June 26

 I got up at 5:20 to the sound of rain coming down on my tent.  It's never fun putting up or taking down a tent in the rain.  As soon as you remove the rain fly everything gets wet.  So you pack up as much as you can while the rain fly is in place.  But stuff is still going to get wet. I was on the road at 6:15 with all my cold weather gear on.  On my maps I know I had to climb the Sylvan Mountain Pass until mile 23, then it should be a gradual downhill the remaining 60 miles to Cody. I reached the first plateau at 8:30 and thought "that was easy - downhill from here"!!  Unfortunately, that was only the first plateau of several and it took another 1.5 hours to reach the top.

From the first plateau.  Just to the left of the snow capped range you can just make out the Grand Teton Mountains.

At the summit I was even higher up than some snow.

On the way down the mountain the rocky formations had changed from the west side of the mountain.

At mile 40 I changed out of my cold weather gear as it was now decidedly warmer on this side of the mountain.  The next 10 miles were going well and then I noticed the wind was picking up.

You can see the flags blowing in the exact opposite direction of my travel.  It was a brutal 25 MPH headwind.  The last 30 miles of the trip took over 4.5 hours.  I even got off the bike and walked a few times.  That kind of wind just crushes my soul.

Eventually I made it to the Buffalo Bill Dam which meant there were only 8 more miles to go.

And then, finally, I made it to Cody.  I can't ever remember being more exhausted on a ride than today.

This ride caused my left ankle to swell up and get quite sore.  I'll hit the Motrin pretty hard and see what happens in the coming days.  A really big climb is coming in 2 days.