Days 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, & 20 ... and 21. (PART TWO)

Part two of the post.

Day 15:
We rode just under 110 miles from Butte to Bozeman, Montana. It was our first real century ride. The views were spectacular:








We stayed at Eagle Mount, a recreational and theraputic facility for people with disabilities. They have an accessible pool and lots of horses for riding. They actually had just been featured on the Today Show the day before we arrived, and had been given tons and tons of free stuff. Here is a horse:


That night I went to a bike shop (The Bike Pedler) to get my bike fitted, my derailed adjusted, my back wheel straitened, my back wheel retaped, and buy some new tubes. The people were very nice, and stayed open late for us. I went back after dinner and one of their fitters came in after hours to help us. He gave me a lot of free advice rather than having me pay for a full fitting when I already had a certain size frame. He moved me seat forward and down, and ever since then I have had very little pain in my Achilles tendons. I think I was stretching my foot out too far to reach the pedals when my seat was too high.

Day 16:
We rode from Butte to West Yellowstone, Montana. The Trans project manager from last year, Jeremy Jones, did a ride along. He is a beast on a bike. We talked briefly about Mike Keough, one of my chapter Brothers and one of his cyclists from last year (he had nothing but good things to say about you, Mike; he was telling us all about how quick you were to get packed in the mornigs, and about your little stand up routine at circle up to show everyone how easy it was to get packed on time).

Anywho, we racked through a big canyon because of safety (the guy at the bike shop said it was the most dangerous place in Montana). Weather wasn't the best, and we had a huge headwind to fight against, but the view was still great:


We stayed at West Yellowstone High School, located just outside the national park. We went to an imax movie titled Yellowstone (the theatre had Honest Ade!), and went to a BBQ place in town for dinner. I had a "Mad Dog" sandwhich, a spicy sausage with beef brisket (I think) and BBQ sauce on it. I went to bed at around 7 pm and slept until 730 or 800 am. I was really tired. Also, at this point my air mattress had broken, so I had been sleeping on the floor for a few days. The mattress has a slow leak (I think through one of the seams), so I can't find a hole to patch.

Day 17:
We had a day off in Yellowstone, but we still woke up somewhat early (early for a day off of the bike at least) and went to Yellowstone National Park. We got to walk very close to a herd of buffalo:


There were tons of other buffalo spread out throughout the park, way more than I expected. We also saw lots of elk, and I'm pretty sure I saw a female moose (or a male without antlers). Here are a ton of pictures of the different kinds of hot springs we saw in one area of the park; the springs were connected by boardwalks:




















We went to Old Faithful, and saw it erupt. I took about 10 minutes of video trying to catch it erupting, and finally it went off, so if I ever can upload videos I'll upload that one, it's pretty cool. Here are some pictures before and after (but not during) the eruption:

Location:Shoshone, Wyoming