2016 Cycle Greater Yellowstone Day 1: Bozeman to Livingston

Ah, the first day of Cycle Greater Yellowstone, when all is fresh and new! I tend to take a lot of photos on day 1. This year was no exception. There are 50 photos in this post!

Here’s the only picture we got of us together. (Another photo we attempted at the top of a hill did not turn out – alas!)

Our Thing-1-Thing-2 getup attracted the attention of a TV reporter, and we wound up on the evening news. (Another rider dubbed us “The Things” and would greet us on the route, “Hey, Things!”)

The official start line! (With the TV reporter off to the side.)

A grain elevator with a ghost sign. “IT’S THE WHEAT FLOUR . . . A PERFECT PRODUCT”

I did a double-take on this one. CaLfe? I looked it up. Stockyard Cafe. I get it! Calf-cafe. Ha!! To quote from their website: “This is recreational restauranting…. Stockyard Cafe…barely above camping :)”

The early morning light made the scenery glow. (Since we’re slow, we always try to be on the road when the course opens at 7am.

A high fire danger day. We were impacted by a bit of wildfire smoke on one day, and the organizers were keeping an eye on a grassfire near the route, but otherwise, we lucked out this year and avoided wildfire conflicts. I suspect wildfire season is part of the reason CGY organizers are thinking about moving the date into September next year.

Bridger Canyon is lovely!

I had to manipulate the photo settings to get the colors to show up – wonder if anyone else noticed the iridescent clouds that morning.

Hay bale art: a bonny Scottish coo? (Would explain the hair-over-the-eye look.)

I was loving the scenery!

But some drivers weren’t loving the bikes on the road. We encountered the first of the week’s honking drivers along this road.

I don’t know if it was the route, or if people’s behavior is changing, but there seemed to be a lot of rude and impatient drivers this year. I have a hypothesis that the increased speed limits on interstates and rural highways have made drivers more accustomed to higher speeds and more likely to get impatient if they have to slow down. Whatever the cause, I don’t like it. Not one bit.

This cow was offended by the rude honking, too:

We saw a lot of magpies along the route all week. You can just make one out in this photo, sitting on a fencepost.

Tandem shadow! On this section of route, we were passed by a number of vintage cars. Not all of them passed carefully. Some were so eager to pass the bicycles that they risked head-on collisions with oncoming traffic. You would think people driving classic cars would be a little more careful.

Before it landed on the ranch gate, this raven flew behind us for several hundred yards. I watched it follow us in my rear view mirror. Corvids are pretty intelligent birds. I wonder what it was thinking.

Being slower on the uphill on a tandem, we got passed a lot on the first part of the ride.

A rest STOP.

The uphill climb continues, we get passed some more.

My view from the back of the tandem. Not bad.

Passed again!

At last – Battleridge Pass (elevation 6,372 feet). Mostly done with the day’s climbing!

Zooming along on the downhill, cyclists tend to take the lane. You need more room to maneuver at higher speeds.

A cattle corral, with bees. You can’t see the bees in the photo, but when we went by, there were a bunch of what appeared to be honeybees crossing the road. One cyclist got a bee caught in her sunglasses and got stung next to her eye. Ow!

This is a working landscape here. Lots of alfalfa, like this side-roll-irrigated field.

Bikes weren’t the only slow-moving vehicles on this road. Watch for farm equipment, too!

The rest stop at the Sedan School was fun. As soon as we arrived, we were mobbed by youngsters offering to fill our water bottles for us. ❤ We had our photo taken with a couple of girls. Our jerseys went well with their recent Dr. Seuss readings. 🙂

I think the folks at the rest stop were keen on introducing us to roping, but the roping dummies were too attractive as bike parking.

The dummies also made for great silly photo opportunities. 😀

Then there was the slide . . .

They sure don’t make ’em like that anymore! A few of us cyclists couldn’t resist a trip down that tall slide. It was high-diving-board intimidating at the top. The trick was being prepared for how it launched you forward at the end. I executed a rather ungraceful double-hop landing.

The source of our potable water at the water bar at the Sudan School stop: Black Magic!

Everyone was exhorted to drink plenty of water and keep their water bottles filled. It was getting hot, and the air was dry. The SAG crew was sheltering in the shade of their van.

Gravel and a cattle guard on the turn into and out of the rest stop were a bad combo. Much easier to walk the tandem over the plywood.

The view west from the bridge over Flathead Creek.

A Historic Point, and a good excuse to pull over and rest, though we rarely did. Need to keep moving if you’re slower than most!

Did anyone see the elk? Haha.

When in Big Sky Country, don’t forget to look up.

We stopped for lunch at mile 47, at Clyde Park. I distinctly remember that lunch included gazpacho. It was divine. Cool, salty, cucumbery – the perfect meal on a hot day! The water bar was a popular place.

Back on the road again. The road surface was unpleasantly gravelly in spots. I found this business sign amusing. “Have gravel will travel.”

We waved to a bikepacker family we met on the road. Mom was riding behind this dad and kid, waving her arm to try to slow traffic for safe passing. It didn’t work. Drivers flew past, taking risks I really wish they wouldn’t take.

As we turned west towards Livingston, the last 5 miles or so wound up being dab-on into a headwind. Not very fun at the end of a ride.

But we made it to Livingston! I love Sacagawea Park! It’s right on the Yellowstone River. I remembered it from the first year, but this time, we arrived in camp with plenty of time to get cleaned up and explore the downtown.

There was a beautiful antique bus available to ferry us downtown. Downtown was only a couple of blocks away, though, so we walked. (Ah, that Day 1 energy!)

Such an iconic historic-mountain-town view!

Great vintage theater marquee!

We had to stop at a sandwich shop for some ice cream. The cone was stamped with a suggestion I followed: “EAT-IT-ALL”. Across the street was a bar advertising itself as a “husband day care center” while the wife shopped. Ha!

My Überbrew pour that evening had a baristaesque touch: there was a heart in the foam!

After dinner, we retired to the banks of the Yellowstone River. I remember the river being higher and louder back in 2013. It had soothed me to sleep at the campsite that year, but this year I couldn’t hear it from the tents. Wonder if the channel shifted, or if the flow is low this year?

There was a family of osprey screaming around in the trees on the opposite bank. When I looked closer at a photo I managed to grab, I could see that the bird was carrying a fish!

I was having great fun playing with the colorful river rocks. (With thoughts of Andy Goldsworthy – one of my favorite artists. I am certainly no Andy Goldsworthy.)

Alas, we broke one of our water bottles after dropping it on the rocks. Bummer! We’d need it the next day, which was predicted to be another hot one.

The sunset on the river was breathtakingly beautiful.

It kept getting better. I saw several people in camp rush to the riverbank with their cameras.

What a day! Can the first day be my favorite?

Day 1 stats
68.3 miles
2,501 feet of climb
12.5 mph avg speed
low temp 48
hi temp 88
precip 0
wind 5-16 g 22 east

Copyright 2016 by Katie Bradshaw

2015 Cycle Greater Yellowstone: Day 1, Red Lodge to Absarokee

Oh, the excitement of setting off on Day 1 of Cycle Greater Yellowstone, feeling fresh and ready for (though perhaps apprehensive about) whatever the week may throw your way!

This post will likely include the most pictures of any about the week’s ride, as I was energetic and in a documentary mood.

We asked a random fellow cyclist to take our picture at the starting line in Red Lodge.

We sailed through the very first traffic circle we’ve ever ridden on the tandem. Red Lodge was all torn up with construction, in the process of putting in road improvements like this one.

Not sure what I was taking a picture of here, but an empty sag vehicle would become a rare sight later in the week. We LOVED this portion of the ride – it was all downhill for the first half of the short, 58-mile route. Our speed for the first 25 miles was from 20-25 MPH, which is really good for us! We wound up getting caught in the midst of a paceline. I see why people do this – you fly right along when you’re drafting another cyclist. Tandems don’t play well in pacelines with single bikes on rolling terrain, though. We’ve got some 350 pounds on two wheels, so we go fast on the downhill and slow on the uphill. Our riding companions, probably annoyed with us, soon went their separate way. I was glad. While it’s exhilarating to be in a paceline, it takes a lot of focus to ride so closely to other cyclists, and it kind of takes away from being able to enjoy the scenery.

Right quick, we got to the break stop in Joliet at mile 35, in a lovely little treed park. I asked Bugman to give me a Pop Tart smile.

Mmmmm . . . strawberries! Much tastier than Pop Tarts, IMHO.

I also opted for a 4-H donut. Gotta support those young entrepreneurs, you know! 

As we headed out of Joliet (no, Illinoisans, not that Joliet) and onto the road towards Columbus, which required a little backtracking, we overheard some cyclists who were confused and kvetching about how stupid it was to require backtracking for a snack stop. That kind of got my hackles up. First of all, the organizers needed to find a comfortable place big enough to accommodate all us cyclists and our support crew. Secondly, if they’d listened to the announcements the night before, they would have known about the backtracking. Geesh. Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety, but I’m finding myself with less tolerance for whiners these days.

Enroute to Columbus, Montana, we saw this:

“If provoked will strike.” Hm. Not sure what it’s referencing, but it doesn’t seem particularly friendly.

A typical recharge stop: (cereal) bars on cars (or pickup trucks). Also, gear drop boxes, where you can offload the warm things you put on that morning when it was still cold out.

Our cyclist group was always trailed by at least one ambulance, which, thankfully, was rarely needed.

There was a great view from that hilltop headed into Stillwater County. The volunteer flagger visible at left was very helpful – they would wave the flag if there was a vehicle approaching from the blind side of the hill, both to warn the cyclists not to proceed and to warn the approaching motorist to slow down.

Wheeee! That there was a nice descent!

Lots of familiar-to-us High Plains farm and ranch scenes out this way. In this photo: baling wheat straw, with a band of yellow sunflowers blooming in the background. Many of the crops we saw in the region are ones Bugman works in through University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension: wheat, alfalfa, sunflower, sugar beet, dry edible beans.

Our lunch stop was in Columbus’ lovely Itch-kep-pe Park. (No idea what Itch-kep-pe means.)

The park was right on the bank of the Yellowstone River, and many of us cyclists went down to sit on the water-smoothed stones next to the river, to eat lunch and watch the incoming cyclists on the bridge above.

Bugman, true to form, turned over rocks looking for invertebrates.

We didn’t see any of the “big five” (bear, wolf, bison, elk, moose) of the Yellowstone region on our journey this year. However, we did see quite a few sandhill cranes, both in the sky and on the ground. Gotta love those feathered dinosaurs!

We cyclists were repeatedly exhorted to ride single file. There was a great effort on the part of the organizers to avoid excessively annoying the local motorists, and on no-shoulder, narrow roads, riding single file helps avoid cyclist-motorist conflict. I think there was still some ambiguity, though. Some cyclists felt comfortable riding the often-narrow, often-rocky pavement to the right of the rumble strip, while others preferred to ride out in the lane – thus effectively creating two lanes of cyclists. At other times, faster cyclists would pass slower cyclists, thus creating double-riding for a time. I think there were some instances of motorist aggravation during the week when a faster bike or bikes would pass slower ones regardless of traffic coming from behind. I would think it would be safer to wait for traffic behind to clear before passing, but people did not always do this, and seemed to assume that overtaking vehicles would adapt to the cyclists’ presence. It’s always a delicate dance when riding highways like that – how to be both safe and courteous – particularly in a large group like ours.

At one informal stop at a roadside pulloff, we were greeted by a couple of local cyclists representing the self-proclaimed “Montana bike mafia” (one of them was born in Canada, the other in Wisconsin). 😀 They gave us a heads up that a church group in Absarokee was proffering pie and ice cream. Pie and ice cream?? Let’s get a move on!

The finish line at Absarokee High School! Woohoo! It’s rare for us to get into camp this early, before 1 p.m. We had the relatively short route, the downhill elevation profile, and the good weather to thank for that. We would actually have time to go into town after getting cleaned up!

Sherpa tents, and beyond them, the bike corral and a horse pasture.

There were a couple of horse-drawn conveyances to take us into downtown Absarokee. These two hard-working creatures were named Rose and Beauty.

Aha! There was the aforementioned church selling sugary delectables! There was also a VFW booth across the street with dozens of cookies for sale. I’m afraid they may have overbaked. We did our part and bought a half-dozen “cowboy cookies.”

Action shot of the pie-serving area.

Ohhh, baby! That was some gooooood strawberry-rhubarb pie!!!!

I loved that the town prepared bike parking for us. Unfortunately, pretty much none of us had kickstands, so the bikes downtown were parked propped against walls and railings.

Back in camp: somebody brought several hula hoops along for the ride. Bugman gave it a whirl.

There was a sheltered area inside the school bus barn for serving food. It was real nice to have that, in the event the weather took a turn for the worse.

Off to sleep and on to Day 2!

Copyright 2015 by Katie Bradshaw

Cycle Greater Yellowstone: Day 3 ride to Gardiner

Day 2

Distance and elevation gain (per my mapping software): 58.49 miles, 1,946 feet

Min temp: 64, Max temp: 89, Winds 8-26, gusting to 32, Precipitation: none

We started the morning with a visit to the mechanic tent to get those obviously loose spokes tightened up. Spokes should not wiggle easily back and forth – especially less than a week after having been retensioned!

The mechanic didn’t have a spoke tensiometer on him, so he gave it his best guess, taking care not to overtension the spokes, and at least got the spokes to the point where they didn’t rattle and the wheel to the point where it was nice and true again. I plucked the spokes like harp strings, and they all sounded pretty much the same – plink, plink, plink, plink – except for one spoke on that pesky back wheel that the mechanic could not get to tighten – plunk! We had discovered loose spokes on a 94-mile ride back home just before we got the wheel trued and didn’t seem to have any problems, so we figured the job would be good enough to get us through, and we’d stop back by the mechanic’s tent that evening to have the spokes checked again.

This is the bridge over the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley – a very beautiful place where we almost clocked a fellow cyclist who, along with many other cyclists, had dismounted on the bridge to take pictures but, unlike the other cyclists, had failed to look for traffic before she walked out into the road. Another advantage of the tandem: I don’t have to watch the road or steer, so I can take all these pictures from the back of the bike without risking getting clocked by traffic.

Paradise Valley was pretty smoky that day from the Emigrant wildfire. The night before at announcements, the ride organizers had checked the forecasts and said that smoke would likely be “moderate” and would not bother most people, but if anyone was concerned, there would be a physician available in the morning to see patients and prescribe inhalers if needed. Have I mentioned that this ride was well organized?? These folks thought of everything!

Bikes on the road in Paradise Valley. I’m sure a lot of locals knew about the ride and were expecting to see cyclists, but I wonder what the uninformed thought when encountering miles of cyclists along the road. Side note: some of the fanciful ranch names in Paradise Valley: Jumping Rainbow, Dancing Wind, Paradise Found, Imagine Ranch.

Another cute little Montana schoolhouse

Lunch stop at River’s Edge Bar & Grill in Emigrant.

After lunch we were far enough south to be upwind of the Emigrant fire – no more breathing smoke.

Rest stop on Montana DOT land.

We crossed onto Gallatin National Forest land (Paradise Valley is a narrow private-property “V” into the national forest) and were met with a “bison on road” caution sign. Didn’t see any bison, but the scenery was beautiful.

We rolled into Gardiner around 3 pm. While everyone else was lining up their bikes to be loaded up for shipment to our next campsite after our rest day and bus tour of Yellowstone the following day, we and headed for the mechanic tent to have our loose spoke checked on.

As a mechanic approached and I bent down to show her the problem, I noticed – OH NO!! – a crack in our rear wheel rim at the loose spoke!

And we’ve got that fancy-schmancy Rohloff hub. No at-hand replacements for us!

Cracked rim! Dun dun duuuuuun….

We talked through our options with the head mechanic. The next day was a rest day, so we had a day to get things done without cutting into the ride. If our future rides were like today’s ride – 56 miles and no serious hills – we could probably ride the cracked rim a bit longer. But the scheduled ride in two days was through from Pilot Creek to Cody via Chief Joseph Pass (6 miles of 5 percent grade followed by a helluva descent that could really get a tandem rolling fast). That would not be safe to ride on a cracked rim. We’d have to get things fixed.

We got our bike in March, so it was less than 6 months old and had less than 700 miles on it by this point, so the bike would still be under warranty.

We tried calling the bike shop in Denver where we purchased the bike. It was Tuesday. They were closed.

Next, we spent several frustrating minutes trying to look up the bike manufacturer’s phone number via a barely-there cellphone Internet connection. We found the number and got through to a live person right away. I explained our dilemma and directed my attention back and forth between the bike mechanic’s suggestions as he thought things through and the bike company guy.

Could we have a rim overnighted to a bike shop in the Silver Gate / Cooke City area, our next stop?

Probably not a good idea. It’s rural Montana, the delivery might not make it even if overnighted, and the mechanics had not been able to contact a bike shop in that area.

How about 2-day shipping to the bike shop in Cody? It would mean we would miss a day’s riding – purportedly the most beautiful day to ride. But 2-day shipping was a more reasonable cost, and we would be responsible for covering the difference in cost between regular and expedited shipping for the warrantied rim replacement. There had been solid contact with the shop in Cody. We could pick up the rim and have the mechanics rebuild the rear wheel in the evening at camp.

Was there still time to make the UPS pickup at the bike manufacturer in Oregon? Yes. We still had 30 minutes.

I gave the bike manufacturer guy my credit card number to cover the cost of the shipping, and that was all we could do for the time being.

We added our bike to the line to be packed up and transported to the next camp and went about our business.

View of wildfire smoke from our tent in Gardiner. It was interesting to note how the smoke “pulsed” over 24 hours – dying back at night and flaring up again with the heat of day.

After we got cleaned up, we left our campsite on the Gardiner school football field, at the corner of Main Street and Main Street (??), to run some errands.

The Gardiner laundromat is probably the cleanest one I have ever been in. Just please don’t wash your horse blankets there.

While we were waiting for the laundry to be done, we decided to go find a beer. We walked into the Two Bit Saloon only to walk out again a few minutes later after the bartender got into a loud argument with a patron. Oookaaaayyyyy…Walked to the Blue Goose Saloon, but there was heavy metal music blasting inside. Not our scene.

We settled for ice cream cones instead. While we were sitting outside the shop eating the ice cream and looking out over the Yellowstone National Park fence, we spotted our first megafauna.

A slightly lost elk on the wrong side of the fence.

I guess I hadn’t realized that the community we were in was literally at the gate of Yellowstone.

Our evening announcements in Gardiner featured the Roosevelt Arch in the background.

Sunset concert in Gardiner – with Little Jane & the Pistol Whips.

A few minutes later, Bugman pointed out the ride’s professional photographer focusing his lens towards the gate. Full moon perfectly framed!

Full moon framed by the Roosevelt Arch, as interpreted by my point-and-shoot camera.

Soon there was a photography scrum at the stage.

The wine tent in Gardiner sure was pretty. I loved how different local wines and beers were featured at our campsite concerts.

Our campsite runway. Every night there were solar-powered yard lights set up to help guide us around camp. (See? The organizers thought of everything!)

Day 4

Copyright 2013 by Katie Bradshaw