The Ride Summary...

Home after a 23 hrs of driving and 4 hrs of sleep....I apologize for not posting what was going on sooner but I went into full "driving zombie" mode....was attempting to use Siri to dictate a post but that experience was as useless as "tits on a bull"....sorry if that offends anyone, just came from cowboy country....

Summary of Day 8 Sunday Sept 13th - Livingston to Yellowstone...

It was 65 that morning, warmest of the ride so far....about 1 mile down the road I had to stop and put on much warmer stuff....the wind was south, from Yellowstone where the temp was mid 30's....a very unusual circumstance for me, with the air temp so warm and the wind ice cold....and blowing hard....

left Livingston at 7am for the 53 miles to Gardiner and had crazy wind....from the left, then from the right, then in front....how come never from the back?....through a canyon following the Yellowstone River the wind bounces off the walls as the road curves and changes direction constantly....and apparently after talking to a few people, the wind through there has a reputation of always being brutal for riding either north or south....took me 4 hrs....

once into Yellowstone the temps had warmed up a lot, close to mid 80's....lots of people....lots of traffic....that kind of thinned out when I made the left turn to head toward Roosevelt Tower....while the wind was blowing it really wasn't a factor until the 10 mile climb up Dunraven Pass (8859 ft).... you are more exposed and the extra effort was significant....I was on max effort many times during the 1 hrs 45 mins it took....it was close to 5pm getting to Canyon Village and I was spent....beat up silly....there were several times I wanted to stick out my thumb and beg for a ride but I made it....

Ending the Ride

at the conclusion of one day the prep for the next day begins right away....besides eating, unpacking to dry stuff out, one other main thing is weather check....and the forecast called for crap....the next 3 days was to be a temperature drop (no big deal), thunderstorms (a bigger deal) and 20 - 30 mph wind (the  killer deal)....and below is why....Togwotee Pass on Monday....the risk exceeded reward....

now I had some contingency plans for other options but rather than jump ahead, change a bunch of reservations, we decided enough was enough.... time to call it a ride....physically I was good.... maybe mentally a little beat down....I don't like not finishing what was started but with the predicted conditions it was best to stop....

Summary

my only regret is not seeing the Minnesota family....we owe you all a visit so maybe next fall we will road trip with the pugs....other than that it was a great trip....thanks for following and glad I got to share some of the beautiful USA....