Day 52, Wednesday, June 11
Our hotel in Jackson was a glorified hostel, the Cache House. I suppose it is named that because they cache their guests in cubby holes, two high, that each have room for a single queen bed. John and I each had an upper bunk.
I suppose it was comfortable enough. There was good light, a fan, electrical sockets for charging devices, and a shelf to put things on. Showers were all clean and private, as were the water closets. People were remarkably quiet, too.
Still, I would not do it again, and since that is the only way I can possiblu afford to stay in Jackson, I suppose I will never go back.
We left early, stopping at Cowboy Coffee on the square for breakfast. Apparently it is the only thing in Jackson that opens at 6:00, and every damn tourist in town was there. Fortunately, most were not smart enough to use the ordering kiosk so we used it and received our orders quickly. It was a polite way to jump the queue.
After all the flat tires we needed tubes. We were carrying one each, plus we had two or three with punctures. We could probably patch those, but neither of us had ever done so.
Google said one of the bike shops opened at 9:00, and it was only a block off our route, so we rode over there. The plan was to wait until 9:00 at a nearby coffee shop, get the tubes, and get out of town. When we arrived at the bike shop we discovered Google lied: they were not opening until 10:00. We did not want to wait that long, so we decided to gamble that two good tubes and three bad ones would get us to Idaho Falls, two days away. We happily rode out of town.
The road was very busy, but we soon discovered there was a paved bike trail paralleling US 26-89 south all the way to Hoback Junction, about 14 miles away. There we had second breakfast then jumped on the highway and continued the descent to Alpine, about 37 miles into the day's ride.
This first part of the ride was lovely as we descended the Snake River valley. The morning was quite cold, in the low 40s when we started, and the riding was nearly effortless.
We reached Alpine around lunch time. The first two restaurants we tried were closed, but the owners of the third did not know we were in town. So we had lunch there, picked up some groceries, and headed up US 26 toward Idaho Falls.
Soon after we left Alpine we were out of Wyoming.
The riding was miserable. Sometimes we had a decent shoulder, but other times there was a guardrail that squeezed us into the road. There was nothing to be done but continue. After miles of this we finally reached our destination for the day, the Riverside Park Campground below the Palisades Dam.
It was a miserable afternoon. After we set up camp it started raining, and some thunderstorms passed through. There was not much to do besides shelter in the vault toilets when the lightning was close. We also spent some time in a day use park down the road that had picnic pavilion. But eventually the rains ended around 7:00, so we cooked dinner and went to bed.
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