I wheeled into a log “Tourist Information Center” and was greeted by a stout older gentlemen in boots and cowboy hat who invited me inside to rest a spell, sign the guest book, and look over the abundant brochures furnished by the State of Wyoming. Chatting inside we were both startled by what sounded like a gunshot outside: my tire had exploded.

Comments from Joe: Chris’ bike is now fixed and we are enjoying a lovely evening at our lodge on the Encampment River. The owner had said on the phone as we discussed our trip before arriving that she “would not use the ‘w’ word” and we didn’t know what she was taking about but have come to understand she was referring to wind, an out-sized factor in biking in Wyoming. Today the wind was strong and variable and mostly in our favor, thankfully so during the miles on I-80, a place neither of us wanted to hang out any longer than necessary.

We are now in a town nestled in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. Tomorrow we will climb up into Colorado. The ride up looks daunting from here but we’ll take one mile at a time and hope that “w” is in our favor!

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The climb through the foothills up to a high arid plateau above 8,000 feet proved daunting but we were ultimately successful at keeping on plan and are now well into Colorado with beautiful views of the dazzling white Rockies all around us.

After a short flat ride after leaving our lodge, we turned into the mountains and had a fifteen mile steep climb with winds not at our backs for a change. They strengthened throughout the day and by mid-afternoon there were 40 mph gusts. The last 13 miles were straight south, and the increasing winds were out of the west. Gusts caught our panniers and tried to push us around, so as Chris said when we got to town, “I feel like I’ve been wrestling all afternoon”.

The same increasing winds out of the southwest are forecast tomorrow – so more wrestling (or bronc riding which came to mind to me during one hairy stretch) is possible tomorrow – but we know and trust our bikes and will try to get an earlier start before the wind builds.

It was bittersweet to leave Wyoming today. We’ve been through many states on this cross continental trek but Chris and I agree we’ve never been treated as well. Literally every interaction we had in Wyoming over a week of riding was a positive one, and we are so grateful to our two snow angels, who, though they were most certainly on their way to some planned destination, helped us get out of snowstorms before things turned dire.

There’s a backstory here: When I was a young boy growing up in the New York City metro area, I became fascinated with Wyoming and tried to convince my parents to move us all there. I was ten or so and would write to the Wyoming Chamber of Commerce and such, who would send me lots of brochures and such, with which I would try to engage my father in conversations about moving our family to Wyoming. It made so much sense to me: on the one hand lots and lots of people in a small place, on the other hand almost no people in a very large place. The brochures stacked up and the conversations hit a dead end when my father asked me what he would do for a living in Wyoming – a tough question for a ten-year-old to answer.

But the place had always seemed magical and wonderfully foreign to me, and our experience riding our bikes through it this last week did nothing to dim the magic for me. It was a wonderful week there full of interactions with gracious and considerate people!

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A challenging day which included very heavy winds and the highest pass of the journey, but we made it and are now safe and sound with dear friends in Winter Park as planned (see tomorrow’s final post of this trip from there).

Because of the daunting winds yesterday, and the pattern of winds building through the day, we started biking early and enjoyed about 20 miles of gentle climb on a secluded road with very little traffic. Winds picked up earlier than we expected and the eleven mile climb from there to the top of the Willow’s Creek Pass, the highest on our transcontinental journey, had sections of road which went up directly into a sobering headwind, and others where the wind was at our back and we were jet propelled up steep inclines.

After teaching the pass we rode mostly downhill for 26 miles to Granby, where dear friends Karen and Brad Quinn were waiting with a sign and a car to bring us, at this journey’s end, to their vacation home for a lovely celebratory dinner. With the big climb and dramatic winds today was an excellent end to the trip!

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Message from Chris: Thanks, Joe for the invite to join you on this ride. Even in “desolate” stretches, we found spectacular natural beauty and friendly, generous people. And, as retirees not entirely clear on our current abilities, it was reassuring to be able to meet the various challenges of this trip: our go-to response to shoulders too narrow, to hills too steep, to traffic too thick – was to get off the bike and walk … and that served us well.

Thanks, too, Joe, for being such an agreeable and determined companion on this trip. My only regret is that we did not keep some record of our respective calories ingested – you certainly were far more efficient than I in converting calories to miles – maybe it was due to the choice of beverage we each had each evening – on more than one occasion, the waitress suggested that she bring an entire pitcher of lemonade to the table.

Message from Joe: This segment of the transcontinental ride completed, we are staying with dear friends Karen and Brad Quinn at their lovely vacation home in Winter Park. There was a gentle rain through the night and I woke to a Dylan line playing in my head, “Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm / Come in she said I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

I’m filled with gratitude for the blessing of lifelong good friends, for the love of family, and for the safe completion of a long and mountainous segment of the sea-to-shining sea trek.

I’m grateful to my trek companion Chris, who is an ideal teammate on this trek, especially on the very challenging segments such as the one we just completed. He is positive, resolute, funny, optimistic, incredibly strong, and always sees the glass as half full. Until our next journey together, I’ll miss his remark after reaching the top of a hill, sometimes with a 25 mph wind in his face of: “Making Headway!” A good motto for life, I think.

I head back to Minneapolis tonight, very excited to be with Becky on our anniversary tomorrow. On Friday of this week, I will head down to Nebraska for a week long group ride across Nebraska, and will do the blog from there. I can’t promise purple mountains majesty from Nebraska, but maybe some fruited plains.

This has been a great segment of the journey. I head back home with reinforced desire to see and feel the magic moments around us, to be the wind at others’ backs, and to see and act on the opportunities to be angels for others. Thanks for your interest in our journey and for being a part of the wind at our back!

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