bighorns to helena, mt

hello from helena ladies and gentlemen
so we left john's house having to bike up up up through powder river pass in the bighorn mountains, which reaches an elevation of 9,666 feet over about 40 miles of ups and downs that includes a lot more ups. luckily, for the first 25 of those 40 miles, john offered to carry all our gear in his truck and then meet us for lunch! so that is exactly what we did. it was a great ending to a great stay with one of the coolest people i've ever met. john helped us out more than i think we still realize.
the climb actually did not feel too terribly bad; the weather was perfect, we were well rested, we had help with our gear, and we even had a tailwind! the wildflowers were beautiful and the trees and the hills and the everything. and at the top of the pass we were rewarded with a sign warning of a steep downhill grade for the next 18 miles. beautiful! we stopped on the way down to look at the huge canyon before us, eat some pop tarts, and talk with a family traveling from missouri who we would actually meet up with again in a couple of days.
we rode about 70 miles on this trek thru the bighorns and camped on nowood road, which was beautifully empty and almost too beautiful to behold. our goal for the following day was to make it to cody, wyoming but we were feelin' the climb a little too much for that to happen. the headwinds caused our progress to slow even further and we ended up having to call it a day about 15 miles outside of cody. close enough i say.
into cody we went the next morning, where some food shopping resulted in a lot of gorging ourselves and where the holiday inn pool called my name a little too loudly so i took a dip while phil caught up on the old blog. it started to rain a bit as we started the gradual climb from cody to the entrance to yellowstone, but the ride still felt really good. the landscape kept getting more and more beautiful as we neared the park. we got to go thru the only real tunnel of the trip so far as well, which was pretty exciting. thought about swimming but the water was cold enough so that i only went in to my waist. i also found a large bag of unopened lays potato chips on the shoulder and ate its entire contents within minutes.
we camped at a developed campground about 20 miles from the park entrance, which you have to do because of grizzly bears (camp in develop campgrounds that is). we were right on a creek in front of a bluff and we got a fire going that allowed us to cook up some rice pilaf that id been carrying from westborough, as well as some mac and cheese. we did our first bear hang and promptly fell asleep.
right as we got to the east entrance into yellowstone, hail came down upon us! this was actually great timing because we could hide under the entrance into the park until the hail passed. it was still quite cold and rainy as we climbed into the park, but all the uphill allowed us to create enough body heat not to mind.
the wildflowers in yellowstone are AMAZINGGGGG. there is also a lot of wildlife everywhere. prairie dogs, bison, pelicans, bald eagles, elk, black bears, and grizzly bears were some of the crazier ones. the bison walk in the road all the time and so we would be biking just a couple of feet away which was pretty nerve wracking!
all the campgrounds were full in yellowstone except for one that was in the wrong direction, but phil figured out a solution to this problem. he helped a french family retrieve a ball that they had lodged in a tree, and with that earned us a place to stay at their campsite as well as a pasta dinner with beer and homemade vodka, and then eggs and bacon in the morning, and plenty of good conversation in between. amazing.
biking out of the park was crazy because you lose about 5000 feet in elevation going from canyon out to the north entrance on the montana border. we had a 100+ mile day ahead of us so the downhill helped a lot! we still didn't make it to our destination, livingston montana, until 11pm. there we met katie kelly, a fellow WRFI-alum and a fellow biker for the next portion of the trip! she is traveling with us from her family's house in livingston, mt to the house she's moving into in missoula, mt, which is a 4 day ride. it is awesome to have another person along and she is totally kicking ass; we biked the 130 miles from livingston to helena in 2 days and though she hadn't done any biking recently she kept up with no problems and no complaints. now we're at her friend's house in helena kickin' back for a bit before we head on for two more days to missoula. good times everywhere. i can't believe there are only a couple weeks left to this trip.