Week 4

We're up at the normal time, and Liz drove us into town for a wonderful breakfast and presentation at the church that set up our hosts. On the way in, Liz is talking to Michael (who's sitting in the front seat) and has half-turned to look at him as they talk. Suddenly out of nowhere, she slams on the brakes and a massive elk jumps right in front of her car, feet from the bumper. I'm not sure how she saw it coming, but her lightning reflexes totally saved us a morningtime tragedy and woke us *way* up, no coffee required! The rest of the trip into town is uneventful. It turns out it was friends of Alex M's dad who were associated with the church and as a bonus, Mr. Menzies had joined us and it was neat for us to meet the man who inspired our best photographer and programmer. And the dog who kept him company =)

While chatting up the churchfolk after breakfast, we discovered that a nifty thing had happened---apparently we are so well-loved that there is already a waiting list for hosting duty next year! I guess we're pretty ok guests =)

I presented for the second time the "synopsis of yesterday" during our morning presentation--I'm definitely getting more into the swing of public speaking as time goes on. I used to be okay at it when I was with the ACM in college, but now that I've mellowed out a little and learned from watching enough bad speeches and meetings, so I think I'm actually getting decent at it and have no more stage fright whatsoever. Nifty bonus skill honing!

We were, for the fourth day in a row, led out by a local fellow (whose name I didn't catch), but Collin and I struck out in front immediately for our (and the team's!) best 20mi average so far, 24mph. And that included 5 minutes of 10mph stuff in town before we hit the open road, so realistically once we started zooming out of stoplightville we were probably over 25mph! We did some great 2 person pacelining (I won't lie--Collin had a lot more juice in him than I did so he did the lion's share of the work and I was out of breath just keeping up sometimes), but we made it into the stop at the 20 mile point in less than 50 minutes from departure...and 10 minutes before the rest started trickling in. The road was fast all morning--not much (but a touch) of wind, and fairly flat. Some up, some down, but nothing rigorous.

Next we cruised a leisurely 19 miles into River Rock which as a town possessed not much aside from a quaint but friendly general store, and was proclaimed to be the same size as our destination today, Medicine Bow. This worried us a lot since we were hoping for some kind of facilities and maybe a church bigger than a doublewide mobile home.

I hammered 18 more miles into medicine bow since there was lightning and threatening clouds and I was tired of sitting in the heat at the rest stop. I figure if I can beat the storm in, I won't have to ride in in the car...but it turned out in the end that nobody sagged. We all beat the rain in and the storm was off to the west the whole time. To our great relief, the town is much more lively than we expected--3 bars and a church, and actual people hanging around (there were no people in evidence when we pulled into River Rock around lunchtime).

The bags had been unpacked from the trailer and left in the parking lot when I arrived, but since the rain was imminent and threatening, I helped move bags inside as people pulled in, and then we had an improptu team meeting about van cleaning (and a lot of other stuff, including some petty bickering, but the only real result was that we actually ended up with a clean van/trailer). Part of the problem is that a lot of personal junk has been all over the van and trailer outside of duffels, and the plan is to cease and desist from this behavior. It will be interesting to see how many people can even fit all their stuff into their bags (myself and about 5 other people have been doing this all along...but everyone else has tons of crap laying all over). It should provide for some interesting moments over the next few days as people have to decide what to do with that souvenir buffalo hide and that second purse that was too cute to pass up. But the real reason for all the hullaballoo (besides the generally disgusting state of the vehicles with 18 of us gritty, sweaty, not-showering-often-enough folks living out of them) is that we need to get ship-shape for bear country. We can't have food laying around, and we especially can't be spilling honey on our gear. None of us have ever camped in bear country before very seriously (I did, once upon a time, but nobody impressed the importance of good practices upon me, and it wasn't quite bear season yet anyhow, so I wasn't as careful as we'll need to be now).

Medicine Bow, or anyway this church's congregation, had quite a few little kids. We gave them a mini-presentation about our bikes and played with them for awhile before and after dinner.

After the great dinner and a decent presentation, a few of us went out for a few drinks with a reporter from a nearby town (who paid our bar tab!). Sadly the more interesting bar was closed (due, we learned the next morning, to the proprietor being off to get chemotherapy! We'll ride for him tomorrow.), so we went to the still-interesting-but-not-having-a-40-foot-jade-bar-and-hand-painted-everysurface bar.

It was a good ride today, but tomorrow will be tough, and my ass is sore. But there's no stopping us now =)

In Medicine Bow, we were told that it was "mostly downhill" on the way to Casper. By this point in our journey, we hadn't yet grown to be entirely cynical about what the "car people" would tell us about the route ahead, so we were looking forward to a long ride without a lot of hills. The church had cooked us a really awesome breakfast of incredibly dense eggy casserole. Like, the stuff was about 2.5" tall and a lasagna-pan full of it weighed at least 20 pounds! I ate as much as I could, but we couldn't even come close to finishing the food. Unfortunately, nobody thought to bring it along with us, so much of what might have been lunch was wasted. Sigh.

I don't remember much about the ride except:

• superfast downhill into rest stop 1. Unfortunately, the rest stop was *on the hill!* so we had to give up our momentum. I think I took the downhill speed record at 46.8mph, narrowly beating Michael by fractional mph. He weighs 15 pounds more than I do so this led to some debate as to howcome I went faster on the same bike since we were both coasting, but then someone pointed out that my bike is almost preternaturally heavy which lends me some momentum. Oh, and I have aerobars which I used for decreased drag.
• Out of the rest stop with Menzies, rode through a lot of nothing for about 30 miles, eventually came to a very roasting hot water stop, hopped a barbedwire fence and poked around in a falling-down building while we waited for the team to catch up.
• Pulled for Alex Chang, Collin, and Ellen out of that ramshackle-building-rest stop until we got into town to catch up with Daniel and whomever was driving. They'd gone hunting for a campground and found one, that wouldn't take check-ins until later in the day, so we opted to go wait there (where there was presumably shade, unlike the last rest stop) and rolled over there despite lackluster directions.

You know, I can't really remember anything else interesting from this leg. It wasn't *really* bad riding...not too windy or painful, fairly hot and shadeless, and we had some tense moments when we thought we were going to be homeless for the night, but everything worked out great with the campground:

The camping was approximately the most cushy camping imaginable, outside of setting up a tent in your living room--if you happen to have a butler! Drive-up sites, Wi-fi enabled, wood already cut in huge piles, fire circles pre-made, showers, laundry, and we got free pizza delivered--thanks to Jay from the Fort Collins Rotary Club. We took the bench seats out of the van to create camp seating. Couches! Also, Wal-mart was about 1.5 miles down the road. (aside--in case you're wondering why we go to Wal-mart so often despite their horrendous business practices, they are super cheap, meaning Texas4000-approved for general as well as grocery purchases, so we can write a bigger check at the end of the year. They also tend to have everything everyone needs so that nobody has to get back on their bike to go to the drugstore, the hardware store, the camera store, etc--since the vans are only for official team trips. it's kind of draconian, but it's the only sane methodoloy we've discovered, once you consider the cost and environmental impact of driving all over kingdom come, as well as the increased probability of a car accident...on a bike trip. How ignoble it'd be to end up with a needless casualty. Finally, Wallyworld donated $20 to our cause almost every time we asked, pretty consistently all the way up into Canada. So they're not all bad.) Also, we were the only people at the campground, and the weather was only mildly warm until sundown when it got to be perfect campfire weather. We pulled the seats out of the van to make couches as we sat around the campfire and told scary stories and drank beer. I slept as well as I ever have while camping, even sleeping through two wake-up calls!

So, camp setup was easy yesterday, and teardown this morning went surprisingly painlessly for our first take on detenting. We had a quick breakfast of oatmeal and rabbit (not really. But there were so many rabbits hopping around that we considered doing some population control to get protein), and then we were led out of town by a news reporter. He was in a car and took a lot of footage of us rolling so presumably there was some footage of us on Wyoming - k2's web site, but we never heard back from him. The ride out of town was kinda uphill but not too bad through about mile 35. We did a rest stop at 25 since the vans didn't come back from shopping until then, and it was decided that the weather and terrain were fine for another 25-miler. This is pretty atypical for our team--we've grown accustomed to the 20-miler, and some people (good for them!) drink enough water consistently that they need a refill after 20 miles. I tend to be more of a gulper than a sipper so I wait til the rest stop and chug about 3 bottles, refill and am ready for about 40 miles before I'm desperate. Unless we're in the desert or going straight up, or something. So, I was pleasantly surprised by the unanimous vote for a second 25-miler: we could make it in 3 rest stops! Earlier arrival! Less baking in the sun at rest stops (while you're on the bike, you make your own wind...when you're standing still you tend to get cooked, especially out here in the middle of nowhere, where shade is a totally unavailable resource. We've actually taken to hanging out in the van, which will no doubt lead to some interesting smelling van seats by the end of the trip. Add that to the delicious smoky tinge from last night and you have a recipe for a vehicle even a mountain man could consider home! Fortunately, so far the potential for yuck has far exceeded the actual stink, somehow.)

I had an interesting idea for a blog posting today, and the title was "Empty". Wyoming is pretty darn empty...of people, of trees, and sometimes, of anything except roadkill as far as the eye can see. There was more to the potential entry, but unfortunately, my brain-like-a-sieve surely didn't help me out in remembering the meat of the post, again. Sigh.

Allison and I were waiting to go and she said something like "Sure, I can dig 25, unless it gets a lot more hilly..." and so of course it immediately proceeds to get very hilly. There was a nice 3-mile climb in the now-baking heat up to a really amazing spot called Hell's Half Acre. Strangely I can't find any current websites that have more than pictures of the place, but we took some pictures and wandered around the abandoned restaurant--which has a hell of a view, but nobody actually living nearby, and looks to have shut down at least a year ago. Too bad the restaurant was shut down, or we would definitely have darted inside and probably eaten or at least dodged the blistering heat for a bit. I wandered behind the closed building for a better view and almost stepped on a live snake...that certainly woke me up (it was a sleepy ride up til then...myself, Shawn, Allison, and Eric all had the nodding-off-on-the-bike syndrome happen today, perhaps due to our substandard (ok, it wasn't actually bad at all, but it definitely lacked protein) breakfast and first rest stop).

The snake and I parted on fine terms after I agreed not to step on him and we carried on...and suddenly the wind hit us hard. In the face. 20mph steady, gusting to 40. For the last 60 miles of our ride. It was vicious, and almost relentless. It made going over about 13mph impossible, and even 12 was very difficult. What a great way to end a hot, dry day. Not. Even I started drinking water like it was going out of style and for the last 2 rest stops we did sub-20's, which at least balanced out nicely with the long legs in the morning. At any rate, we were all pretty miserably demoralized and then we ran out of bread. We somehow managed to lose 2 loaves that were kindly donated by the local grocery in Casper the night before! Sigh. So Amy darted up ahead to Shoshoni and saved the day at the last stop by delivering bread. However, I got to the last stop first along with Nelson (who'd been in the lead all day) and couldn't even fathom putting anything in my mouth. It was all I could do to finish my gatorade and I turned down additional non-water drinks. After a 2-minute stretch break, I took off before anyone else arrived because town was only 16 miles out--and we'd been informed that there was seriously good eatin' there--and there was NO WAY I was going to miss my window of opportunity for having restaurant-food this evening. So I found some legs and a lot of luck to find some less-windy spots and held over 20mph for at least 7mph of the last 16. Of course, the rest was that pure torture, shout-into-the-wind-but-it-steals-your-voice hand-pushing-you-backwards-in-the-chest frustration zone. But I made it into town (16 miles in 45 minutes, so I averaged a much better pace than I'd managed at anytime today since mile 40. Turns out I was very lucky since nobody else got as many breaks as me. Or maybe nobody wanted a huge meatburger and malt as much as me!) At one point in the last leg, Nelson was a ways behind me and suddenly saw me just take off and couldn't figure out what was propelling me. I swear it was a break in the wind, he swears I'm just a hoss. Whatever =)

I pulled into the first bar in town, almost limping in pain...my butt was very unhappy for the last half of the day. It's not about distance, it's about saddle time, and this day was a lot of time on the bike. It still hurts a few hours later, but at least I can sit comfortably now! The bartendress pointed me in the right direction to the restaurant, and I hobbled into the cafe and had the best meal I could imagine. I can't tell you objectively how it was, but as my first substantial meal of the day, it was freaking excellent. Yay and yay! I then sat at our host venue (the local fire station) and guided everyone in, and urged everyone to go get fed ASAP (since the place had claimed they were almost out of ice cream and were closing when they ran out...but then never closed for at least another 2 hours). After all had arrived, I sauntered back over with Claire and chatted with the other cyclists and, surprisingly enough, members of *another* charity cycling team of 18 that is travelling across the country and staying in Shoshoni tonight! It's a crazy small world. It was quickly established that we're more hardcore than them, since they do 10-mi rest stops and have 4 support cars & full time drivers & have other people plan their trip. But they've been doing it for 20 years and had a cyclist killed about 6 years ago, so much of their situation is dictated by that reality. Vinoj wondered if that'd be where texas4000 is in 20 years...interesting (but sad) thought!

I also want to shout out to Amy and Matto who raced their first ironman triathlon at Coeur D'Alene today....congrats, you crazy kids! I followed as best I could from my cellphone on ironmanlive or somewhere it pointed me to...but all I could get was finish times...no studly crossing the finish line video! I am *super* proud of you for doing something I can't (yet!) do and I hope to join you guys for a full-distance tri in years to come, if my knee is ever up to another marathon. (Sigh. It has been a bit twingy, though not painful, lately). As I rode 100 miles today, I thought "Thank god I don't have to run a marathon after this!" and I hope the wind that was against me was with you...looks like it was from your bike finish times =)

I heard from a local that tomorrow's easy--31 miles, more down than up, and very scenic. We've damn well earned it. Let's hope he's right! And let's try not to think about the long day into Cody thereafter, or the tremendous climb into Yellowstone coming up...

The rest of last night was pretty tame...after the supersatisfying dinner, I wrote a couple of blog entries and then pretty well crashed out. It stayed hot for a long time in the building we were staying in so I ended up getting back up and reading/playing scrabble with my cell phone while I hoped in vain that it would start cooling down. Even so, I was pretty well-rested by 5 when wake-up call came so I didn't go back to sleep but instead got up and got cracking...which of course left me with plenty of time to goof off and manage to post a couple of blog entries over the really substandard cellular data network in this area, before we got ready to head out and suffered the inevitable hurry-up-and-wait syndrome as we were almost ready for some time, but then didn't get that final push til 7:30 or so. One day we'll actually escape before 7. Hopefully tomorrow--it's a long, hot push into the wind and uphill to Cody, and it'd be pretty fabulous to get the majority done before the heat & wind really get bad (typically around noon). Ah, well, we shall make it there either way, uncomfortable and frustrated or just tired depending on how fast we move. And I get to drive the next day, which is a pretty intense climb (~4000 feet) into Yellowstone, where we also have a day off. (I'm campaigning along with Eric and Katy to drive down to the Grand Tetons National Park to do some majestic hiking on our following day off--I've been both places and I think I've seen most of what there is to see in Yellowstone but I haven't hiked even a 10th of the Tetons!) So, my sore butt will get a 2-day reprieve once again.

Oh, right, so we left for the 33 mile day at 7:30. Which seemed kind of ridiculously early, but then there was the heat and wind to worry about. The wind was still there (which we should have expected along the Windy River Canyon which we followed all day today), but it hadn't really kicked up to full force while we were riding. Same with the heat; but then we got in by 11:30. It didn't take us 4 hours to do 33 miles, but we did get a chance to stop and splash around in the Windy River, whose cold I liken to Barton Springs. Quite tolerable, especially compared to our eventual goal of withstanding glacier water! Katy and I are trying to help everyone acclimate so we can polar bear together. And I need to start wearing my tri shorts under my normal shorts...the extra padding will be nice but the real win would be the dry-fast ability to go swimming wherever/whenever! I just don't want to bike all day with a wet chamois next to my sensitive areas if I don't have to!

The spring was beautiful and the sun was warming and we found a place where the grass was lush so we hung out for a half hour or so, playing in quite literally a mountain stream at a distance of around a thousand+ feet below the canyon walls that surrounded us. This is probably the best smelling water I've ever swum in...pools all smell like chlorine, barton has its own unique odor, and the ocean, even in the crystal-clear caribbean, still smelled a little fishy. This smelled like nothing...at all!

Nelson made the connection between the ancient (and apparently current!) town of Thermopylae and our destination of Thermopolis, WY. The Gates of Heat would certainly be an accurate name for this place, and not just because it has some hot springs in....it's just plain hot. The locals are sweltering and we're certainly not feeling cold, but we are doing ok perhaps due to the total lack of humidity.

A few of us rode out from the church we're staying at to check out the town, got a random donation sans solicitation while eating lunch at Subway (which was the best option; we checked all of the available choices), and then I headed back to the church to sink wash some clothes and take a shower. I guess everyone else is sleeping or out at the hot mineral springs...but nothing appealed to me less than getting into a hot tub in this weather!

[note: The mineral hot springs is VERY sulphuric, so it's best to skip it unless you relish smelling like sulfur for some time to come. Several people were sulfury for days...]

After dinner which the church graciously provided (and it was, as usual, quite tasty! yummmm lasagna!), a few of us climbed flattop "mountain" and enjoyed a stellar view of the surrounding area. And I called my sister Mer from the top of the mountain as the sunset, since we used to share that moment when we lived in Colorado. And then I got to sit out under the stars and chat with Lori for awhile.

Note to all the moms who are apparently reading my blog: everytime someone tells me "My mom is so glad you're writing, since I'm not", I encourage your daughter or son to write too! Sorry about the sporadic updating--our internet has been flaky at best lately and is not expected to get a lot better at any point in the near future. I continue to write daily but it may be a week or more between updates especially in rural canada. So, don't wait up too late for me to update, please!

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. -- Newton

And so I've spent the last 26 days on the sides of America's highways, seeing a thousand bits of roadkill, the detritus of our fast food nation (which looks to be alcoholic if we go purely by the numbers), and a few hundred pieces of the oddest discarded cultural items: a basketball, a ski hat, 3 left shoes, a dozen tapes and CD's, and more than a few banana peels. But the anthropologist in me is just a passing amusement (I haven't asked Daniel, who is actually an anthropology senior, what he thinks)...mostly I'm indebted to the giants whose shoulders I'm standing on.

I mean this in two ways:

1) The transportation industry. As much as I am biking "not to save the world so much as not to actively destroy it" and thus have some lack of respect for gas-guzzlers and their byproducts, without that industry, we wouldn't have this tremendous network of well-paved highways with enough commercial import to justify huge government subsidies to keep them in good repair...and I wouldn't get to ride across the middle of Wyoming through these amazing vistas and beautiful huge country. Wyoming is huge country the way Texas is, but maybe better...there's still the requisite "whole lotta nothing" between towns, but there's less of it. And the "somethings" we come across like hell's half acre, the wind river canyon, and today's mountain passes, are bigger than anything similar that Texas can offer. It often seems that in Wyoming, roads are built explicitly for the purpose of connecting two small towns...there will be a hundred miles of nothing save a rest stop, and we get the benefit of a lot of pavement that doesn't even seem to be used much at all. But it serves us well--today's ride was smooth, fairly direct, fairly hilly, but it never got hot and was only windy for a small portion. It went over mountains that there was no reason to go over, except for the existence of the town of Cody, population 8800, into which we rolled around 3pm. I swept for most of the day, and Alex C and I zoomed out in front of the group (despite me getting flat tire #2 for the trip) for the other portion of the day, and it was wonderful all around.

Standing on the shoulders of giants everybody's looking on -- R.E.M.

2) The giants whose shoulders I'm standing on more literally are all of yours. I give you an example from Amy, whose dedication I read before our ride started this morning, and which moved everyone including myself to tears. Thank you for sharing, Amy. You're another part of why we ride.

Helen Louise Bounds - My grandmother Helen was already a longtime grandmother before discovering her breast cancer. While quietly suffering through depression she found a lump in her breast. Helen kept this a secret from her doctor and family, perhaps too scared to know what to do, or perhaps thinking that the lump would mercifully and painlessly kill her. Instead, about a year later it caused a double mastectomy and radiation therapy. By this time she realized her mistake, but not much could be done. Helen had additional chemotherapy and survived only to have her husband taken from her unexpectedly.

In 2003 she struggled with the pain so much that morphine no longer helped to keep her comfortable. She was brave but in the end the pain took over and it was impossible to ignore. One day while trying to shower, she slipped in the bathroom and broke her leg. After that she didn't recover. A few months bedridden and nearly comatose, and she slipped away from us.

Although her life was ordinary, she was an extraordinary person. She was a widow after less than 3 months of marriage (World War II). She married my grandfather, had and raised three children, one of which was a lifelong dependent. And she taught her granddaughter to knit. She was a woman who put others first; she was quiet, modest, talented, and crafty. She chose to dedicate herself to her family and she was great at it.

She is sadly missed.

The ride into Cody was fairly pleasant, if long. I swept. We had some scenic moments, some great climbs, and some fun descents.

After getting into Cody, we had a lot of evening ahead of us--nothing planned and we'd pulled in by 3 (even me, as sweep) and I'd blogged and done a baby-wipe version of a shower by 5:30. So, I rode my bike into town and cruised the drag, which in a highly tourist-driven town of 9,000, was at least somewhat interesting. I probably should have geared up to go to the rodeo (world-famous, to hear them advertise it) at 8:30, but instead I checked out the local outdoor/sports store (which lacked the two things I really wanted--new insoles and water purification tablets. Too bad I didn't know someone would lose my fork/knife/spoon at Yellowstone so I could pre-purchase a replacement! Hello, eating with my fingers.) I ran into most of the rest of the team who'd driven down...apparently 85 miles was enough for one day for everyone except Alex C and myself. Wanting some alone time, I skedaddled off to a saloon picked at random and which became fully approved when bringing my bike inside raised no eyebrows...and they had a large selection of fermented yeast libations on tap. I sampled a few of the local brews (one brewed just for that saloon and a couple of Red Lodge numbers) and then settled into a Moose Drool, one of my favorites from this region, for name alone...but it also happens to taste good! Eventually I grabbed a burger and continued reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I don't have the book handy now to quote from, but it really echoes so many of the sentiments I feel about our own trip. If you've got a copy, go read chapter 1, a great deal of which I might have said myself about riding the backcountry of America...if only I were a better writer! It really strummed my heartstrings and I felt it powerfully. That was obviously the right book to bring along! Funny that as voracious a reader as myself took almost a month to get started reading my first book on this trip, but our days are still pretty full!

While I was hanging out, a folk singer had been doing a few numbers and started singing a song I'd heard before about a car wreck in which the narrator was driving and got in a wreck and killed his girlfriend...and I started crying. I just sat there and sobbed and even though it had no direct relevance to my own life, and I'd heard the song many times before (I think pearl jam covered it?); it just hit me at a tender moment. Maybe this trip will have a permanent loosening effect on my emotions, which would be a-ok with me. I've been missing that kind of intensity for at least the last 13 years. Once the moment passed, I paid and rode home in time to do some grocery shopping with Collin for our drive day, which was coming up in 9 short hours by that point.

Of course, it turned into another day I'd rather have been riding than driving. The scenery was unbelievable and I hadn't seen that portion of the park when I was last there with my friend Mark in 2002. Even the miles leading up to the entry gate were super scenic, but I was on a mission...negotiate entry for a crew of bikers without making them pay individually as they rode through the gates. Alas, twas not to be so simple--construction from the gates onwards left us without a road to ride on! Last year's riders had warned us about a dirt road to go with the 1600 ft climb from the park gate to mile 7, but this year construction had it down to a 1-lane dirt road and so we had to unpack the gear from the trailer, load the bikes in (which miraculously worked pretty well on our first ever attempt), and then bus people + bikes over the treacherous stretch. Once at the top, I dropped them off in the wrong place and we got shooed out of the construction zone by a very harried lady who was most unhappy with our presence. She later apologized, saying she remembered last year's crew (who apparently got an escort from the law to protect them on that stretch!), and that pretty well repaired my frustration and hurt. Over the last 20-odd miles, the country was differently beautiful due to a few factors...the forest inside yellowstone is strangely slightly less healthy overall than that outside of it, so there are more brown and browning pines. However, the major tragedy (aside from the constant traffic) is more the pair of forest fires in 1988 and 2002 (just after I was last there--I swear I wasn't involved!) that have left vast, vast acreage (something like 40% of the park) as stands of white poles that are yesteryears' burned trees. It looked, from a distance, like a toothpick factory accident of magnificent proportions. But it was still beautiful in a stark way, and I was happy to see that since my last visit, the new growth of trees has finally stretched above my head, albeit not by much. The tallest ones were probably 10' tall and starting to make the distant hills green again, though the toothpicks poke out all over and stretch far taller than any new growth, anywhere they still stand. It's heartening to see a beautiful place regain its old spirit.

Collin is always a great guy to drive with, and this time was no exception. We got everyone in without trouble and fired up the big dinner winner of baked potatoes (simple and cheap) with some rice and beans. Great camping food. We actually washed our dishes and the cookware that night because...bears! 3,000 warnings, a ranger station about nothing but bears, and signs everywhere..no food left out, and also we're nice people and clean up for the next crew. Unfortunately that pre-cleaning didn't happen the night before we drove which cost us an hour or so on departure time as we scrubbed the kitchen and dishes up to military spec in Cody. Or at least, close to. I brought enough beer back that everyone could share, and Shawn broke out his menthol schnapps (Dr. McGillicuddy, our savior!)...and so we celebrated our first national park arrival and somehow managed not to attract any park ranger attention with our rowdiness, which was moderate to loud. Van seats made great couches once again! Unfortunately I'd failed to pre-inflate my air mattress and assemble my sleeping bag (assembly required!) so my sleep was sub-par but fortunately I was still tired enough to make it work despite sleeping on a hill. Fortunately Alex M was very hard to disturb, even when we kept waking up accidentally spooning.

I was among the first up on the next day, so after starting some laundry I aided in the "make so many pancakes we don't want to eat anymore ever again" project (which failed miserably since we all ate pancakes for breakfast the next day. Thank goodness it failed, too, since we have nearly infinite mix so there are definitely some hotcakes in our future!) The eating, the readying, the etc etc etc took forever and we finally got on the road to go see the Grand Tetons around noon. Which meant we made it down into the park around 1:30, and got started hiking around 2:30. Shawn, Eric, Katy, Amy, and Claire and I wanted to do some climbing--get some height and some views, so we picked what we were assured was a hard hike and everyone else took what was advertised as a leisurely flat stroll in the wetlands. Hi, Naomi! We ended up getting the opposites of what we'd bargained for, since we forded a stream 6 times and gained approximately 0 elevation, and the other group climbed straight up for 2 miles. By the end of our hike, though everyone but Claire was fording the stream barefoot to keep our shoes dry, we'd all failed variously and soaked our shoes while we carried them, and ended up just walking through the stream and getting wet--except Eric, who was wearing his bike shoes. So, at least the most critical set of footwear survived in good shape. It was a good time, even if not what we were looking for. And then my vague memory of the Tetons kicked in and I somehow guided the six of us to a very scenic overlook of the whole Teton range with a lake that was temperature-wise very reminiscent of barton springs...however, it was thoroughly crystal clear and had beautiful mountains towering over it! We had an awesome time splashing around before we headed back and ate a nice dinner and zonked out. It was kind of a different rest day than we'd envisioned (5 hours in the car), but we made it Teton-riffic and of course the company was wonderful.