Grand Teton National Park

Leaving out of Dubois, I was pretty eager to reach the "main event" so to speak. We had been surrounded by mountains for awhile but I was told the Tetons would be unreal. I should have probably known that seeing mountains so brilliant would come at a cost, but I still hadn't developed any sort of sense about things to this point. We climbed, let me tell you. Even though there was a river along the way, we climbed back and forth plenty of times, leaving me to wonder if there was any way we could build a raft out of spare wood. I mean if Tom Hanks could do it, surely a couple college guys could do it, but alas there was no rope or even videotapes that we could make rope from.

And so a steady climb lay ahead of us but we made our way up each hill and tried to not look too far ahead. As the mosquitoes drank from my legs like I was a Hawaiian Punch soft drink fountain, I knew I was moving pretty slow but the blood was a small price to pay for the views we got to see on this day. We climbed Togwotee (toe-gah-tee) Pass for a good part of the day and halfway up we stopped a small lake that was nestled against the Pinnacle Mountains where there was a good deal of snow right on the water. I'm from Cleveland where I once went to an Indians game that was snowed out at the beginning of the season, but seeing this much snow in July was crazy to even me. I dipped my hand in the icy cold water and it went numb almost immediately. I imagine the fish in that lake were pretty lethargic from the temperatures but sadly I didn't have a fishing rod and there was still a lot of climbing to be done.

After reaching the summit (of which isn't marked at all) I experienced the pure joy that I can only remember feeling as a kid when you go down a hill on a bicycle or a sled. As the wind rushes across the surface of your skin you feel alive with each hair rising to see what all the fuss is about. You know that with just the wrong piece of debris (in Pennsylvania we had a fork kick up off the pavement and several of us hit it) on the road or hard gust of wind, you could fall from your steel steed and find yourself bouncing to a painful death.

As an aside, the thought of death entered my mind very early on when Carson fell off his bike and broke his helmet while not even going all that fast. I happened to be right in front of him at the time and was not wearing my helmet. In fact, there were much steeper hills prior to this accident that I went down without a helmet on at much faster speeds. When Travis fell on a busy road later in to the trip, where he could have easily fallen the wrong way and had his head land right in front of a car's wheel it only further made us realize just how powerless we are as cyclists. We're passed by hundreds of cars each day and it would only take one driver not paying attention to kill one of us.

With that being said, I never was any more cautious on hills. The fear of death often made me ride a certain way. I would stay further to the right than necessary or turn on my lights when it wasn't that dark out yet, but on hills I never hesitated to let the weight of my bike take me as fast as I could go.

I reached the overlook where you can see the whole Teton range off in the distance and about 800 feet further down the hill I saw the most beautiful sign I had come upon in a long time. It said 6% downhill grade for 8 miles. Now I hate climbing, know this about me. I started this trip a bit overweight but by the time I reached Wisconsin I was at a very healthy weight and would consider myself in pretty good shape by that point. Still I'm not a small guy by any means and gravity was not kind to me while trying to climb up hills. I never did get much faster at climbing from the beginning to the end. I can say that at the beginning of the trip I had to stop every 50 feet and let the blood back into my legs, but by the end of the trip I could climb any hill without needing to stop, but I wouldn't say my actual riding was faster. Why do I say this? Well I want you to understand that climbing is not something I'm good at, but there was no hill too big to make me quit, and the only reason is that I always knew at the top of a hill I would get a downhill at some point.

But not on Togwotee. Just a couple miles after seeing the beautiful sign I came upon road construction where Jared was waiting for me so we could load our bikes into the back of a pickup truck that would take us down the hill. I kept wishing that we had been coming the opposite direction and quickly regretted feeling sorry for the people I had seen a few minutes before who were climbing in the opposite direction since they clearly just got a free ride uphill.

I felt robbed. I had just climbed one of the longest hills all trip and now I couldn't feel the wind on my face because they made us sit up front, but I did find relief in knowing that the worst was behind us.

As we rode through flat fields full of wild flowers (and even more mosquitoes) with the mountains right out in front of us I knew that I had made the right decision for not giving up back in the Black Hills when I briefly considered getting a job and staying with my brother for the summer. This place was amazing and for the next couple days we would make this our home in a park that Jared had spent last summer working in.

Unfortunately the warm reception we received back in Custer State Park was not matched by Grand Teton National Park. On the first night we stayed with a guy Jared had worked with who had an apartment at one of the lodges. He was a stickler for rules which was understandable, but he invited us to camp out back in his yard when his couches were left empty. All trip I had never found myself lacking appreciation for people's hospitality, but I guess I judge the heart, not what we receive, and in this instance we found ourselves sleeping outside in the cold mountain air behind a home of someone who had plenty of room inside and who knew Jared well enough to not lack trust. It was a bit frustrating but I was just happy to not have to pay for a campsite.

The next day we joined Jared's "friend" for lunch at the employee dining room at Jackson Lake Lodge. It blew the one at Custer away which is really an understatement because the one at Jackson looked like a real buffet restaurant compared to Custer's break room appearance with just one option. Still I found myself wishing we were back at Custer because of one key benefit: at Custer the food was free.

Now I should be fair, the cost for the meal was something ridiculous like $3 a person, but I was beginning to become fearful. My belief was that it was okay to stay as long as either of us wanted in any place so long as the time we spent in that place only cost the equivalent of one day. For example while we were in Custer for five days we had free food the entire time and free housing. We only paid for souvenirs if we wanted them so at the end of five days we still spent less than we would on just any one given day. At Teton we were off to a bad start because Jared thought it would be fair to spend as much time there as we did at Custer, and understandably so, but if we had to pay even just $3 a meal for two meals a day, at the end of 5 days we would be quite a bit over our one day budget of $15-20, not to mention we had to pay to get in to the park and we still had no real idea of where our housing would be.

Fortunately one of Jared's contacts came through for us and gave us a complimentary hiker/biker camp site for two nights, and Jared felt like we would be able to eat in the employee dining room for free while we were at Colter Bay where he had worked. Even if we weren't allowed to eat for free at the dining room we were bailed out because a travel group called Backroads invited us to join them at their group campsite for meals since they always made more than they needed. After a few meals with them I started to feel like a beggar but I was just happy to not be paying for it.

On the first night at Colter we walked in to the dining room and were able to eat all the meatloaf and mashed potatoes we wanted without any problems. Then we rode down to the lake to sit by the mountains for awhile and properly digest. Finally we finished the night off by making a fire at our campsite before bed. Needless to say I was enjoying this life, but the next day would be a little less inviting.

It started off just fine. I woke up and joined the backroads group for breakfast. They had breakfast burritos with avocado which is my favorite, coffee, and a homemade coffee cake which was just what I needed for a long day of relaxing by the mountains.

I picked out the perfect spot along the lake and sat down at a picnic table to write a few posts for the blog on my blackberry and was pleasantly surprised to meet some very friendly people. First an older woman and her daughter came by to take some pictures of the mountains. I suggested trying to shoot the mountains through the wild flowers and helped them take a few. It was nice to just chat with fellow vacationers without being viewed as some crazy lunatic who was riding a bicycle across the country. While the feeling of being some kind of unique celebrity was nice at first, after awhile I just wanted others to view me as being one of them.

After the women left I took some pictures and continued to blog, taking breaks in between to feed some trail mix to the tiny squirrels that were all over the place. I was amazed at their courage (or naivety) as they would wander in close enough that I could touch them. In fact, one of them even walked up on top of my sandal which made me freak out a bit and scared them off for a couple minutes.

As I was packing up my stuff at the lake a man named Jack came by. He was a rather imposing looking guy but no at all intimidating due to the globs of sunscreen on his nose, cycling jersey, and handlebar bag on his shoulder (not a manly look). Jack was a real piece of work. The guy had survived cancer and opened his mouth about wanting to do a ride across the US to raise money for research. Just as I had once opened my mouth and got forced to follow through, Jack's church decided to buy him a bike and send him on his adventure so he was going to do it in two sections and had made it here from the Oregon coast that I had my eyes set on. After talking for awhile about our faith we exchanged information and I headed back to my campsite for no reason.

After a nice long nap I decided to venture out for dinner so Jared and I walked in to the employee dining room where we were greeted by a chubby punk of a kid who was working there this summer as a security guard. Jared went up to him and asked if we could pay to eat there since he had been allowed to do this for his ex-girlfriend the summer before. The guard told us we couldn't and when Jared mentioned that we had been allowed this privilege at Jackson Lake Lodge, the guard told us we should go back there.

So we left without causing a fuss and found a seat on a bench not far away. While we were chatting with an older couple from Germany who were doing virtually the same ride as us, our luck ran out. The security guard came over to apologize and got to chatting with Jared while I continued my conversation with the German couple.

Being greeted by park rangers is never a good thing and it turns out that the security guard was only chatting with us to try and keep us there until the rangers could arrive. They split us up and made us tell them all kinds of details about the past week of our trip from where we stayed to what we ate, etc. It turns out that the security guard had fabricated information and told the rangers that we had been staying in the park for over a week, eating at employee dining rooms the whole time. Jared dropped the name of his friend from Jackson Lake Lodge, the one who made us sleep outside, so I didn't feel bad about it at all, but after we produced documentation showing the meals we had eaten and how long we had actually been at the park we were let go. The chubby kid didn't win this time, but after this experience I was thrilled that we were leaving the next morning.