Togwotee Lodge to Dubois, WY

Woke up to snow mixed with rain this morning and some pretty gusty wind (Like the weather for the Sawtooth Challenge in Sun Valley a few years ago.) The temperature never rose above 38 degrees all day. With the wind chill it felt more like 20-it was cold! BUT WE HAD AN AWESOME DAY!!!!! Such a great start to this trip. We left from the Togwotee Lodge, which is about 10 miles and about 1500 feet from the summit of Togwotee Pass. As it turns out our plan to climb the whole pass, from Moran Jct., could not have happened anyway. There's about 5 miles of road construction leading up to the lodge that isn't passable by bike. There is a construction shuttle for cyclists, but it wasn't running today (Sunday). Lung (Cheri and Ashlyn)drove us to the lodge and we were off. We had come to the point where we decided we just needed to go. If we ran into weather trouble up ahead we knew they were just a phone call away. We did some pretty good climbing for about 10 miles to get over the pass. Although the wind was mostly at our backs(yeah)it was raining and snowing off and on and we were both ready for a break. We needed to eat something too. It had been about 6 hours since we'd eaten anything-kind'a starting to bonk. Just when I was about ready to take a bite out of my Burt's Bees Honey lip balm Bob spotted a sign for the Lava Mountain Lodge; The best Bloddy Mary ever! Awesome hand formed burger! A roaring fire in the restaurant/bar fireplace! Friendly and fun locals!!! We spent an hour there. Our hotel, Trail's End, in Dubois was still 20 miles away. BUT it was pretty much down hill with a some rollers and the pavement was basically dry-nice! We hosed off the bike at a car wash when we got to Dubois. John, one of the locals we met at the Lava Mtn. Lodge and a cyclist, suggested we do that. Great idea! I don't know how we could have possibly gotten all of the dirt, grime and mud off otherwise. Bob then wiped it all down and oiled the chain once we were in our room. She's all shiny and ready to go again. The Trail's End is a super cute, rustic, very 50's vintage looking, hotel right on the river. I'm pretty sure Ricky and Lucy stayed here with Fred and Ethel. (Hmph? Why won't this blog let me paragraph?)