Rising Out of Nowhere, Wyoming

One of our first views of the Teton Range
Mt. Moran to the Right looking from Jackson Lake
Mt. Moran again.
The Pinnacles (I think). A small pond at the top of Togawotee Pass where we ate lunch
Another of our first views of the Tetons

The sun shining on Grand Teton
Rory and Rob
Jenny Lake Campsite
My first Grizzly sighting ever, and hopefully my last!

The Teton Range...the only way I could describe it while looking at it was "majestic." It really is quite...majestic. We were descending down a pass, and ran straight into them. Obviously we saw them from quite a long distance at first, but they really do just sneak up out of nowhere and BAM...the Tetons. There really aren't any foothills or anything, just flats all the way up until the mountain begins. It really is breathtaking. We saw the range, and then had to go over about 2 miles of gravel to continue into the Grand Teton National Park. All these construction workers were asking me how the ride on the gravel was and all I could tell them was,I didn't notice and I could care less...I'm looking at the Tetons right now. I would venture to say they're more captivating than the Colorado Rockies by a long shot. I mean its a pretty small range all things considered, but they're just so rugged and fractured you really can't take your eyes off of them. We've been riding with an Irish guy Rory for the last few days. We met him in Virginia actually and we've been at a pretty similar pace since then, but haven't really ridden with him at all until the last few days. Anyways, he and I were riding into the Jenny Lake campsite when these people jumped out of a van and stopped us in the road. We had no idea what they were saying at first, and then they told us a bear was about to cross the road. And it did... It was just a juvenile, no real danger really, so he and I got to snapping pictures. The went into the woods a bit, then kind of walked in our general direction towards a clearing to our left. Sensing no real danger looking at him through the camera lens, we snapped another picture when Rory finally looks up and goes "Christ mate, he's pretty close and we're soft and vulnerable. We ought to get out of here!" Oh yeah, that's probably a good idea... So we booked it down the road, and everything turned out fine.

This place is incredible. We're in for a lot more wildlife when we hit Yellowstone in a few days. But for now, its time to kick it and relax in Jackson. You know, blow all our money on food, beer, and bike stuff, then live off of peanut butter and crackers for a week. Pretty standard really...

An Expletive Hurricane

Six states down, three more to go!
This is 23 miles of road
The small silver spec in the distance is a tractor trailer
You have to catch the cowfish with steel fly line and you have to be very careful when taking them off the line, as they can get you with their horns...
It was impossible for me to show the scale of this...

(you have to tilt your head to see this one, by the way)

Wyoming welcomes you. Cool, thanks Wyoming. What a welcome too. Little did we know, southern Wyoming is like a hurricane...a god-awful, exhausting, demoralizing wind-machine that will leave you cursing the heavens all day until your throat is parched and your voice is nearly gone. The harder the hurricane-like winds blew the more expletives I blew right back, as if I could counter the wind by cursing it. It nearly broke us all. There were a few points in the first two days that I just wanted to throw my bike in a ditch, making sure it was irreparably damaged, and hitch a ride to town. Oh yeah, not to mention...Wyoming is completely empty. There's nothing in the part we've been riding through for 4o to 50 miles at a time. When we do finally come to a town...I use the word town very very loosely here...its usually a closed gas station or a closed cafe of some sort. There are a few houses scattered about, very few. Wyoming was awful from Rawlins to Lander. But for some reason, after Lander, everything got a lot more beautiful, and much much calmer with respect to the wind. We went through the Wind River Indian Reservation, which we were told by some Eastbounders from California that it would be dirty and very much like a ghetto. Not at all the truth. There's more ghetto places in the suburbs of Durham than in the town through which we passed. I don't have a clue what those kids were talking about, but they're in for a major shock when they see eastern Kentucky. Fortunately, we escaped the wind around Wind River all day. If the wind did blow, it was pushing us forward instead of ramming us like a freight train like it had been the last two days. Its a good thing too, because we were all pretty exhausted after jousting with the wind all day for two solid days. The scenery got much nicer too. There were some pretty incredible geologic structures. However, we have yet to see anything as incredible as what we will see in a few days until we leave Yellowstone. We're planning on spending a day or two around Jackson and the Grand Tetons, and then Yellowstone!! This is one of the biggest parts of the trip for all of us, and we're getting really really excited about it. I think we're going to see the Tetons in the distance tomorrow from the top of Togwotee Pass. I can't wait...

Pictures are Worth a Thousand Words

Well, maybe not quite a thousand, some of these pictures are just what you see, an amazing landscape. For a quick synopsis for those of whom I haven't been able to talk to in the last week or so, we met this guy Donald in Pueblo. Amazing dude, let us stay in his yard, and he took us out boogie boarding on the river... which I didn't even know was possible until last week. Anyways, he told us how to go through the real heart of the Colorado Rockies after looking at where our map took us. And, seeing as how the whole point of the trip was to see some incredible scenery, we followed his advise. So this is what we've been seeing pretty much non-stop for the last few days...you can't take a bad picture here.

Crossing into Colorado

Kansas Prarie Scenes
Big Cloud over Kansas
Todd
Yes, that's right, Colorado already. In a month we've been able to get to Colorado from Virginia on a bicycle loaded with gear. It's pretty incredible. Mind-bottling [sic] even. So what happened to Kansas you may ask... Kansas flew by. We had a tail wind pretty much the entire way, only one pretty hot day, and even a few showers and a pool session or two. Kansas was the most dreaded part of the trip. From other people's journals, and books I'd had three preconceptions about Kansas. It's super hot, the wind is killer, and the scenery is god-awful boring. Well, in my experience, it worked out so none of the above three were true. It was really only hot one day, as mentioned. The wind was always blowing us forward, and the scenery was actually pretty awesome. I mean, to look out and be able to see miles and miles to the horizon is pretty cool. I never really got bored with it. Not to mention, the people in Kansas are, in general, really really nice. I can't say that I thought that was true the first few days as we met a girl who had her bicycle trailer stolen and saw an episode of Jerry Springer at a state park. A whole group of dumb rednecks were drinking heavily lakeside on a Sunday night, you know, the beginning of a recipe for a nice family outing. Well, I guess calling a friend of yours a sissy when he's on the last beer of a thirty rack calls for a fight. Maybe not so much a fight as a brouhaha. the guy got sucker punched, and kicked in the face karate style about 4 times...that is once per occasion on four separate occasions. Ahh...Kansas. Welcome to the state with the nicest people you'll meet along the trail... Well, a few days later it redeemed itself. I broke a spoke on my bike in Buhler KS. So Jake, Bonnie (the girl we temporarily adopted on account of a stolen trailer) and I at lunch and tried to fix it with this temporary spoke I had. It broke immediately, maybe because we're dumb, but I think it was just too old. So I talked to the girl working at the diner and asked her if she could maybe give me a ride to the next town over with a bike shop. She called her dad, a pastor/cyclist/mobile bike mechanic, and within 15 minutes he was there with a bike stand, about 60 spokes, and all the tools necessary. He had me back on the road in about 45 minutes and didn't so much as ask for a thanks. I felt like I was in a movie, and Todd (the pastor/mobile bike mechanic) was like batman for down and out bike mechanics..."what?!? a cyclist is in trouble....I'll be RIGHT there!!" With an immediacy I was up and running, armed with two spare spokes that are the highest quality spokes on the market all gratis. THEN...he offered Bonnie an old rack and set of panniers (bike bags) that he had laying around, he gave her a cookset and a new seat too. All for free...all she has to do is send them back to him whenever she's finished w/ them. So...Kansas has some nice people after all.
Eastern Colorado ended up being more like how I imagined Kansas than Kansas was. They actually had more sunflowers in Colorado than were in Kansas...and Kansas has roadsigns with sunflowers around the highway numbers. Silly Kansas. But, other than that, eastern Colorado is barren. There's lots of grasslands sure...but that's it. We were hard pressed to find a tree on the horizon for about two days. It was pretty amazing actually. It really was like being in the middle of the ocean, except there's land everywhere instead of water. We stayed last night in Ordway CO at a lady named Gillian's house. She was awesome, and we got showers for the first time in a day or two. She just leaves her house open for bikers, and leaves them notes with instructions etc. She took us to breakfast with a group of about 15 other cyclists going from NY to San Diego. They're all Illini...so Rob and I let them know we were going to school at UNC in 2005. They took it well I suppose. Anyways, we're on the threshold of the Rockies and were sitting at about 4700 feet elevation. We're all giddy with excitement and I imagine our day off will be met with ambivalence...although its much needed. We have done about 650 miles in the last 7 days, and for a few days before that we were doing about 80 or so a day. So yeah, rest day...

Hippies and Indians

We left Salem MO in the morning and we originally planned to do about an 80 mile day. So close to halfway through we stopped in a KFC/Taco Bell to eat some lunch. While we were there, a Native American man comes up to us and tells us that he owned the hotel across the street and he would love it if we came over, signed his register and had a beer...even if we didn't stay in the motel. So when we heard the word beer, we all stopped eating, threw away our food, and sprinted across the street, ignoring all traffic and traffic laws. We went inside and he had a huge list of possible free beers we could choose from. They were all good beers too...I think the only mass-produced American pilsner was Miller High-Life. So we had our free beer, and ended up running into about 4 or 5 other cyclists on the route. We all, having tied on a one-beer buzz, decided to camp out for free behind the motel, which he offered for us. It turned out to be a good decision because there were about 14 cyclists in total that ended up staying there that night. The owners cooked us all dinner and hosted some crazy games in front of the hotel in the yard. It was probably the most entertaining night we've had thus far. So we all drank until about 1 AM. I think when we meet other bikers we bring them down to our level. Everyone was talking about how they'd get up at 5 or 6 in the morning and ride off for the day, but we got them all drinking hard and I think we may have left earlier the next morning than 3/4 of the riders we were with. We're definitely bad influences on other bikers...

Skirting the Ozarks...There's no Such Thing as Cheating When You're Bicycling Across the Country!

We left Farmington and headed through the Northern tip of the Ozarks on a more direct route than that which was mapped for us. The only problem with the route that we decided to take was the massive amount of tractor trailers. It's not really that big of a deal, it's kind of annoying, but I'm sure we annoy them too. The ride was pretty hilly, but mostly it was roller coaster hills that weren't too terrible on the legs. I've seen much worse. We heard from some other bikers that said they went the Transam route through the Ozarks and supposedly it was pretty tough. I would have liked to see them, but then again, we saw some pretty sizable hills ourselves.
We made it to Salem in good spirits, spent the night in a city park and departed pretty early the next morning.

Crossing the Not-quite-as-mighty-as-I-had-imagined Mississippi

We left Illinois today with a renewed vigor. Jacob had a new bike, mine was adjusted to my body a little better than before, and we were all full of energy from a day's break. It almost felt like our first day of riding again...considering we're now in the traditionally defined "west," as in west of the Mississippi.

The first part of the ride was very pleasant. We rode along a levee for a while. That was gorgeous. We got to see the cornfields from a new perspective (that is, above them, not from eye level.) That was awesome, because the tops of the plants were an incredible golden color that wavered gently with the breeze. We also caw a coal loading station on the river. We crossed the Mississippi in Chester Illinois and went into Missouri. Here come the Ozarks. Not so bad today...but they're going to make themselves present tomorrow.
We rode another 100 mile day...well I think it was actually 98 or so, but I round up when its that close to 100. The terrain definitely got a little more rolly...but nothing unmanageable for me. I forgot how much I missed the short rollers. You can get going really fast on them with minimal effort. There are some parts where you have to get down into the lowest gears and grind it up a hill, but that's not usually more than a 5 minutes at the most of grinding before you get a steep downhill. We spent the night in a city park in Farmington MO. The town isn't remarkable, but it was okay. Their Mexican food was good. Although I like most all Mexican food, so I guess I'm not a very good judge. We spent the night in another city park under a pavilion.

Onward to Carbondale it is...and Our first 100 Mile Day!!

So we did our first century today (100-mile ride). and got to Carbondale Illinois. I didn't realize it, but we almost went through Illinois in one day! pretty crazy. It was flat the entire time and there were corn fields galore. Its interesting to see the different stages of development vary from field to field. I always imagined that it was pretty uniform from field to field. It's not though. Maybe that's a dumb assumption, but I never grew up on a farm, so I don't know these things.
I wasn't that tired considering we did 100 pretty quick miles today. My but hurt a little, but my legs were fine. We ate at Taco Bell and slept behind a fence in a brush field behind a ball park. It was okay except it rained just enough to require a rain-fly at about 4 AM. and Then it got so hot at 6 AM I had to remove it again. Not such a great night's sleep. We all woke up pretty early because of the heat, packed up, and searched for a hotel we could sleep at for tonight. We found one and hit up downtown Carbondale's bike shop scene because Jacob's chain stay broke yesterday morning. Not a good thing... Jacob bought a new bike, a pretty sweet Raleigh bike with a carbon fork and STI shifters. He got it for a steal too. So while they were moving all the crap from his old bike onto the new one, we went down to the local coffee shop/bar and had a beer or 3 or 4...
We ended up meeting a crazy old Vietnam Vet sitting outside. He told us about growing up in Chicago, a little about guns and a lot about life, or something like that. His voice reminded me of Tommy Chong a little bit. He was entertaining to say the least. He brought us across the street and bought us all a bunch of shots and beers and talked to us for a few hours. After that we went up to the bike store for a bit, got Jake's bike, did some adjustments on mine, and finally went home to the hotel, a little more tipsy than originally planned...but whatever...it's vacation.

Hot dogs and Hamburgers You Say? What!?!...Homeade Ice Cream Too? No Thank You, I'm on a Diet...

We got up and rode another 80 miles to Sebree (See-bree...don't ask) Kentucky today. We rolled into town at the famed Sebree hostel. Supposedly this will be the nicest hostel that we will stay in on the trip. It was definitely incredibly nice. The common room was huge, the fridge stocked with chocolate milk and oreos, sandwiches, etc. They had showers and a tv...all for free. The family even fed us hot dogs and hamburgers as soon as we rolled in. It was amazing. The ride to Sebree was pretty flat, and there was so much corn I couldn't really even fathom how much corn it would produce. The fields were so extensive that It looks like grass far off in the distance. Mile after mile after mile of corn fields. Sometime there were soybeans but not too often. It was a pretty fun ride though b/c you can just hit the accelerator and fly until you're flat out exhausted, and then recharge and do it again. The flat-lands are fun...

Crazy Chapel Hillians

We woke up after a long night of 12 oz. curls and rode 80 miles to Rough River state park where we met a guy from Chapel Hill doing the Transam route for a bit, then I think he was headed up to follow the Lewis and Clark Trail, through South and North Dakota...pretty twisted. Supposedly there's some rugged terrain through that way and some large gaps between services.
Rough River state park had the first shower we had taken in close to a week (since Berea I believe). So that was the most welcome and incredibly long shower I've taken in quite some time. The ride was pretty easy, nothing to complain about. I mean I guess you could complain about the heat, but it's summer, and it will always be hot. The heat is something I've learned to deal with pretty easily. I get sort of cold inside restaurants, grocery stores, etc. pretty quickly now. Although a nice, well air-conditioned hotel room doesn't really bother me for some reason. Maybe its mental. I don't know, either way...showers are nice...

Inside the Belly

The ride into Mammoth caves wasnt' so bad, we only had to ride about 30 miles from where we set up camp in Munfordville the night before. Unfortuneately we missed the tour we really wanted to go on, but we still go tto see some interesting features of the cave. I'd never been in a cave before adn the initial descent in from the entrance we took would have been incredibly intense, if it weren't for the steel staircase. I wasn't so happy about how commecial it seemed. There were small auditoriums set up in some of the larger rooms so the tour guides could speek to the crow. I guess its necessary for the general public, but I was sort of annoyed. I wanted to see it without all the seating and fluffy crap. Oh well. Jacob, our resident cave expert told us he'd take us to cave he k,nows really well when we all get back to NC, so I think I'll probably do that in the fall or something. We spent the night in the national park campground and ended up meeting some girls from North Dakota who were more than willing to share a 2 cases of beer with us. Two cases you say? Nah, that's okay, I hate beer...
So we drank into the evening and did some star gazing. The stars were out pretty good that night, although nothing like they will be further west I would imagine...

Doesn't Kentucky Make Bourbon or Something?

We left Springfield this morning around 9:30 and got into Bardstown KY and hour or so later. As we rode into town we saw some road signs pointing to some distilleries around the area. SWEET... I love bourbon. In the interest of saving some time and miles, we decided to forgo the Maker's Mark distillery and went to the Heaven Hill distillery. Negative Nancy (Rob) tried to dull my excitement by telling me that Heaven Hill was the lowest tier bourbon on the market and not to be so excited because it will be gross. I told him I was sure they made some nice single-barrels or something, as distillers don't just make rott-gut liquor. Master distillers like to drink the nice stuff too... Boy was I right. Heaven Hill is the home of Elijah Craig, and Evan Williams (who does an incredible single barrel bourbon...award winning actually) As we rolled onto the distillery grounds we were punched directly in the face with strong vanilla and bourbon scents I will never forget. The smell comes from the "angel's share" or the volatile alcohol released from the barrels during the aging process. We went on a guided tour, learned some things about bourbon and the aging process that I never knew, and got to sample the Evan Williams single barrel, which I've had 2 bottles of prior to this...it's good stuff. We also got to try some Elijah Craig 18 year. The Elijah was definitely my favorite. The first bottle of liquor I ever bought when I turned 21 was Elijah Craig, but it was the 12 year. So after that we left town and set out for Munfordville, about 40 or 50 miles away. Tomorrow we're going to Mammoth Caves National Park...the largest cave system in the world...sick! That should be really fun, and I'm really excited about it. It's about 80 total miles off course, but definitely worth the trip.

Smooth Sailing on Smoother Pavement

Today was probably my favorite day on the road thus far. The morning started out quite well. We left Berea and hit some small rolling hills. It was fairly easy riding with some slightly steep hills with which to contend, but nothing compared to Eastern Kentucky. We went off course a bit to go to a bike shop in Danville KY. Danville had a bike shop and Rob's and Jacob's bikes needed some work. So while the bikes were in the shop we went to a coffee shop/bookstore/sandwich shop with really good food. They also had the first sweet tea I was able to find in days...I love sweet tea. I don't think I'll be able to pedal without it when I can't find it out west. We sat down and ended up talking to a guy named Nate who was thinking about doing the trip himself next year. He asked us a lot of questions about the trip, our motivations for doing it, cost etc. Then he told us how to get around the whole "dry county conundrum...that is, go to an Applebee's or similar chain. Apparently they can serve beer in a dry county. So Nate borrowed a friend's car and drove us to Applebee's and bought us all a round. Beer is good...
Danville was a very nice town with a lot of character. Apparently we missed a huge town brass band celebration weekend by about a week. Too bad. After the beers we went back to the bike-shop, got the bikes back and left town with the quickness so as not to run out of daylight before getting to Springfield KY. The ride from Danville to Springfield was the flattest and fastest riding we've done thus far. It was fun because you can make the ride as easy or difficult as you like. It seems like you can always go a little faster. I like to push myself to the limit. I got to a point today where I was, at any given moment, teetering on the edge of exhaustion. Its really fun though. If I find that I've pushed myself a little to hard, then I back off a little, stop pedalling and recharge. My rebound time is really fast now. It takes only a few minutes to feel completely recharged and ready to attack the road again.
As we got into town Jacob and I ate at the local Mexican restaurant. The food was great and they had beer! We had a few, I got a free 32 or 34oz beer for drinking one without stopping. I think I drank it in about a minute, with very minimal spillage. I impressed myself, and then had to chill a while before the next one.
We slept under another pavilion in a city park next to a playground. Jacob and I played on the seesaw and Rob climbed on the monkey bars. Come to think of it, maybe we had more than a beer or two...

Doing nothing in Berea

We left the hotel around 11 AM and hit the town. We found the library at Berea College and set up base for the day. The cam[pus was very nice, lots of large tress and walkways a plenty. We all spent some time catching up with our blogs, and calling friends and family, etc.
Then we explored the town a little, found out what the college kids do, and did some window shopping. Rob bought a really nice window. We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant with the best garlic bread I think I have ever had. After dinner we went around campus looking for places to set up camp. We found a nice pavilion-type structure right next to the tennis courts and the track, and we finally got some rest.

Into the Heart of Darkness...

Some parts of Kentucky look more like part of a rainforest with all the vines.

A strange little elementary school in Berea, KY.

Me and a future bicycler killer.

Wildflowers that grow along Kentucky river banks

The only thing I can really say about today is that I was so tired and ready to get to the end of our second map section that I burnt myself out pretty early and didn't save much energy for the second half of the ride. We had a few very short climbs out of the state park we stayed in last night, but we finally got out of the bigger altitude hills into those that peaked in the 1000 ft range. The first part half of the day was okay, a few stores along the way, and we ate lunch in the small city of Boonevillle. After that, however, were a lot of really really short, but super steep hills, and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of farmlands with small 1000 footer mountains that all looked the exact same. We went 40 miles or so, maybe more, without passing a convenient store that hadn't closed because of lack of business. The mountains around us changed pretty quickly but they all looked the exact same, there was always one in sight that had a very sharp point, and one or two that were long and flat on the top and terminated on either side with about a 45 degree angle or so.Notice how the mountains in each picture look the exact same? They're not the same though.

It really felt like we were pedalling and pedalling ever further into more and more of the exact same scenery. It really dulls your senses after a while and it made me want to never ever visit Kentucky again...at least on a bicycle. I'm sure in in a car with air-conditioning it would have been a breathtaking ride. Not so on a bike when you have very little water. We actually had to stop at some one's house and ask them for some hose water. They were very kind, and the guy's wife brought us some ice for our bottles. That pretty much saved us from dehydration.
The dogs today were pretty bad too, I got chased by quite a few, one of them was a St. Bernard. That was pretty intense, but luckily I'm pretty fast when I need to be.
We finally got into Berea and got a hotel. We were all so tired and excited to be done with the second section of the map. We went down to the convenient store to get some beers to celebrate, only to find out that Berea is in a dry county. Kentucky didn't make any new friends today...

Strip Mines and Strip Malls

The terrain today hasn't changed much, we still saw many roads carved through sedimentary rocks that crumble a little more every day. We didn't see too many coal trucks today, nor did we see a lot of dogs, but we also skipped part of the "scenic" road for a slightly shorter day as got sort of a late start. It was probably a good decision b/c Jacob got a flat again. He may not have gotten it if we'd stuck to the maps, as there would most likely have been less debris, however we saved some ride time, which is always nice on the bum. We got right outside of Hazard Kentucky and say a giant strip mining operation across the street from a large strip mall rising out of the dust of an older strip-mining operation.(The leftmost part of the bottom picture is supposed to match up with the rightmost part of the top picture...its all one scene)

The strip mine had obviously removed a mountain or two from the landscape. It was a pretty sad thing to see. I guess that's the price we must may for our coal-derived power. I don't think (and I hope I won't) forget that the next time I turn on a light or leave one on unnecessarily.
The ride today wasn't too bad, there were some long, low-grade hills with which to contend, but I got a feel for what I imagine climbing the Rockies will be like. The mountains will soon end, and I believe we art to expect some rolling hills, straighter roads, and farmlands further west. I like the hills, but I'm anxious to see what our average speed will be through the flatter parts, There have been some rolling hill areas through which I have been able, for the most part to average around 18-20 mph. That is fun. Hopefully I'll see some of that tomorrow...