After
having breakfast, we dressed to ride and took the bike out for
a short warm-up ride. We rode south out of Grant Village,
since we wouldn't be riding that section of road with the tour
group later. We went out and back along the one and only
road to the south, for a total of 15 miles. Along the way
we met a Swiss woman who was doing a self-contained solo cycling
tour of the United States for 6 months. We saw a lot of
the area that had been damaged by the wildfires of 1988 which
affected much of Yellowstone National Park. We were
happy to discover that the altitude was no longer a problem for
us at all.After noon we checked at the post office and were relieved to see that USPS Express Mail had delivered as promised. The bicycle parts that Bilenky had sent to our home had been forwarded by my sister to the post office at Grant Village. The kickstand that we were expecting was not in the box, but we did have the stoker's dummy brake levers which we installed right away, and the right side 287-V brake lever which we would not get around to installing during the trip.
That afternoon we met up with Roger Haga, the owner of TandemTours. We were surprised to learn that there would only be a total of 3 teams on this tour. I had thought that the ride would be at least 3 times that large. It turned out that several of the teams who had signed up had decided to switch to other TandemTour events, and one had said they might not make it. The other two teams were Hal and Barbara from Albequerque, NM aboard their Softride beam equipped S&S Co-Motion tandem, and D and Patty from Tampa, Florida riding a Santana Sovereign.
We headed out from Grant Village for a 22 mile ride to Lake Yellowstone. We were warned that there would be several miles of gravel where the road was under construction. The ride hugged the shore of Lake Yellowstone and we got our first glimpses of the geothermal activity that makes Yellowstone famous as we passed steaming pools on the lake side.
As we were crossing the first section of gravel, we were in the middle with one team in front of us and one behind us. We hit a really bad section of large gravel where the road was sloping sharply to the right. Quicker than you can read this, the first team slid out, we went down trying to stop behind them, and the third team did the same thing. We all got right up and started assessing injuries to riders and bikes. Most of us had some scrapes along our left legs and arms. Dawn got the worst of it by far, with a large area of very bad road rash and several gashes where gravel had cut into her. We normally travel with a large first aid kit, but this trip we had decided to cut the kit down to bare essentials. The most important thing we were missing were non-stick gauze pads. We made do with regular gauze, and sharing supplies with the other riders, we got everyone cleaned up and bandaged. After straightening a few twisted handlebars, we set out again for Lake Yellowstone.
As we arrived at the Lake Yellowstone
Hotel we got our first close up look of a Bison. We had
seen some at a distance north of Jackson a few days earlier, but
this one was about 30 yards off the side of the road next to the
hotel. Being on a bicycle that close to a 2,000 lb
animal that can run 30 mph and has horns makes you feel pretty
vulnerable. We kept moving past it and soon were checked
in to the hotel.