Hello Wyoming/South Dakota

July 13
Wow.. its almost been an entire week since I posted. It must be the heat. "How hot is it Mac?" I am glad you asked... it is so hot that so far, the rearview mirror melted off the windshield, the fire extinguisher screws melted out of the plastic and the sun shades melted off the glass. So yeah... its hot.
In my last post I talked about the antler arches. It turns out that people collect the antlers in the hills around town. I thought as part of their community spirit days they shot them. Turns out that wasn't the case. The lady who explained it to me understood my confusion. She also did attest to owning a gun.

Chase Game trail. On top of the mountain. Such a pretty experience.

The van is actually in the center of the image on the brown road. The white dot. 

Now with .... Cable? I think they just store the As there.

So what have I been doing the last few days, other than melting. Well I must say that both the scenery and scene in this little neck of the woods is very cool. After doing the chase/game creek trail, we were told to go ride in the big holes. Yeah I had no idea what they meant either. The Idaho mountains. Why do they call them holes? The holes are a reference to the valleys between the hills. Hence, Jackson Hole.
So I headed over the Teton Pass to Victor Idaho. Victor Idaho has a population of about 1000 BUT it has two breweries. I got very drunk with some mtn bikers upon arrival there.

The Red Creek tail. Jay had never ridden it either. It was super lush in the 'hole'.

Just another awesome mountain range to look at while driving

The next day, after having my beans weighed, cup heated, and water brought the correct boiling point at Fitzgeralds, I went riding with one of the guys I met yesterday in Red Creek. Super fun trail with about 8 creek crossings. Perfect for a hot day. After that I parked my ass in a library for the rest of the day and did work. It was too hot to do anything else. End of the day though was trail day so I pitched in. It got me a free BBQ. That evening I was introduced to the main trail builder in the area, Wendell, who amazingly enough not only builds trails, he still rides them. He volunteered to take me on one of the 'pass' trails.
The next morning was nice and bright again as usual. Pass trails are up on Teton Pass around 8000 feet to start and uphill from there. I was sucking wind. The bonus was that once the first 5 miles or so of climbing were taken care of it was nothing but descending for about 1.5 hours back down to the valley floor. Absolutely awesome.
So where next. Someone mentioned that Lander Wyoming was an interesting spot to visit. Four or five hours later I arrived in Lander to a Native ceremonial dance. This is deep in native country.

The fancy feather dance. That was the actual name. It was fancy

 The drive to Lander was pretty neat just due to the topography. Tons of red rock striations and outcroppings. Upon arrival I found out that it was also the International Climbers Festival so that brought out some interesting characters at the campsite.

The topography was rapidly changing on the way to Lander. 

The next morning was a total write off. I got given bad information on where to go and by the time I had figured it out, it was 10 in the morning and getting smoking hot. After getting the right information, Maya and I made our way out to arrive around 11:30. For the first time ever, Maya stood her ground at the van in the shade. I finally was able to convince here to join me since the trail was only about 8kms total. Poor girl ran from cactus to cactus for shade. Lander was fun but not worth the 400 kms.

Johny Behind the Rocks trail...that is the actual name. BOO!

After riding, not wanting to wast another day in Lander, we headed straight out towards Rapid City South Dakata. I know that sound close but actually it isn't. We made it as far as Douglas Wyoming last night after doing some work in Casper. This was a painful drive. Very boring. 

Maya and I got up early this morning to visit Wind Cave and Mt Rushmore. We saw more buffalo in Wind Cave national park than we did in the entire Yellowstone. The drive to Rushmore from Hot Springs Idaho is horrible. I can't say I have ever been on a more arduous drive. Just never ending curves.
Rushmore is not worth the pain. Luckily Rapid City is only about 30 mins from Rushmore so getting into town was fairly painless.
Going to spend a few days around Rapid City checking it out. It looks promising so far.