Into the rockies, once again (USA)

Day 80
Km 5544


The Yellowstone national park was the first park to be established in the world in 1872, and probably the greatest American contribution to the world’s culture:
The creation of the national park concept.
They exist now all over the world, and protect ecosystems, that otherwise would be destroyed by the greatest predator of all: man itself.
Yellowstone is a huge park, which to cycle around, one needs a few days. It has 4 distinct areas; mammoth hot springs to the northwest, the remote and mountainous area to the northeast, the alpine lake of Yellowstone to the southeast, and the geysers basins to the southwest. The 4 areas are connected by a 300 km loop road. Most of the park facilities where already closed for the season, so I had to carry food for several days.

It’s a high altitude park above 2300 meters and with some good grades. I’ve registered the highest altitude so far (2583m), and it wasn’t even a pass, but an elevation of the road trough the rim of the gigantic grand caldera, one of the biggest craters in the world. Due to one of the roads to the north been already closed and the upcoming unsettled weather, I’ve decided to do only the lower loop though the geysers basins, Yellowstone grand canyon, and the alpine lake, on my way out into the next park of the grand Teton.
Yellowstone is a great place to see wild life. I’ve seen, amongst others, many elk, antelopes, one black bear, one wolf (just recently reintroduced), and a lots of bison, some a bit too close!

The weather was pressing on me, and as I head south on my way to the grand Teton national park, known for the enormous craggy volcanic mountains. I look trough the mirror of my bike, and watch the dark and heavy clouds to the north on the horizon. It was another 160 km until Jackson Hole and no facilities at all on the way. Everything closed for the season.
On a normal situation, it wouldn’t be a problem to found 10 square meters of land to set up my house, but I was traveling in altitude, and know for experience, that the weather can turn very nasty in the mountains. I needed some sort of shelter to cook, and maybe to make a fire. So I decided to cycle to the Bridge Bay campground, that was already closed but would provide some sort of shelter. I set up my tent and found one of the shower houses open, that I used as a kitchen. It was –4 degrees and absolute darkness. Cooked dinner and went straight to the comfort of my sleeping bag, turned on my petrol stove, as I did in other cold nights, to work as a central heating, and wrote a few line on my journal. But my fingers where too cold to write, so I scroll trough the pages instead. My eyes focused on something I have wrote over a week ago:

“With each day that goes by, life seems to be less complicated, without having to worry about what’s going on in the world. But I should think more about the real world, and what’s my role on it.
The “burra” is heavy loaded, but even so, I travel light, so light that that I don’t think much of it. It crosses my mind, why did I leave school so early? I’ve changed the state school teachers for the teachers of nature and life, because I thought, I could learn more my self. I wanted to live the moment, rather then the future.
But to live each moment is difficult. It means to cycle without destiny, without knowing which road to take next. But at least, I’ve got a shelter; my tent. My tent, almost 3 months after, feels like my house, a nest, a fort, a cave.
The human desire to live in a cave must be by instinct.
Humans must have basic needs to make a cozy, private space where to spend the nights, where they are free to be themselves, to hide from the world.
I have my tent, my fort, my cave, but more important then that, I’ve got myself in it! Hours upon hours of myself living in this fort that is my tent, spending so much time alone, I start to discover myself….and I like it!

When you are surrounded by other people, constantly distracted, you end up forgetting what’s made of the soul that lives in your body. Living like this, it seems to me that the true happiness lies under layers in the body, layers of convenience, of comfort, of compromises. Removing those layers brings as closer to the fundamental reasons of happiness. Here inside my tent, life is simple, but nothing in the world created by man is as complicated as the small fossil, I’ve found on the side of the road this afternoon.
The more I cycle on this solitary road to the land of fire, more the landscapes I see grow inside me. In fact, I’m loving to travel like this, lonely, living an elementary life with the wild nature.
That must be one of our biggest needs, almost religious; to live a life entranced with the cosmos, with the mountains, the air, the water, the sun.
Would I be able to readapt myself in the world where I came from after this trip? That world that seems so distant?
Do I belong to it?
To travel like this, solitary, day upon day, as set me apart. Life seems so much simpler like this...so basic!
The nights are what I fear.
The sun is my consolation. After a cold night, it warms up my body and my soul all day long. And makes spectacular things in the skies and in the rocks at the sun set. With each end of the day a different picture."

Next day I woke up, not with a warm sun, but with the camp covered with snow.
Not very far away, a wolf scrolls trough the fresh snow in search of its prey. I take a reinforced breakfast. 4 packets of oat meal with 2 bananas, 2 hot chocolates, and 6 slices of bread covered with nutella, and to finish, one coffee with 2 Danish, a multi vitamins tablet and a cigarette (yes, dam habit!). It’s amazing what a cyclist can eat! I pack everything very fast, not that I'm in the hurry to go anywhere, but maybe because I think that fast movements will keep me warm. By the time I was ready to leave, it started to snow again. I had no other option but, to continue. If the weather gets worst, they could close the road and stop maintain it. And I didn't like the idea of pushing the bike trough the snow...
It snowed all day long. Some times with huge flakes, some of them would stay in my beard.
If some one has invented sunglasses with snow removal, they would have been very handy that day.
I doubled everything; 2 pairs of warm socks, 2 trousers, 4 layers, poncho, 2 pairs of gloves, and plastic bags in both hands and feet. In fact, the front bags, where I carry all my clothes, where almost empty.
One more night camping in the snow at signal mountain campground.
This time a good foot of snow overnight. But somehow, been a Latin and not used with snow, I was enjoying the experience of riding on it...

Grand Teton national park is about 500 meters lower then its neighbor Yellowstone, and the downhill brought nicer weather; it was only cold, damp, dark and rainy. At one point I managed to have a glimpse of the mighty Teton, amongst the dark clouds, a ray of sun illuminated the bottom of the valley. I could just imagine how they would look in a sunny day. I found a hostel, here in Jackson Hole (they are not very common in the States), where I share the 20 plus beds with only another tourist, a Californian, and the Mexican employees. As soon I reestablish my energies, I will turn west and cycle until I reach the sea. I will see you again in the warmer waters of the pacific


Nuno Brilhante Pedrosa, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA

River of the road to the buffalo (USA)

Day 74
Km 5213

Traveling by bicycle, one can see things in a completely different way from the other transports...in a car you are always in a compartment, and because you are used to the car you don't realize that everything you see is just "more TV". You are a passive observer, and the landscape goes trough the window like if you where seen it on a screen.
On a bicycle the screen disappears!
You are in total contact with the landscape that surrounds you. You are part of the landscape, not only watching it. And the sensation of presence is fascinating. The asphalt is only a few cm from your feet and its real. Its right there, so distorted that you can't focus it, however you can stop put your feet on the ground, and feel it, at anytime, and everything, the hole situation is never far from immediate consciencialization.
I was already on my 6th day in the united states. The landscape remembered me of the western movies I used to See when I was a kid on a black and white screen on Sunday’s afternoons.

The traffic on highway 200, known by the Blackfoot Indians as cokahlarishkit, or river of the road to the buffalo, was light. It was a dark day, an autumnal gray, the light breeze refreshed my face. I let me self be absorved by the images immortalized by Hollywood, and spent all afternoon on a cycling dream, where me and my iron "burra", invaded Indian territory.
This was the road south and I couldn't avoid it. I was crossing the valleys of black foot and Seeley Swan, east of Missoula, theater of conflicts between the local Indians and the European colons in the beginning of this young nation. I could feel them observing me from the top of the hills, in a cliff, waiting for the right moment to ambush.
I hear the sound of a coyote. Or was it the chief of the tribe? I watch them coming down the hills in their war gear, screaming, in their horses leaving a trace of dust in the horizon..
Furious combats against the invasions of the white faced. One more defeat. In a war never won.
They where decimated like bison.

It started to cool a bit and the sky got darker, a sign that it was time to start look for a place to camp. I cut trough a gravel road on my left, went a bit up hill and in a small narrow valley found the perfect spot for that night. It was all very fresh in my mind, the events of the previous night and How I ended up spending the full Moon night sleeping on a ti pi in rattle snake, in the suburbs of Missoula.
I met Gordon in the center of the beautiful town of Missoula, home to the Montana university, and with a very relaxed, hip and edgy atmosphere. Missoula is also home to the American adventure cycling association, and the all town has a bike friendly vibe.

I was looking for a bike shop, because, after a few bad nights sleep with pain in my back, and numb hands from long hours of ridding, made me think that there was something wrong with my relation with my partner (bike). A visit to the doctor was out of question, as it would be a slash on my travel budget. Probably before I could meet the doctor, would have to leave 200 or 300 dollars with his secretary, plus exams, medication...So, I decided for a self diagnostic that reveled that there was nothing wrong with me, but with the bicycle.
Gordon indicated me to a bike shop ironically called "doctor bike", and invited me to stay the night at his house, or better, his ti pi.
I lifted up the hand bar to a more comfortable position and put a new set of sidebars.
The house of the Opel family was situated in rattle snake, a narrow valley just 15 minutes out of town. It took me quite some time to fall a sleep that evening, looking at the voyage of the stars through the hole of the ti pi. The moon illuminated the night with its cold rays reveling all the Indian history and their universe.

On the next day I continued my ciclonavigation of the curvature of the earth.
I was heading once again into the rocky mountains. One more pass over the continental divide, the Mac Donald pass, at just over 2000 meters and already covered with snow. Day after day the temperatures where falling and the roads rising.... The downhill from the pass left me with my fingers numb from so much cold, and the road didn't go bellow 1300 meters. The first of a serial of valleys that I was going to Cross, which theirs altitudes would increase with the crossing of each pass, until I reached the entrance of Yellowstone national park, at the small village of west Yellowstone, at 2295 meters, where I am now.

Trough those valleys I passed ranch upon ranch, with a lot of cattle, thousands of them. The livestock ration per person in Montana is 12 to 1, in the 4th biggest state of the nation but with only just over 1 million inhabitants. In one of those valleys where the confluence of the rivers Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin met, creating the headwaters of the Missouri river (the longest in the states with over 3800 km), sits the small town of Manhattan, with the same amount of inhabitants as Monte-Redondo (the village where I was born, in Portugal). It would go unnoticed in my map if wasn't for the great hospitality of the Mac family, that invited me for the night at their home (in a contact articulated from Portugal via New Mexico).
I'm loving this side of America. The side that the media doesn't show back home in Portugal or anywhere else, for that matter. The true, rural, simple and hospitable America. The one without the cities with buildings that reach the skies, without the gun yahoo's, the violence and the political wars. The one of common Americans in their daily lives.
I arrived early in the town of Manhattan and because I arranged to call only after 5, I looked for the local library (Internet in the public libraries is free!), nested inside the local school. The head teacher showed me the way for some news from the family and friends. I was watching this very same site, when a young and timid girl approaches me and asks me for my autograph.
In the beginning I didn't understand. My autograph? Why?
Obviously the head teacher has exaggerated on the content of out conversation.
I showed the Young girl the itinerary of the trip, which resulted in the increase of curious students and of the number of papers in the table to sign. I found the situation a bit uncomfortable and finished my session on the net and left the school.
The Mack family took me out for dinner at a local restaurant, where I indulged myself with a local specialty: cowboy Burger with chips and tomato sauce. Probably the best American contribution for the world's gastronomy, and more commonly known as ketchup!!
On the following morning I said goodbye to the very hospitable and friendly Mack family and continued my journey. The sun melted away the frost and slowly warmed up the autumnal morning.
2 days later I was at the gates of the Yellowstone national park in this small mountain town.

Traveling off season, some times bellow zero, has it's discomforts, but at least I will have the peace necessary to enjoy the beauty of this park that for many is an icon on the natural beauty of north America.


Nuno Brilhante Pedrosa in West Yellowstone, Montana, USA

The Icefield road and the US border (Canada&USA)

Day 64
Km 4369

That morning I woke up undecided. A signal that probably I would have a bad day.
I could not decide if I should leave, or wait another day to see if the weather cleared up. I look trough the window of the 44 beds room (yes, 44!) of the whistlers hostel, situated on one of the many mountains that surround jasper, 7 torturous kilometers uphill from the city. The day was dark and rainy, with low and dense clouds, that created an uncomfortable humidity. The weather didn't let me see any mountains, and I new I was surrounded by them. But I was in jasper already for 4 days and it was time to move on. Besides that danina got a lift with 2 other Canadian tourists to Banff, the town on the other end of icefield parkway road, where, we decided to met up again in 3 days.

I put my rain gear on, and left trough the icefield parkway road (highway 93), that the tourist brochures claim to be the most beautiful road in North America.
The 44 dollars that this lady charged me to enter the road (8 dollars per day, including the 4 I spent in jasper,plus the annoying Canadian tax), left me even more frustrated. With that weather the road was like any other Canadian road on a rainy day.
In the afternoon the rain intensified, so I decided to found a place to pitch the tent, doing only 70 km that day.
Next morning I woke up with a beautiful sunshine that would last for the rest of the days I spent in Canada. The difference with a clear blue sky was abysmal; gigantic mountains on either side covered with fresh snow and glaciers, alpine lakes that changed from green turquoise to every kind of green as the sun moved in the sky.
The landscape was too beautiful to describe. Each bend of the road would present me with a more beautiful view that the previous one.

It was 300 km of a gigantic parade of natural beauty. The icefield parkway road crosses the hearth of the Rockies, where one can almost feel its beat, taking me the closest possible to its peaks, without leaving the comfort of the road. It is 300 consecutive kilometers of world heritage declared by UNESCO.
I did 3 considerable passes on this stretch. one at 1890 meters, other at 2049 meters and the other at 2092 meters. The attack to the first pass was very easy and progressive, starting in jasper at 1000 meters and climbing slowly over 70 km.
I climbed the pass next morning with the last 7 km at 8% grade. The downhill is more accentuated and allows for the great views of the valley with the minuscule road at its bottom. One more pass on the same day, the Sunwapta pass, accumulating 1290 meters of vertical climb and ended with 110 km on the counter, in 6h11m at an average of 17.8 km/h, setting up camp by the Mistaya River, with one of the best views so far.

The 3rd day was the hardest of icefield road, only 897 meters of vertical climb, but pushed it to Banff that same day ending up with 134 km in the counter. Lake Louise to Banff was done in only 2h15m (over 30km/h) due to the great tail wind.
I arrived in Banff Saturday night, as promised to Danina, just in time for dinner and a bit of buggy. Banff night life was known throughout the Rockies and I wanted to have a taste of it.
We started with an acceptable Canadian wine for dinner at the backpackers’ hostel, continuing throughout the night doing the round of the local clubs, fueled by some round of shots.
4 days latter fully recovered from the hangover (it was the first time I drunk since I left Portugal) I hit the highway 93 again kissing goodbye to Danina with the promise that we would met up again some where in the states.

Highway 93 goes south trough the kooteney national park, partially burnt by a recent fire. I cycled only 57.6 km that day; camping for free on a closed campground (one of the advantage of traveling off season) not far from the vermillion pass, (1651 meters) one of the dozens of passes that cross the continental divide.
The mountain range that divide the waters on the American continent. The waters originating east of the range end up in the Atlantic, and the waters originating west end up in the pacific. I will cross that "line" many times throughout my trip. My first crossing was in the artic on the north fork pass, in the Dempster highway. Part of Canada and in the states the Rocky Mountains form the continental divide. And for the more adventurous cyclists, is possible to follow the continental divide almost all off road, from the town of Banff in Canada, all the way to El Paso on the Mexican border.
A good program for the A2Z!

Next day highway 93 had a surprise for me. The downhill from the Sinclair pass (1486 meters) revealed a very different landscape; small hills with a mixed forest, exhibiting the beauty of the autumn colors. I've descended about 600 meters and the temperatures climbed to a very pleasant 20/25 degrees at the midday sun.
I've entered the populated valleys near the Rockies, with a micro climate, where the softer autumns are longer.
In this vast country, second biggest only to Russia, but with just a few more inhabitants then Mexico city, 90% of the population live in a belt 300 km north of the American border, from Vancouver in the pacific to the French speak provinces of the Atlantic. It was this belt that I would cross in the next few days until I reached the US border.
I was about 180 km from the border when the chain broke and I had to make a detour to the ugly town of Cranbrooks to replace it. I took the chance to make a revision to the bike, tune the wheels, change the rear brakes and put a new cassette.
2 days latter I was again on highway 93 heading to the border....
The closer I was getting to the border the more negative thoughts I had.
And if they didn't let me in?

I would have to cycle to Vancouver, catch a plane to Mexico, ruining all the plans. The day before I started by deciding which would be my best look.
Since September 11 the American government committed it self to build a "country castle" against any suspicious penetrations, including aliens and cyclists. I've heard innumerous stories of the border officers that regardless of the type of visa on your passport, had the full authority to do what ever they wanted.
I've chosen a quite border, near the Rocky Mountains, with little traffic. But some times that means that the officers had more time to implicate with each individual. My worry was my beard! I had 3 options:
a) leave the beard as it was but that could be an indication of my relation with some Arabic terrorist group.
b) Cut off the beard, but leave the mustache. Option that I rejected straight away because that could reveal an association with Mr Bashar.
Or c) and last option,would be to shave completely. But that would expose my skinny and long face, that all my life, I debated my strong links with my Moorish blood. Besides that, could be taken by a Moroccan terrorist traveling with a fake Portuguese passport.
I've chosen the last one, because, at least I knew that the passport wasn't false.
I went to the local government department of my home town, just a few days before I started this trip, to make a new one. My old one was still valid until 2009, but because it was hand written by an employee of the Portuguese embassy in Atens, Greece, years back, on an emergency situation, it wasn't valid in the states, under the new waiver program.
The waiver program, offers visas for 90 days on arrival, to citizens of an "elite group" of "nice and friendly" countries in which Portugal just join recently.
Every other citizen of this planet, has to queue in one of the most volatile terrorist spots across the globe: American embassies.
The traffic on this part of highway 93 was light, with just some local traffic and the occasional group of motards on road trips, on their loud Harleys.
The building of the frontier was brand new. There were only 3 cars in front of me, and they went trough pretty quick. It was my turn.
-hi
-hi, I replayed.
-how are you today?
- I'm fine, and how are you?
"how are you" and "have a nice day" are 2 expressions in the American English, that I always found a bit irritating, because of the lack of genuity of the people who pronounce it. I listen to them all the time, everywhere, in any situation.
I imagine the number of times each American citizen pronounces them each day, multiplied by 300 million and in unisonous, it would be enough to create an avalanche in a mountain.
-so, where are you going today?
Looking at the bicycle, I felt like saying that, "today", I wasn't going any further then the next forest and pitch my tent. But the officer that actually was very cordial, pointed out that because I've been in the states before (stop over in Seattle, in the beginning of this trip), and left to Canada without an exit stamp, I was entering the states with the same visa which had only 25 days left on it.
Not enough to cross the country by bicycle.
- Please, park your bicycle over there, and go to that building.
I knew it! I should never shave!
They going to start with the interrogations, and bags searching, with no food, or drinks, or be able to call the Portuguese embassy to say that I'm just a simple cyclist crossing the American continent on a 25000 km journey!
And the gasoline bottle of my stove? And the solar panels that my cousin Pedro offered me? And the Portuguese flag that my sister put in my bags?
I don't know!
Anything could be suspicious....
I still fresh memories of my border crossing into Israel from Jordan,in 2000, thru King Hussein Bridge, where I was left in a compartment, only in boxes and t-shirt, until the Israeli authorities convinced themselves that the only reason why I was cycling through the Middle East, was for pure tourism and pleasure.
But this wasn't the Middle East neither Guantanamo bay.
Inside the modern building with some bizarre pieces of decoration, amongst them a fin of a whale to the left of George bush picture, and a fur of an animal to the right, the number of computers outnumbered the number of officers by many.
One of them, the one that wasn't reading the news paper, bombarded me with the usual questions of a border officer, plus some that I found a bit out of context, like: there are mountains in Portugal?
And how did I intend to cross the Panama Canal?
He explained that the waiver program didn't allowed extensions, but due to the circumstances, he was going to make an exception, proving once more, his total authority. He asked me for 7 dollars, that I couldn't figure out if it was for the form I filled out, or for the ink of the stamp, and said: -have a nice day!
Since that moment, I started to believe that the reason Americans repeat unnecessarily, and almost in a religious way:"have a nice day" is because they believe the repetition of the words transform it in reality.
With me it worked that day!

I grabbed the "burra", and kicked of on my first strokes on American soil.
I have entered the USA, but funny enough, it looked like if I was entering the "alentejo" (a region in south of Portugal). The road made its way trough small brown and yellow hills of hay and the air was dry and hot.
After a while I look at the map and realized that I calculated wrong the distances, it was another 30 km to Whitefish. Of course, from now on the distances are in miles...
Montana has funny names, starting with the border town of "eureka", "yaak", "paradise", "pompey's pillar", etc...
But my favorite is: "going to the sun road", that in fact doesn’t go to the sun, but to the ironically called "international peace park".
Tomorrow I will go for a scroll there, to see if I found some "peace" from the traffic of the city…..


Nuno Brilhante Pedrosa, in White fish, Montana, USA.