Biking Brian’s Blog

I’m glad I camped at the top of the mountain last night instead of trying to find a place at the bottom. There was indeed 4 miles of flatish downhill from Burgess Junction, but then a 6 mile climb to another summit – not a difficult climb, but a surprise you wouldn’t want to have…

Today was the last major climb of the trip – crossing the Big Horn Mountains. There are three choices: from north to south – 14A, 14, or 16. The locals all said that 14A was the hardest and 16 the easiest. So I had checked my Wyoming bike map (which I had mailed to me…

I got up early enough to have the all you can eat breakfast buffet at the famous Irma Hotel (Buffalo Bill’s Hotel named after his daughter) right when it opened at 6 AM. When I got back to the campground to finish packing, I was talking to a Scottish couple – although they were doing…

It was nice to wake up to a dry and sunny – although a bit cool – morning. I was on the road by 8, bundled up for the downhill. By the time I reached Wapiti for breakfast, the quick drop in altitude and the later morning hour started to make the weather heat up…

(speedometer has dried out and is working again) After packing a wet tent once again, John and Nancy and I went for breakfast at the same place we had dinner last night. Nancy didn’t finish her toast – after staring at it for about a minute I asked her if I could eat it –…

(mileage estimated from the map, since the speedometer got washed out by the rain) It was a little slow going in the morning, attending to the business of packing up a wet tent (the worst part about camping in the rain), but I was on the road by 8:30, not too bad. Leaving the campground…

I could have gone from West Yellowstone to Grant Village (about 50 miles) in one day, but with the mandatory stops at Old Faithful, etc., it could have been too much for one day. Oh yeah, there’s also the issue of crossing the Continental Divide twice. So I decided to do errands in the morning…

I had hoped that the wind would have died down after the storm blew out, but that was not the case. My map showed a few restaurants in the first 20 miles or so, but all of them were only open for dinner. So it was a Hostess Donuts breakfast at one of the small…

I was packed and ready to go by 7:30, but Ed at the KOA was having an all you can eat breakfast at 8:00, so I stuck around for that. Most of the same “regulars” were there and were helping with the preparation. I was the first one served to pancakes, sausages, and eggs. Ed…

Dillon is a town that can definitely be considered small (about 3000 people), yet almost too big to strike up conversations with locals at restaurants. As far as I could tell, there were no other bikes at the campground. This is one of those rides where it looks flat on the map. In fact, it…