Sunday, July 17th
The guys i’d cycled with last week introduced me to the phrase ‘hauling ass’. As I interpret it, cycling hard and fast and constant, regardless of the terrain or conditions. Today I definitely hauled ass, covering 74 miles in the park on the Grand Loop Road, which as the name suggests makes a big loop around the park.
I’d had an unpleasant night of sleep. A combination of the cold and my unrelenting bear fear came together to produce disturbed dreams verging on nightmares. My alarm went off at 6 but I snoozed another two hours, finally able to rest now the sun was up.
The morning was far more pleasant. As I brewed my second cup of coffee I was invited over for breakfast by David, with his wife and three kids, who were camped a little uphill from me. They were on holiday here for 4 or 5 days from Oklahoma and had more sausages than they knew what to do with. I was more than happy to help solve that problem. David had biked the Great Divide route – a mountain bike trail from Canada to Mexico, and seemed to understand the kind of appetite you could develop when riding a bike across a country.
Before leaving the campground I took a $4.13 shower. Everything here was optimised for squeezing out your dollars.
My plan for the day was to follow to loop road to another campsite. Jumping off the bike occasionally at some of the major sites along the way.
My first stop was Yellowstone Canyon. Which despite it’s size seemed somehow tucked away out of view, but emerging on the first overlook the scale of it became apparent. A couple of waterfalls dropped into the river in the valley of the canyon. I took a short but steep hike down to the first one to the point where the water dropped over the age. Clouds of water mist rose like smoke from the walls of the canyon as the water cascaded down.
All the colours in Yellowstone seemed unnaturally saturated – bright yellows, oranges, and blues. I can be pretty ignorant beyond the surface aesthetics of things but imagine this is due to the volcanic nature or thermal properties of the springs and rocks in the park. Something like that.
I hiked back to the top, my knees were hurting already. I’d have to be picky about what I stopped at. What is amazing about Yellowstone is the amount of variety in what is still a relatively small area. As I continued around the loop road I watched this change from canyons, to waterfalls, thick forest, rivers, geysers, mud springs and meadows.
Buffalo seemed to roam almost all of the park, and I came a little too close to some as I rounded a corner close to the river. A small pack of them were to my right amongst trees and had been startled either by me, but more likely by the cars. They jumped to their feet and hooved it away in a cloud of dust. Of the two directions they could have chose thankfully it was into the forest and not out into the road, and into me. I cycled to the other side of the road and shielded myself behind a stopped car as this all unfolded. Though buffalo look like sleepy, lazy animals, this had shown me how quick and powerful they actually are.
As I carried on cycling around I kept one eye on the trees.
I stopped at a beach named Pumice Point to make some coffee and oatmeal. Services in the park were limited to a small number of highly concentrated area. The picnic benches looked out over the water and an elk came by munching the grass by the shoreline. Cars pulled in to take photos. I kept my distance after the close call with the buffalo.
I reached a junction and took the road towards Old Faithful, probably the biggest of the parks tourist attractions. But first were 19 miles to cover. This section began with a series of tough climbs which culminated in a sign marking the continental divide. Two signs in fact. The first at an elevation of 8391ft, then 8262ft. I passed two different sets of cycle tourers, downhill for them, ‘Almost there!’ shouted out one from across the road. Uphills no longer troubled me like they had in the past, in fact they’d almost become a kind of guilty pleasure.
After crossing the second divide marker a steep winding downhill took me to Old Faithful. I pulled into the car park and put my back outside the visitor centre. A sign said the next eruption would be at 5.37 (+/- 10 minutes). I arrived at 5.32. Inside the building people waited and watched from behind a big glass window. Then outside hundreds gathered around the circumference of the geyser on the boardwalk. The crowd was three or four deep in parts, all waiting with phones unlocked and cameras primed to capture a spurt of water into the air. Having been lucky enough to go to Iceland for a few days, and see geysers up close with far fewer people around, I was less interested in the eruption than the whole ceremony of it all.
Perhaps i’d be less cynical if this was my first time witnessing something like this, but it was hard not to be when surrounded by so many other tourists. It began to gurgle a little. A person joked how they were just waiting for 100 more dollars before the flipped the switch. Then it went, and a tower of water gradually rose into the air. And the crowd went wild. I took a few shots then made an exit before everyone rushed back to their cars.
It was 6 miles to my next stop and the thing i’d been looking forward to the most – the Grand Prismatic Spring. A geo-thermal area of orange volcanic rock and turquoise blue water, steam rising from the surface and from a number of other nearby craters. Cars piled up outside the entrance but I glided passed them on my bike.
The colours were incredible, and of course the crowds on the boardwalk were large, but it felt less staged than Old Faithful. A collection of various hats were in the spring, offerings from previous tourists in return for selfies.
I hopped back on my bike and exited the car park. 10 miles remained to Madison where i’d been told there was another campsite which accommodated bikers/hikers for $8. It was mostly downhill as the road followed the bends of the Firehole River as the sun slowly began to set.
It had been a rushed day but I’d seen a few of the main sites at least, and due to the way the campsites were located, my choices were either double back on myself, go very slowly, or go fast. The reality was I probably could have spread this stuff out over 3 or 4 days, but then there’d be a rush later on. I’d rather have a couple of spare days to enjoy the ending than be worrying about missing a flight i’ve already delayed once.
I paid for my spot and spoke to Edward, a cyclist from the Netherlands heading from Canada down to Denver. It was a pretty campsite amongst trees, more primitive than the previous night, no showers, no mobile service, no shops.
There was an outdoor amphitheatre a short walk from the site where a ranger gave a presentation about bears: “The Bear Essentials of Yellowstone”. I thought it might do me some good to learn some facts. Ranger Steve spoke into a crackly microphone and pressed through Powerpoint slides. The production values were low, but the content helpful in understanding how we view bears today and why they behave like they do. Essentially the behaviour of previous generations messed bears up and now we have to deal with many of the consequences. When they weren’t hunting them or cutting their heads off for photos, people fed them at the picnic table or let them loose on their garbage. Now we have to lock our food up.
As he spoke lightning struck on the horizon and it gradually moved closer until it was right over our heads, lighting up the whole sky. This really bought the powerpoint and the pixelated jpegs of bears to life.
We all ran back to out tents in the rain. I was hoping a grizzly hadn’t beaten me to it.
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