Diary

Mileage:  90 miles

Elevation Change:  3431 feet

Weather: sunny, hot and windy

Morale: good but tired

Incidents:  killer headwind all day long

Daily Summary:

Well, it wasn’t quite the easy day we had hoped for.  There was a 20 mph wind blowing from the south all day long, which made it a long, hot, and hard day.  As you can see on the map, we were heading due south all day long.  And as you can see from the elevation profile, we were heading up as well.  It wasn’t steep.  We were going up the Gallatin River for miles and miles.  In fact, the elevation change was an optical illusion.  We could see that we were going up river, but the road looked like it was going down, down, down.  The road out of Bozeman was extremely busy until we got past Big Sky Ski Area, which was a stress as well.  The shoulder was very narrow and there were lots of big trucks passing very fast.  So all in all, the day was a lot harder that we had hoped it would be.  Raymond was a hero, and cycled steadily all day, doing the bulk of the work for the last few hours. 

Below you see the scene all day long:  Gallatin River on the right, beautiful forest all around, narrow shoulder.  You don’t see the big trucks and the killer headwind.  Next is Raymond at the entrance to Yellowstone.

 

Tomorrow is a long day:  135 miles.  We will be riding through Yellowstone and Teton National parks, but we will be unsupported.  The vans and trailers can’t go through the parks, so the supported route goes to the west of the parks.  I suspect  most people will go on the unsupported route through the parks.  Wind tomorrow is supposed to be more of the same, so it will be a challenging day.