The travels of the Rambling Roses: Moran Junction to Yellowstone entrance Aug 1

34.68 in 2:49---After driving through Yellowstone and getting a feel for what it was going to take to bike through it, I decided it would be wise to ride to the entrance and have Pam and Buddy meet me there for the days activities. We are getting shut out of camping possibilities in the park, because it is peak season, and no one has spaced for Rv's as big as ours. The best way to camp here is with something under 30 feet in length. When I do ride in Yellowstone, I may have to do close to 100 miles to get to the other end, or Pam may have to go further than that and come back for me. We'll see how this plays out. Anyhow, the ride from the campground to Flaggs Ranch, where I stopped, was a great ride. I climbed about 1400 ft, so it wasn't a fast ride, but on the one hill I hit, I was down in the arrow bars, and hit 45.5 mph. The fastest I've ever gone in the arrow bars, which makes me tuck real low like they do in a bike race, but they can be unstable if you hit bumps. The road had a great shoulder, and there was large sections of brand new pavement, which is always nice. They were still paving two sections, and in one of them, they made me put my bike in the back of the escort truck, and they drove me through about a mile of construction. I wasn't real happy about that and I gave the driver an ear full, but she was friendly and understanding. It was just a nice, comfortable ride, generally speaking, and it was good to get it done, because the next leg might be VERY long, by necessity.

Pam and Buddy met me right on schedule and we headed out to try to see everything on the southern loop around the park. We saw tons of paint pots, cauldrons, steaming holes, geysers, thermally active fields, and everything else Yellowstone had to offer, including Yellowstone Lake and Yellowstone River. The highlight may have been the Steamboat Geyser, which was very big and was belching massive amounts of steam. We found out that less than 24 hours before we saw it, it erupted for the first time in over eight years. The steam that was coming out only comes out for about 24 hours after an eruption, so even though we didn't see it blow, we saw a unique sight in the steam. The eruption drained water and heat from many of the other features nearby, so there were cisterns and holes that were normally active, and they weren't doing anything. It was all very unique and colorful, and it all smelled like sulfur, some areas more than others. We grabbed a tank of gas and a burger at one of the visitor centers, checked out a few campgrounds looking to get lucky and find a site for next Monday, (Which we didn't ) , and got home after 10 pm. We still have to see the 'Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, but we figure we will check out the stuff at the north end of the park when I ride through and we find a campground on the north end of the park, maybe in Montana.