July 1, 1998 - Mammoth - Cooke City

DISTANCE TRAVELED: 57.75 Miles

TIME: 6 Hours 30 Minutes

AVERAGE SPEED: 11.0 Miles/Hour

TRAVEL CONDITIONS: Hot and sunny all day

ROAD CONDITIONS: Very bumpy with a few potholes. The road was eroded in many places leaving only small pebbles on the surface of the road.

TERRAIN/DIFFICULTY LEVEL: Although it was gradual, almost the entire trip was uphill. It was overall very easy although after a 105 mile day the day before, it was very tiring.

DAILY JOURNAL COMMENTS: We woke up today at 6:50 although I didn't actually get up until 7:30. I packed up and ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast since we didn't have any milk left any more. I ate quickly and left around 8:30. Unfortunately I had to retrace 15 miles that I had already done the previous day. It was just as beautiful and had about 50 elk in an area that had only 5 the previous day. I continued on up a long uphill which was followed by a series of rolling hills. Finally after a great but short downhill I came to the junction where I turned to Cooke City. The sign said that we had 33 miles to go and 29 would have construction! I was all ready for tons of rough road with lots of delays. I biked for about 5 miles before even coming to the first construction area.(Picture38) It was only about 100 yards long and wasn't even rough. We continued on through lots of valleys which gave us great views of the surrounding mountains and the area where we had come from. There was a raging river(Picture39) that came through which later meandered through a meadow. After this we came into a canyon which was called Ice Box Canyon. Here you would look off of the road and you couldn't even see the river since it was a vertical drop of about 100 feet. As I continued on we finally began to be able to see a huge range of mountains ahead of us.(Picture40,Picture41) There were many waterfalls coming down the mountains that were full of granite and snow.(Picture42,Picture43) Finally we came out of the park(Picture44) and entered into a small town in about one mile where I stopped at a local cafe. I had a great club sandwich around 2:30 after eating a power bar and three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I continued on for another 5 miles until I reached our campground. About 2 minutes after I arrived a ranger came in and told me that I had to call my parents so I biked down the hill that I had just come up and talked to them for about a half an hour before going back up the hill to help unload the van and set up my tent. This went fairly quickly and I then took a quick ride back down the hill into town with my laptop to find a place where I could make a phone call to MSN to update my web page by using a long distance number. After trying unsuccessfully, I found a person who owned a hotel who had access to MSN by a long distance number. I used her connection but of course things wouldn't be that easy. I got on fine and then I tried to type in my password to update the home page but I couldn't get the password to be accepted. So I e-mailed the information to my parents to see if they could put it on for me in case they had better luck signing on. After this attempt I biked over to a local bike shop and paid $5 for a quick tune-up on my gears since it was the first time that I had ever had them tuned up. They had previously been making the chain fall off on both the outer and the inner rings. Finally it was working correctly and I quickly rode up the hill again to the campsite to get some dinner that was fortunately still there. Although it was only a simple dinner of spaghetti, it tasted great to finally have some meat in my meals. I sat around the campfire for a while and got to bed around 10:30 after putting my food into a bear box for the night.

TRIP ROUTE:
Go towards Cooke City to Tower. Turn left to Cooke City and follow out of park. Follow for 5 more miles until you reach Soda Butte Campground.

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