Day 34

Mileage: 85
Total mileage: 3016

I rode all the mandatory rides and saw the obligatory stuff, done with Disneyland!

Thank goodness I got to sleep inside last night, it was cold! I'm sure my sleeping bag would have been equal to the task, but if I had needed to relocate myself in the middle of the night it would have been a frigid endeavor. My host for the night (who I've intentionally kept nameless due to the no visitors policy in those cabins) gave me some jelly beans for the road. I swapped him for some sour skittles. Not a good choice for the road, they're messy and you can't eat them by the handful or they ruin your mouth. The skittles that is, jelly beans have neither of those problems.

I was on the road early, but not crazily so. I think I was riding by 7, coming onto the main road from the Grant Village turnoff, when I was closely passed by a car going slowly. Interestingly, the passenger window was rolled down. Even more interestingly, the passenger was yelling my name out the window. They pulled over, and Jasper and Lizzy (from Lander) jumped out! What a crazy coincidence! I got a picture of them this time and we chatted for a few minutes. They were going to Boise tonight. I thought I probably wouldn't make it that far given that it's several hundred miles and I was headed the wrong direction. They drove off to go find some showers, but I saw them one more time. About an hour later, 15 miles down the road, they drove past once more, going the other direction. Lizzy was taking pictures of me through the window as they drove past which I found hilarious.

I met another cyclist named Mikey today. He was crossing the continental divide for the first time on his trip and trying to get a selfie with himself jumping in the air using the timer on his camera. I offered to try and take the picture for him. He's riding from the Midwest to Seattle and taking a Yellowstone detour, but the amazing thing is that he's riding the whole trip in crocs (the foam shoes). We met again at Old Faithful before parting ways.

A few miles later, I got to Old Faithful. I expect it had just blown prior to my arrival, because there was a mass exodus of cars while I was riding in and the next event wasn't going to happen for 90 minutes. I hadn't had breakfast yet and there was a restaurant there, but there was no way I was paying Disneyland resort prices for my breakfast. I got a box of doughnuts for 5 bucks from the souvenir shop/grocery and just ate those while I waited. I also had time to finish last night's blog post since that was still incomplete.

As it got closer to eruption time, the benches around me started to fill up. Hundreds of people were lined up just like me to watch this iconic part of the park. In the end, the eruption lasted about a minute and it was totally oversold. Here's the thing though, if I had been riding down the highway, minding my own business and seen a smoking crater, I would have stopped for a picture without a question, it would have been one of the coolest things ever. If during that picture it has shot a jet of boiling water over 100 feet into the air, I would be eternally enamored with the park as a mystical place. As it was, I followed a marked sign onto a designated highway, past a gift shop and onto a nice bench overlooking the geyser. Even the performance time was scheduled. I know the big appeal of the geyser is that it's natural, but if you strip every natural part of the environment away and leave just one facet in the middle of an artificial jungle, it's basically just another water show like the fountains outside the Vegas casinos, only less impressive. This is generally how I feel about the park; a really cool place that's overly hyped and too crowded, rather more like a theme park than a national preserve.

Enough complaining about Yellowstone though! In the end, the west entrance road had a wide enough shoulder to ride safely and some solitude started to develop as I got out. In the last 4 miles, the park really started to grow on me. Then I was in Montana and shortly afterwards left the park.

I snagged lunch quickly in the city of West Yellowstone and turned north toward Ennis. What followed was a beautiful 35 mile ride past an enormous lake and then through a mountain pass. If there's one thing to be said for having Disneyland nearby, it's an amazing tourist trap. I rode through some gorgeous scenery today, like the last picture I included, and I was the only one around to enjoy it. No swarms of people pulled over taking photos, they're all bottled up in the park right now. There was a rough 10 mile section through the pass where the wind was heavily channeled into my face, but otherwise it was very pleasant riding.

For entertainment I've been listening to the song 'lose yourself' by Eminem on repeat for the past two days, at least four hours each day I'm sure, and still haven't managed to memorize the lyrics. Why am I trying to memorize the song? I have no clue. It's got some surprisingly intricate rhyme schemes though which make it particularly entertaining to listen to for hours on end.

I stopped for dinner at a little restaurant in the middle of nowhere, the last eatery for 40 miles before Ennis. I asked the owner if I could sleep on the porch, but she wanted 5 dollars for overnight camping, apparently she frequently lets cyclists pitch tents on the lawn for that price. That's actually a very reasonable deal as it included a shower, but I'm at a weird point where I think I can go the whole way without paying for lodging. The funny thing is that if she'd have offered free sleeping space and offered a 5 dollar shower, I would have taken her up on it in a minute. As it is, I'm sleeping at a trucker rest stop a few miles down the road. It says no camping, but I'm technically just napping overnight on a picnic table under a security camera, so we'll see if anyone actually cares. G'night!