Day 7: Optional riding day, I.E. solo expedition around Grand Teton National Park

By stopping at the displays I learned three fun facts from my 6 hour 89 mile solo jaunt through the Grand Teton National Park:

• The uplift of the Teton Range and coincident sinking of Jackson Hole is caused by the uplift of the Yellowstone area by its geological hot spot. (I'd only heard of tectonic plate collision as a reason for such significant uplift before now.)
• A full grown wolf's skull can be as big as black bear's. Maybe the bear wasn't the biggest, but it was mature.
  
• The Yellowstone-Teton ecological area has not had a single extinction from all the native species that were there when the white man arrived.

Not to brag, but when I posted today's ride to Strava it dissed me by saying "This was easier than your usual effort. Know when your training is on track blah blah blah." It is true, though, that I usually dial it back a notch or two when I'm riding by myself.

I've got to say I'm blown away by the high quality of the bike paths provided in this area by both local government and the National Park Service. A lot of the road / path surface was "butter", a word sometimes used to describe smooth low resistance pavement. Because I felt sorry for those riders in the tour that didn't ride on these great roads today, I thought I'd create a few short videos of what it was like. So interspersed with still photos, in chronological order, I present today's ride: (I recommend you turn your sound down now as the sound track on the videos is just noise).

On the way out of town the path crossed the Snake River. The bridge shown here is only for the bike path! Not sure where  the money came from, but most other localities don't seem to have it.

The path turned north and ran parallel to the river

Before reaching open fields with a view of the cloud-topped range:

 

Looking across to Teton Village and ski area I saw a string of boxes glinting from reflected sunlight on the hillside, 

then I did a double take when I noticed they were moving, so I assumed it was a ski lift in operation. That piqued my curiosity so I had to take a side trip to check it out. When I got there a hiker informed me it was a "tram" not a "lift", and yes it was operating and his group were about to use it to "get all the way to the top."

We're talking real money again: 

 

The sign on the terminal says the summit temperature is 36° and wind speed is 4 mph - good info to know before you go.

When I reached the national park access gate there was a long line of cars for a single open lane. Selfishly I rode by them all and found that fellow rider Luis had just got to the head of the line, so I swung in behind him, intending to show my lifetime national park pass. However the ranger asked if I was with Luis and I said yes and she said I was good to go. Having only one lane open was great because it meant only a trickle of traffic could come through on the spectacular smooth road:

After second entrance gate where I was waved through after assuring the ranger I had a pass, the path climbed onto a higher drier level that provided some perspective of the river valley to the east

By this time I was riding much closer to the Tetons. Each peak had a cloud train off of it, showing the wind direction up there.

 

About this time I hit just one bike-path-frost-heave-seam too many and the mount holding my front light and bike computer broke.  For your entertainment, here is a true-to-life reenactment just like the crime shows do:

 

 

As you can see, the only reason that heavy unit didn't go into my front wheel was that the tether on the front light went around the handlebars instead of around the mount. Without a mount I pocketed the light and tucked the computer into the little bag on top of my bike frame.  For the rest of the ride I was habitually looking down for info on speed, grade, watts, time, navigation, etc and not finding it. Man! I have really become reliant on that thing. Luckily I could still access it by pulling it out while trying not to push any of the buttons which screw up its display. I think I unintentionally reorganized several of the data fields.

After a lunch break of coke and potato chips at the Jenny Lake visitor center, the route went down a loop road with a one-way bike path that was the "left lane" on a one-way road for cars going the other way. The road showed the lake to advantage:

 

Still heading north, I took a spur road to climb Signal Mountain which is a popular destination in the park. The climb up the hill wasn't very steep (how steep? I don't know ... I couldn't see the percent grade on my Garmin 😜 ).

On reaching the south shoulder of the mountain, I took the short trail to the viewpoint 

 

 

and got a friendly stranger to take my portrait.

The road went on up for another half mile

 

before leveling out with a view over the Snake River valley and mountains on the other side:

 

 

The descent was fun and included seeing a bunch of cars coming up the hill being led by decent sized fox. I stopped and it looked at me in an irratated way, but didn't break its pace as it came by within a few feet. As I struggled to get my phone out and NO I'M NOT DRIVING DAMN YOU IPHONE! the fox decided this running down the road was getting old and dodged off into the woods.

After crossing the Jackson Lake dam over the Snake, the road (and river) ran quite a way east providing a whole new perspective of the Teton Range

The only way down that side of the valley is on US Highway 89, but this far north of Jackson it was pretty quiet and had a good shoulder

A bunch of cars pulled over ahead.... Oh look! Oh look! There's a herd of pronghorns! A herd of one that is.

We call them antelopes but they are not related to them or goats or deer. Just now I googled them. It's a North American specialty and they are supposed to be able to run 88 MPH, fastest of the western hemisphere indigenous species. That one sure isn't running anywhere.

Although I was theoretically going down stream with the river, the road kept going up until reaching a plateau with another nice perspective:

Then I just had to ride 30 miles to Jackson with the afternoon headwind picking up more and more. Just like a regular day on this tour.

 Jackson has an REI so I walked over there after shower and message to see if I could get a mount for the Garmin (bike computer). Gotta have it! Of course I have several at home, but ... So REI has mounts but not for Garmin but they've got an adaptor:

My rigging skills were tested but came through by using the adapter with the old broken mount. 

There's a beaut for you!