Bison. They are pretty cool, and some other neat stuff.

       Yellowstone was quite the park of parks, that everyone wants to see. We both expected the park to be crowded, but it was packed with way more people then I thought there would ever be there at one time. Although the massive crowds make things sort of hectic, it is still worth the trip.

       It took us about four days from Butte to get to Yellowstone. All we did was climb massive hills and passes with a few flat stretches all the way to the park. The winds through the last two days were brutal going south down Hwy. 287. They constantly blow against you in strong gusts, and make the climbing slow and painful. Along Hebgen lake, which we passed just before reaching the town of West Yellowstone, they died off and gave us a break. Not to mention the rains that hit us off and on too. Oh well, that part of the trip is over. We were really excited to get to the entrance after buying some supplies for the park. After we flashed our parks pass to the ranger and got a map of  Yellowstone we took off down the road to get to the closest camp site, 14 miles into the park, so we could finally relax after the trek in. 

       I'm sure that there is something on the Yellowstone website that explains if you are biking or hiking through the park that you are always guaranteed a campsite no matter how full the park gets. We did not know this coming into Yellowstone. Once we stated down the road we saw a huge billboard announcing that every campsite was full. So in short we lucked out being on bikes. Until we reached the first campground we were sweating bullets wondering if we would really be turned away after all the biking we did just to get into the park.

       There is so much to see in Yellowstone that there was no way for us to make all the sites this trip, but we saw a majority of the geyser pools and Old Faithful. I posted LOTS of pictures of thermal pools. They're amazing flukes of nature, and are so beautiful.  I couldn't help but put many different pictures of them on the blog page. They don't do them justice entirely, but give you a nice glimpse at some of them. We also saw Upper and Lower Falls on our third day of exploration via hitch-hiking and hiking trails around the park. It's fairly easy to catch rides in Yellowstone because everyone is there for the same reason. Most of the rides we got were from employees of the park who were on their days off.

      The one trouble with biking Yellowstone is the elevation. It was hard for both of us to breath as we biked around the park, with trailers in tow at elevations between 7000-8000+ feet.......when going over the Continental Divide, twice....... in one day! It was rough and slow-going. I vow not to bike through Yellowstone again. We both did fine when we were just walking around, but the biking hurt. I'm glad that I was able to see it on a bike, but will only return in a car!

      The last two nights we stayed in the same campground and spent the evenings with a couple of Polish guys and a guy from Baltimore who were all hitch-hiking /taking Greyhound across the country. All three of them were tons of fun to get to know and spend time with. The polish guys, ( I can't remember their names, sorry guys,) loved the park and all the cities and places that they were visiting in America. Rob and us had a great time explaining weird American customs and recommending places to them that they should see before they go back to Poland. 

     Rob decided to take his trip last minute and was also in the park for the first time and had started his journey solo. We hope that you like Portland as much as we think you will. We'll see you in the black hills in a couple of days.

     Oh yeah! And Audie too. Note to Audie: Our cell phones work in the larger cities and are charged as of today. Give us a call when you can because we want to hang out with you and your family in the hills.

      Otherwise, we have one more mountain range to climb before we are out of the Rockies. I can't wait for flat nothingness so we can lay down some serious 50-70 mile days and start getting further East. The Rockies; beautiful, yet hell after almost a month of biking through them.

Ryan and Allegra

      This bison walked right by us. We didn't see it coming up because we were waiting for traffic to move forward and were stuck between two big RVs. It was scary to be so close to one.
                                                Beautiful scolding hot Pools.

                        Our Polish friends, Rob from Baltimore, and Ryan.
                 Yellowstone's Grand Canyon and Lower Falls.
                                        Another view of the canyon.
                               This crossing made us want to die!!!
                              This crossing was horrible.
                         Old Faithful going off.
     We took tons of pictures of the many thermal pools. I can't remember all of their names, but this is a pretty good selection of some of our photos.




                                       A sleepy bison sunbathing.