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.