We enjoyed our ‘zero’ days in Jackson Hole. I am not sure I even left the house on our first day, but I clocked a few kms mountain biking with Pam on the second day, and we both enjoyed a raft down the class 3 Snake river with Mick in the afternoon. The days are warming up so it was a perfect activity.
Next morning Mick kindly dropped us off back where we left the GDMBR and it felt a little like going back to work. The first 20 miles were on the busiest road to date – tourist traffic heading in and out of Yellowstone.
Time to leave Wyoming for a brief fling on some back roads of Idaho – potato fields, views of the Western side of the Tetons, missing good friend Lyn who used to live in Driggs, Idaho and sadly died well before her time, and a grumpy RV park manager on night 2 of the 2 nights in the state.
The old rail trail we followed for most of a day could compete for some of the nicest and some of the worst trail conditions to date, the worst being soft corrugated volcanic soils/sand that we quickly tired of even with our fat tyres.
We exited Idaho into Montana, over Red Rock Pass into the Centennial Valley under the beautiful striated Centennial mountains.
We were happy to finish riding some big sky open countryside and head up the Big Sheep Creek National Scenic Byway – try saying that fast with a Werthers lolly in your mouth when you are riding uphill on a hot day! Great to be following up a rock and forest lined gorge until it opened out to more big open country and our ‘big sky Montana’ campsite on the side of the road where we were held hostage in our tent between the hours of 7 and 9 pm by the mosquitoes.
The next day we came across our first bear beer, kindly handed to us by a passing motorist before a lovely camp at Montanas first town, Banack – a historic gold town that people rushed to in the late 1800’s and the remaining buildings now form a State Park. We lucked in on a guided tour of the old buildings, very interesting.
