Day 5: Grand Tetons and Beyond

After waking, showering, and packing, we left the Worland Campground a little after 9 in the morning. We were sad to see that the shirtless man drinking beer in front of his trailer home from the night before was not there to see us off. I'm sure he had other matters to attend to.

We hopped back on Hwy20 and rode down along the Wind River through the Wind River Canyon. This is a beautiful canyon with great scenery and fun twisty roads. We went through a couple of tunnels in the canyon along the way and finally came out with a view of the Tetons in the distance. Any French speakers know where the Tetons got their name?

We proceeded northwest towards the Teton Range through the Teton National Forest and then south into Jackson Hole. After a quick gas stop at the edge of the town of Jackson, we took the scenic route north through the Grand Teton National Park. There were great views of the Tetons the whole way (which are more impressive from a distance than the Colorado Rockies we saw) and the road took us right along Jackson Lake for a bit, offering more great views of the Tetons across the water.

We continued heading north and got caught in some pretty serious construction just south of Yellowstone. After several miles of gravel and broken roads we finally made it into the South Entrance of Yellowstone. It was just a little before dark so we pulled over to take a look at the map and figure out which campsite we were going to try for. It turned out that all of the southern campsites weren't yet open for the season. It is precisely at this moment that we realized just how big Yellowstone really is. The campsite at the northern end of the park was 90mi away, which would take over 2 hours at the park speed limits. We picked one of the closest open parks and headed towards it. We didn't have a reservation, but were hoping they'd still have open spots.

Although it was after dark, we made it to the campground office a few minutes before they closed at 9pm and they still had room. While about to reserve a tent site, we ran into another guy, Jason, who was touring on his Harley and offered to share his camp site with us. Jason was also on a long motorcycle tour, covering around 8000mi in two weeks. He was more hardcore than us though, he was making the trip solo and had done more than 1000mi in a single day. He was on the tail end of his trip, heading home to Michigan, and had already been out towards the coast where we were heading next. The camp site was nice with plenty of room for the three of us and no burn ban. We had a good time eating dinner and swapping ride stories by the fire. The night was pretty cold, but we managed to bundle up enough to stay plenty warm through the night.