The princess and the pea

Sunday 9/11. 62.7 miles for a total of 1003.4! Day 26. Warm River to Colter Bay in the Tetons. We knew it would be a long day so we were up at 6 AM with lots of frost on the tents. I know this is repetitive but today was the coldest morning yet. We were on a bikes just after 7:30 AM. We started with a paved road climb which helped us warm up. We turned onto Robinson Creek Road and then Ashton Flagg Road and then through grizzly Gulch. Immediately after the sign announcing we were in grizzly Gulch we saw three very large piles of grizzly bear scat that looked quite fresh. Jon did not comment on the size of the bear relative to the size of the pile (like he did with the small piles yesterday), he just peddled faster! The dirt road was quite bumpy and a bit of a challenge. Eventually we saw this big truck flying towards us and we all stopped to hold our breath because of the dust. The young man stopped abruptly and it turns out he was the sag wagon for three guys on cross country motorcycles. He offered us water, Dr Pepper‘s, granola bars, and anything else at his disposal. At first we all declined but Jon Has since taught us to accept any and all offerings of food. The young man in the truck was also named John and he had five giant tires in the back with plugs in them. The hazard of running sag wagon is you get lots of flats. He was backtracking looking for the cover to one of the motorcycles toolboxes. Nice young man. Throughout the day we stopped a few times and pumped water from a stream. We stopped for lunch which sometimes is the difficult part of my day-five hours in and I’m in a slump but I do recover! Late in the day, many miles in on a very rough dirt road we calame upon a camper towing a car. Crazy man driving that expensive rig out there! We saw huckleberries today, and although they look like blueberries they are quite sour. We also ran across a couple pick up trucks of people getting firewood from the public lands. Apparently there are places where that is allowed and other places that are posted that collecting firewood is not allowed. We arrived in the Tetons late in the day after maybe nine hours on the bikes, around 11+ traveling hours. We stopped for pizza on Jackson Lake before the last 2 miles into Colter Bay. The campground had over 300 sites and they were all booked but there are special areas for groups, cyclists , and backpackers which was nearly deserted! It was a cold night and we went to bed with no plans specifically for the next day, planning to gauge our level of exhaustion in the morning.