Day 27: To Ashton, Idaho

August 27, 2013

After sleeping much of yesterday it was easy to get up early in the morning. I'm still feeling exhausted, so I decided to not go through Yellowstone. That route has more climbing than the route west of the park. And I would be forced to camp one more night because lodging in the park is fully booked long in advance. The day would be quite long if I go through Yellowstone because there is no campground in the Old Faithful area. I would have to climb a second mountain pass to get to a campground at Yellowstone Lake. I could do that near the beginning of the tour, but not now with my state of exhaustion. I did a grand tour of the Yellowstone area in 2004, so it wasn't a huge disappointment to miss Yellowstone this time. That tour had much better weather.

I got on the road at 8 AM heading west out of West Yellowstone on US 20.

Heading west from West Yellowstone to Targhee Pass.

The climb to Targhee pass is very easy, climbing only 500 feet. The pass is the Continental Divide, so now the water flows down the Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific ocean.

Targhee Pass, crossing from Montana to Idaho into the Pacific (Snake river) watershed.

There isn't much of a descent from Targhee pass to the high valley known as Island Park. It's a wide valley with the Henry's fork of the Snake river running down the middle. The region has several large lakes. Some natural, some man-made.

One of many lakes in the Island Park area.

The riding was easy, gentle downstream. Open grassy valley surrounded by pine forested mountains. Traffic is moderate and most of US 20 has a paved shoulder. For 10 miles the shoulder was removed to add a center turn lane, forcing vehicles to drift into the turn lane to pass me.

Henry's Fork of the Snake river has many fishing lodges and vacation homes.

All day I could see big mountains to my left in Yellowstone. Much more cloud cover there than in my mostly sunny valley. But it didn't appear to be having storms.

Looking west towards the mountains in Yellowstone. More clouds there.

The route between Targhee Pass and Ashton is surprisingly populated considering there are no real towns. Many vacation homes, retirement homes, and fishing resorts, but no real towns with services.

The weather was delightful today. 50's in the morning. 70's for most of the afternoon, and 80's after descending 1000 feet to Ashton. As usual the cloud cover builds in the afternoon. But it never threatened to rain. Strangely, the clouds disappeared for the last 2 hours before sunset.

I arrived in Ashton at 3:30 and got a room for $97 at the Angler's Inn. Expensive, but probably half the price of lodging in Yellowstone or Jackson Hole. Dinner from the supermarket deli.

Ashton (elevation 5259 ft) is the self-proclaimed "seed potato capital of the world". I'm sure readers have been wondering where seed potatoes came from. I had never heard of seed potatoes before. I thought all potatoes were seeds.

Ashton is not an especially interesting or beautiful town. It's a farm town, definitely not a tourist town. Just a place to spend the night.

I had a headwind all day but it was only noticeable for the last 15 miles. Today was an easy day with minimal climbing and a 1400 foot net descent.

Distance: 62.4 miles (100 km)
Climbing: 1166 feet (353 m)
Average Speed: 12.3 mph (20 km/h)

Today's ride: 62 miles (100 km)
Total: 1,354 miles (2,179 km)

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