Epic Bike Ride Day 36 July 3

Thoughts from Kelly: I woke up just before 8am feeling fairly rested.  I woke Mark up to go with me to pee, since we are now in grizzly country.  We haven’t seen any, but many other riders have, without incident.  I do not want to take any chances.  After slowly getting ready and studying the map for today’s route, Mark decided to save his back, and drive the portion of today’s gravel road.  After driving for 20 miles (during this time, we met 3 riders (one from Kalamazoo, about 20 minutes from our home!), we were on pavement and Mark started riding. We were traveling along a river for part of the day, then more mountains and Aspens, so beautiful! I love the way the Aspen trees shimmer in the wind, and make a cool rustling sound.  At one point, we went by Warm River campground and saw tons of people tubing that section of the river, having a blast. I was tempted to jump in the river too! We ended up taking the wrong road (Mesa Falls Scenic Byway) to Island Park, but it was a beautiful road with lots to stop and look at.  We made it to the main road into Island Park, and a guy told Mark that he can take the two track next to the road all the way into town, since the main road was so busy.  Nervous about not finding a place to camp, I drove ahead to scope things out.  Luckily, Buffalo Campground had plenty of spots and very friendly people all around us.  We walked across the street to Ponds and had our second drinks of the trip.  I even got to eat pizza, because they had gluten free crust, YUMMY! After being well fed and taking forever to finish our drinks, we headed back to camp for the night.

Thoughts from Mark:  A relatively short day on the bike, and fairly easy riding (as easy as it gets on the GDMBR, anyway).  The scenery in some of these spots is just fantastic, and today was no exception.  We met a couple out for a 2-3 day ride, and they were excited to hear about our adventure.  Island Park seems like a decent little spot, and clearly it’s focused on catering to the fly-fishing and hunting crowd.  The campground was nice, and we spoke with the camp hosts for quite a while.  Kelly is thinking we could be camp hosts when we hit the road full-time as RV-ers.  Our dinner and drinks were very good, and it was one of those days when everything kind of just came together.

Miles for the day:  36.58         Feet climbed today:  1,909

Total miles ridden:  1,656.77    Total feet climbed:  105,587