To our backs, the water flow west. Ahead of us, the water flows in the same direction that we continue to travel. We have crossed the continental divide. It’s all downhill from here, right?

Yesterday we decided to opt for a different terrain in our cross country journey, biking over 40 miles on rugged dirt roads to cut the corner off a significantly longer paved route and arrive on the other side of the continental divide a day ahead of schedule. The route’s difficult sections of sandy and washboard roads were a fair trade off for a panorama of spectacular scenery to encourage us on. The novelty of the experience compared to previous days on pavement made it one of my most memorable days of riding yet.

The 73 mile day traversed the edge of the divide through rolling dry meadows which reminded me strangely of northwestern India. Getting closer to the Teton Range by leaving the main road provided an environment more conducive for spotting antelope and other wildlife. Our wildlife encounters have fortunately and unfortunately not included a bear. Although the shortcut didn’t indicate an exact location for the highest pass, we claimed a spot on the divide around 8000’ and took photos to commemorate the accomplishment.

I learned yesterday that the continental divide pass isn’t necessarily the highest point on the road. We returned to pavement for the last 12 miles of the ride only to face more climbs and a stiff headwind. Pulling into a campsite in the Shoshone National Forest felt wonderful after what was probably the most physically demanding day of our journey so far.

Yesterday we also saw something we hadn’t experienced in a long time: lighting, thunder and rain. As we were sitting around the campfire and ready to begin Sarah’s story, a thunderstorm quickly rolled in and we dove into our tents just in time to beat the rain. I enjoyed watching the sky flash through the tent and then counting the decreasing seconds until the thunder followed as I fell asleep.

We will be camping for the next week until we start visiting churches again in eastern Nebraska. Note that there are no Mennonite churches in Wyoming. On July 31^st, we hope to cross from Wyoming into Nebraska and look ahead to long days of flat riding and hopefully a tailwind. Although my guess is that we might miss the mountains more than we yet realize…

~ Dave

Posted by David Landis

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Trip06. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.