Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Ride Days 103-4

I took two days to ride from West Yellowstone through the park and out to Gardiner Mt only about 60 miles total with a couple thousand feet of climbing in mixed weather of sunshine, rain, thundershowers, hail and high winds. I still enjoyed the ride despite some bad weather. I left West Yellowstone and slowly meandered into the park watching the bison which were all over the park and the few other birds and animals I encountered. I set up my camp at the Norris area of the park and went looking around at all the geothermal stuff and of course more bison. In the campground the bison were wandering all around the tents. There were two incidents of bison human while I was there. One idiot got too close taking flash pics and a bison charged him but he ducked behind a tree and got away. The rangers scolded him but did nothing else about it. The second was after two big males were butting heads and pushing each other around when one of the bison stormed off all excited and headed straight at a young couple sitting in lawn chairs with their backs turned to the bison coming at them. At the last minute another camper yelled out and the couple just managed to get up and out of their chairs before the bison gored the chairs and stomped on their jackets that they dropped when they fled into and across the river to get away from the pissed off bison. They were scared but unhurt. However the darwin award goes to the idiot wearing only jogging clothes that went around the giant sign stating that a trail was closed due to grizzly bear activity. Only 20 yards down the trail he ran into a sow grizzly with three cubs. He dropped to the ground and covered up as the sow came at him and cuffed him rolling him over on his back then cuffed him again rolling him back on his belly. Lucky for him but not our gene pool a ranger with bear spray immediately responded to the reports of someone going down the closed trail and was able to use his bear spray to rescue the idiot before the angry bear was able to do more harm to the guy. Another 6 year old boy was gored by an elk when his parents let him run ahead of them and he got too close to an elk with a calf. He has a bunch of stiches now to show his buddies when he gets back home. Despite these close calls that others had I loved my time in the park and had no problems whatsoever. On my ride out of the park I got caught in some rain, some hail and some high wind as well as thundershower cells blowing over with thunder and lightning. I ended up stopping in Gardiner instead of going all the way to Livingston which was my morning game plan. Oh well such is life you have to just roll with the punches and keep pedaling. Some pics....