Wyoming has Mountains!

There is snow on the Mountains only 50 miles to my West. We caught our first glimpse riding into Shishoni on a 100 mile day. The landscape has started to become more 'featured' ever since we hit Nebraska and Wyoming, but there has been little in the way of actual mountains. It was nice to crest a hill and see the real thing with snow on top. It was also pretty nice to know that I climbed those mountains on NOLS only two years ago.We are heading over the Continental Divide tomorrow, into Jackson the next day, and over the Rockies the day after. I am obviously very excited.

Visiting Lander today was also a little surreal. The last time I was here, I was preparing for my NOLS course in the Wind River Mountains, and it was kind of cool to come back for another adventure. I visited the Gulch and the hostel and bought some of the bulk food. One of the riders even found my picture posted on the Honor Wall, which was pretty cool.

If you're interested in the day-to-day definitely check out the route tracker on the Bike & Build website where at least two of the riders update our progress daily. I also just uploaded about 130 pictures or so from between Ohio to Iowa/South Dakota today so check it out.

PICTURES!

My first camera lasted all of two days of the trip and somewhere in Connecticut it started to fall a part. First the lens didn't close, which wasn't too bad, and by day three I had pieces all over the place. I sent it home to get fixed and sometime in Ohio I was able to get my hands on another picture taking device. There are some gaps in the pictures but here is a general overview.


Dayton in the morning

Re-route on the 120 mile day

Indiana!

Carrol Iowa


A video!

Its been a while

So I kind of thought that the beginning of the trip would be the busiest and eventually I would fall into the routine and find all the time in the world for blogging, uploading pictures, and writing post cards. Of course that is never the case and each day continues to bring new challenges and adventures. Here are some thoughts about the states from the first half of the trip:

Pennsylvania is beautiful with actual rolling hills and gorgeous farmland that continues right into eastern Ohio.
Ohio is not flat. This is a lie and I had one of my worst days trying to climb the hills on an 80-mile ride through Amish country in eastern Ohio.
The roads and the drivers are better in western Ohio than eastern Ohio. We had some rough days in Youngston but I definitely began to love the state by the time we hit Dayton.
Illinois and Indiana are indeed flat. It is also hard to imagine what the states would look like with natural vegetation. There is so much corn and soy that it almost seems like its supposed to look like that. Illinois and Indiana are also a lot thinner than I expected. We blew by the states in no time.
Iowa is generally awesome and biker friendly. They have a yearly bike ride that spans the state called the Rag Ride and everyone in Iowa loves to talk to you about it. The advantage is that Iowa is used to bikers in large quantities and so drivers and people are not too annoyed to be held up for a few minutes on the main roads by bikers.There are also hills in Iowa, but not nearly to the extent that Iowans think there are. The hills are perfectly graded and help to brake up the monotony of corn and soy. I have some amazing pictures of Iowa that I will try to get posted.
South Dakota started flat with lots of corn but that is giving way to rolling hills of pastures and a few trees.