Another Angel...Bob Johnston

Ride Against Hunger
Friday, June 18, 2010
Canyon Village, Yellowstone to Cooke City Montana—50 miles.

A Day of Contrasts and Another Angel

What a day this has been. The picture included in yesterday's blog shows that we woke up to a thin blanket of snow and very cold weather in Canyon Village, Wyoming, right in the middle of Yellowstone National Park. We cleaned off the snow and started our ride at 7 a.m. as we always do, but my riding partner Joe took a serious slide on the ice (and fall) before we even left the campground. We slowed down immediately and became aware that there was black ice everywhere.

After a quick cup of coffee at the visitor center we started up the trail only to find that the road was closed due to ice and snow. The prediction was that the road would not open until noon. It didn’t. We all sat around in the cafeteria with our lap-tops trying to get a signal strong enough to receive and send e-mails and do our blogs. That worked…kinda.

After eating our lunch in the cafeteria we started up the trail. Now blue skies were overhead and it was warming up. We started up immediately and rode up Dunraven Pass. The beauty of that ride is simply indescribable. I am adding a picture to the blog of this ride, but it pales in comparison to the reality. The ten-mile ride down the other side was exhilarating and beautiful. By then it had warmed up enough that we took off some of our heavy clothes for the first time in days…and enjoyed immensely the other 30 miles of our trip.

We were then welcomed into the home of still another angel, Bob Johnston, who had fixed a big pot of pasta with vegetables, salad and wonderful desert. His home is so welcoming and so warm and has the most astounding view across a valley and into the face of Mount Republic. Bob lives in Davis part of the year and is very good friends with our good friends, the Costello family of Davis. We were privileged to get to know him better and be in his home for an evening.

So here we are, now in our sixth state—Montana, and we can hardly believe we’ve come this far. Tomorrow we will climb to the highest point in our trip, over 11,000 feet in elevation over Beartooth Pass, and then down into Red Lodge, Montana. The ride will include twenty miles of relatively steep up-hill riding, and then over 30 miles of down. We look forward to that second half of the ride.