Into Montana

It's going to be a quick one tonight because I'm flat exhausted after our fourth century of the trip today.  After the highs of our climbs up Togwotee and Teton passes last week, we moved on to Ashton, ID and then to West Yellowstone, MT.  We had an off day in West Yellowstone, which is a horrible tourist trap (think Gatlinburg, Blue 2), but a group of us rented a few cars and made it into the park for the day.  We had a good day viewing the sights, including Old Faithful (overrated and too many people), Lake Yellowstone (very cool), and some paint pots and geysers throughout the park.  All told, it was a good day.  Yellowstone is far from my favorite national park, however, and it ranks far behind the Tetons from a few days previous.

The ride from West Yellowstone to Bozeman yesterday was incredible.  It was a 90+ miler, but it was almost entirely downhill and along the beautiful Gallatin River.  I cruised for much of the day on my own, which was really nice to reset after an off day.  The scenery was absolutely incredible, rivaling the Tetons (in my opinion at least).  Bozeman was a pretty cool town (or at least it had good ice cream, haha).  We had a great chicken dinner and got to chat with a B&B alum from last year's Central Route who lives in Bozeman now (she made us a cake, ballah on dessert last night!)

Today's ride was a tough one: 100 miles with over half of it in headwinds.  I started the morning in a poor mindset; I was upset because me and a few others were doing most of the clean-up chores after breakfast and when I started bringing things to the van, there were no less than 10 people sleeping on couches instead of helping.  I stormed off on the bike and actually had a productive first 20 miles just chewing some things over in my head (let's say this morning was a microcosm of things I've been fighting for years far beyond Bike & Build).  I actually pulled off and logged a quick journal entry on the back of my direction sheet, which helped calm me down.  I had a good rest of the day into our second lunch, pacelining with Isabel and Danny for awhile.  I crashed after second lunch, however, losing all energy and coasting into Bozeman on fumes after the headwinds and heat hit.  Today was definitely a "Survive and Advance" day.

We supposedly have great scenery over the next few days into Lincoln and Missoula.  Looking forward to it.  Hope you guys are doing well!