Back on the bike today and making forward progress. From the campsite at Jenny Lake I took the bike path south and connected with the highway north. The highway follows Snake River upstream, the same river that I crossed over at the Oregon/Idaho border, its headwaters are in Yellowstone.

Back onto the TransAmerica route the highway follows the Buffalo Fork of the Snake River east. After a few miles the trail starts climbing, we cross over the Continental Divide again, and at 9,500 feet it’s the second highest pass on the route. It was a steady climb up, hot in the sun, but the kicker was the mosquitos buzzing my head as I sweated up the inclines.

I made it up to the summit for lunch, and sat behind the forest service sign seeking some shade. Just as I was finishing up a couple of raindrops fell, and then some hail. I packed up to start the descent, hoping not to get wet.

Multiple people I’ve talked to on the trail have warned me about Wyoming; it’s a long dry stretch of desert with notoriously high winds, and that the landscape would get old. That was not true today, cresting the summit there were huge buttes, hills formed of harder rock on top of softer rock that erodes away. In the distance were snowy mountains. The descent from the pass followed Wind River, which snaked in a narrow green valley surrounded by rolling hills. And when I got down closer to Dubois large bright red sandstone hills jutted out. The one thing that rung true, and the name of the river gives it away, there is a lot of wind, but luckily today it is a tail wind.

Tonight I’m staying I Dubois in a biker hostel run by a church, and there’s 4 other bikers staying also, all doing the TransAmerica. Tomorrow is forecast to get very hot again so I’ll try and leave as early as I can.