Monday, August 29, 2011

Day 51

Saturday, August 27

Miles today: 68
Dubois to Jackson Hole, WY

We woke up and went back to the Cowboy Cafe for breakfast, and yes, another piece of pie. We hit the road and immediately started climbing. The incline lasted for a full 29 miles, which took 4 hours and 20 minutes of pedaling. There was construction going on so we didn't know exactly how far away the top of Togwotee (pronounced Toe-ga-tee) was, so we just had to keep on pedaling for what seemed like forever. The good thing about the construction was that there was very little traffic, I think because the cars wanted to avoid delays. It was by far our hardest and longest climb yet on this trip. Once we got to the top, we had to get in a truck to go over the torn up part of the road- this is a Wyoming state law. There were no signs but we know that the top of the pass was at elevation 9658 ft. We also crossed the continental divide for the the fifth time, back into the Pacific zone. I was sad that there were no signs to take pictures with like we have at every other pass.

We rode in the pilot car for about 2 miles, rode our bikes about 10 miles down a 8% grade, and came upon a gorgeous view of the Grand Tetons!



It looked better in person I think. The Tetons are so weird because they are often blocked from view by the surrounding mountains, but they are very impressive looking. And they still have some snow on them.

We got back into another pilot car for about 7 more miles, which was pretty much to the bottom of the mountain. We starting riding again and then it began to downpour. There was no place to stop or hide under so we just kept going. It rained for about 45 minutes, which was not fun at all. We entered the Grand Teton National Park, which has gorgeous views of the mountains, but a US highway goes right through it so we did not see any wildlife on that road. We did see a ton of RVs and cars, which sprayed dirty water at us.


We were hungry, cold and wet and there was just no where to stop. We quickly ate granola bars on the side if the road and kept going. We saw planes flying into Jackson Hole airport, which must have been an awesome view to fly into. We finally arrived in Jackson Hole and right away picked up our rental car- a Jeep Liberty! It felt so weird at first to be driving, like we were doing something wrong.



They are letting me drive!?

We drove all around town and Ben had to get used to driving again- it felt so fast just to go 30 mph! We went to the grocery store to get food for dinner and they happened to have a frozen yogurt place inside the supermarket! Of course, we couldn't pass that up. We went to the city park to cook dinner, and then called it a night. The climb up Togwotee really wiped us out and I was very thankful to be taking two days off to see Yellowstone!

A few pics of downtown Jackson:


Location:Jackson, WY

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