Day 11 Rexburg to West Yellowstone

After having spoken Charlotte back home – it is after all our wedding anniversary today – we have been in the saddle a lot. It has been about bringing ourselves into the best position to cross Yellowstone tomorrow. If we would have stayed inside the park, we should have brought a larger wallet and booked a year in advance, so now the plan is to get up early and ride 180-200 km across Yellowstone National Park tomorrow and end the day in a town called Wapiti.

A scenic detour

The shortest way to West Yellowstone was a highway tour on a shoulder of varying quality, so after having spoken to a ranger in a town called Ashton we took a detour on a more desolate, more hilly and also longer route. One of the challenges travelling as a tourist on a bicycle is that you want to minimize the number of miles or kilometers you waste in order to make as much progress as possibly. Luckily the Upper Mesa Falls were only one mile out of our way but a lot of down and just as much up in order to return to the starting point. Also you do not relax at a scenic spot until you are satiated with impressions, because you do not have all day and want to move on.

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Progress

Just look how far we have got. Everybody I met in the neighborhood of San Francisco knew that we, the hotshots from Denmark, were going to traverse this continent called North America. Now we are just travelers and more often than not we only mention our starting point and the destination for the day. If people are more interested they can ask.

Montana has got a very straight line southern border to the east of here, but just here it becomes a very curvy border to Idaho, so 10 miles east of town at a small summit we entered Montana. It will be one night only, as we will roll into Wyoming tomorrow morning.

There is a story about the border to Idaho that it was supposed to follow the great divide (the line from north to south where water runs west or east respectively). But the cartographers got lost on the way, so the first part north from here follows the great divide, the second part followed the cartographers expedition on the lost trail and the final part just runs straight north up to Canada. At least we are told…

Grand Tetons

Enough has probably been said and written about the Grand Tetons named for theirsimilarity to big breast by some French fur collectors or trappers. We have not been away from home enough to find that name appropriate but they looked magnificent from our ride today. Grand Tetons are just south of Yellowstone. We do not know if it will be as clear a day as today, so for safety’s sake showing the Tetons at a 100 km or 70 miles distance: