Through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks to Salt Lake City in Utah

13 cycle days

1124 km

10794 m ascent

4 snakes

_{Our route from Butte, Montana to Salt Lake City, Utah. With a nice loop through Yellowstone!}

Sometimes it’s hard to find the inspiration to write something and I have been struggling a lot with this post. Maybe because it’s already so long ago? Time to catch up I guess! From Butte in Montana we cycled a few days through Wyoming and eventually arrived in the state we’ve been looking forward to the most: Utah! Before getting there, we had some 1000 kilometers of riding before us.

Upon leaving Butte, we had to make several stops. I had to bring a package to the post office, we needed to fill up our fuel bottle for cooking and we visited the Berkeley Pit. The Berkeley Pit is a former open-pit copper mine and all that remains now is a massive, acidic lake. They even have quite the sophisticated system to scare birds away before they land on the water.

Later that day we followed a rail trail for a few kilometers. Rail trails are gravel trails for non-motorized traffic, that are built using the infrastructure of old rail tracks. This part included two tunnels and a bridge! We spent the night at a free campsite in a park. It was specifically for cyclists, with a shelter and toilet and even a cold shower. We met two sisters from Salt Lake City and were asked to stay in touch, should we really cycle to Salt Lake City.

Sebi did most of the route planning and found a really cool gravel road over some mountains, called the Gravelly Range. From the cyclist shelter we made our way towards it. For a while we were on the same road as a local gravel/cross country race and were overtaken by so many cyclists that it was hard keeping up with greeting! We saw a herd of bison, some small snakes (more dead than alive unfortunately) and the first wild pelicans!!

It was a lot of uphill, and the gravel road got progressively steeper towards the end of the day. The trees around us were in beautiful autumn colors and it was gorgeous! We were cycling at an elevation of around 2400m, when we realized how “normal” the forest around us looked like. That felt so different to our experience at higher elevation in Europe!

We camped fairly high and if you thought we’d only have to descend the next day you’d be as fooled as we were! The following day was way slower than expected, with even more uphill and non-sealing leak in the tire that needed patching. We stopped at Monument Ridge at 2922 m to take in the views and some pictures, as this was the highest point of our trip so far! A thunderstorm developed in the distance and we made it to a campsite at the bottom of the hills.

We managed an early start the next day and met another cyclist after a few kilometers. We continued cycling towards Yellowstone together and only split up right before town. Sebi and I had to stop at a post office to send our action cam in for repairs/replacement and buy food for the next couple of days. We went to the visitor center and learned that most campsites had just closed for the season and we would have to replan our route through the national park. That damn week we had to sit in Canada to wait for our visa days to expire! We knew it would haunt us. We entered the Yellowstone national park late in the afternoon and headed for the first campground in 20 kilometers. Lots and lots of red deer (known as elk in the US) stood next to and on the road and stopped the traffic for good – they caused a traffic jam several kilometers long! At the campground we saw Tibo again, the French guy from earlier and met Kris, a cyclist from Poland.

The Yellowstone National Park is Americas first and one of the best-known national parks. It’s known for its abundant wildlife and geothermal features, like geysers and colored lakes. It has two main loops with paved roads and we had originally planned to do the whole northern loop and half of the southern one. With only two or three opened campgrounds, we had to reconsider that idea, but decided to go for it nevertheless, even though that meant we had one really long day.

On our first day in the park we cycled from the Madison River campground to Mammoth Hot Springs. With not too much distance, we had time to stop at several waterfalls and geysers and mud pools. We found another trashed iPhone and met a super cool couple from the Netherlands during our lunch break (greetings to you two!). We saw so many bison that we lost track.

The second day is the tough one. With 114 km, nearly 2000 meters of climbing and rainy weather we didn’t stop too much. We didn’t wanna miss the beautiful landscape and the canyon though, and in the end it was worth it! An Asian family didn’t feel any shame in filming us like we were the main attraction. Somebody gave us two bottles of water and shortly after we were offered snacks and water a second time. All the climbing was rewarded with a few pronghorns and a grizzly bear right next to the road! So many people stopped and some even climbed on their cars to have a better view. The canyon was super impressive as well and we’re happy to have made it here. We rolled back into the campground at Madison river just before it got dark. After dinner a sneaky fox tried to steal food from our table, but ran away once I noticed it.

The third day is already our last day in the Yellowstone park and it starts freezing cold with a bit of rain. For a short time we can escape the paved main road and follow a gravel trail, which ends at the Grand Prismatic Spring – a beautiful colorful spring that reminds me a lot of the Champagne Pool in New Zealand. Around lunchtime, we arrive at the Old Faithful Inn, a huge, impressive building completely constructed from wood back in 1903. We admired the building for some time and treated ourselves to a shower. For five dollar each, we got handed a fluffy towel and some bear-shaped soap and were allowed to use the bathrooms upstairs. A short time later we were back in the same dirty cycling clothes, but felt way cleaner! We sat outside and waited for the Old Faithful Geyser to erupt. It is apparently pretty predictable, but with the government shutdown that had just happened, they couldn’t provide any predictions anymore. We were lucky and only had to wait around 30 minutes! It was quite late until we finally left and we arrived at the next campground after the sun had already set. Due to the government shutdown it was reservation only (which we didn’t have), but as nobody told the host what to do with cyclists we got to stay the night for free. We won’t complain!

The next morning was freezing cold with around 0°C and the slight rain didn’t make it any better. We knocked on the door of an old fire truck with a Swiss license plate to ask for water and got invited for tea and coffee. Gratefully we accepted the offer and ended up staying way longer than anticipated! It continued to rain for most of the day and when we got to the Grand Teton national park we had heard so much about, we didn’t see much with all those clouds. We cook dinner in front of the closed souvenir shop at Jenny Lake and had no other option than camping on the campground that was already closed for the season… But the hiker/biker site was conveniently located right next to the bike path!

We got up early to pack up in the dark. Thunder was rolling in the distance and it didn’t stop raining long enough to pack up the tent without rain. From the Grand Teton NP, there was a beautiful bike path all the way into the city of Jackson. We bought food and had lunch in front of the supermarket. Upon leaving, somebody started talking to us and offered us lunch from their restaurant across the street. Oh we were so sad that we had just eaten! And we had a long ways to go to the next camp spot. The sun had already set and we were on the last stretch towards some kind of RV park, when a car stopped next to us on the highway. A lovely elderly couple approached us and asked, if we had a place to stay the night. After some conversation, they kindly invited us to come to their place and it wasn’t even too far away! We cycled for maybe another hour until we arrived at their house. Kip and Dru were absolute sweethearts, they invited us into their home with open arms and had even started to prepare dinner for us. We had a place for our bikes, a laundry for our soaked clothes and a warm shower and cozy bed for ourselves. We ended up staying for two nights and had a day of rest, full with beautiful conversations.

We said good-bye to Kip and Dru and cycled through an area with lots of French/Swiss town names. Montpelier (not a typo), Geneva Summit, Bern, Paris.. From Paris we turn onto a gravel road towards the Paris Ice Cave. As the name suggests, the majority of the year the cave features some cool ice formations. During this time of the year it was nearly empty though and we only see muddy ground and some thin ice. Still a cool thing to see! From here, we continued on the gravel road to cross over to the other side of the range. That turned out to be one of the worst route decision we ever took and we ended up on an unrideable, muddy, slightly-covered-with-snow dirt track. The mud was so sticky, that it stopped our way from turning and we couldn’t even push our bikes anymore. Push, stop, one step backwards, scrape of mud, repeat. Somehow, we made it through the worst part and started the bumpy descend. That was a very exhausting day and we camp way earlier than planned.

The next day is equally exhausting, but not because of the road. We stop for breakfast way too long and made the same mistake again for lunch. We went to a car wash to get our bikes clean again and by 6 pm we still had 30 km and a climb ahead of us… We followed a national cycle route – that runs on a highway, without a shoulder or bike path. Somebody needs to explain that! On the descend Sebi ran over something that instantly deflated his tire. We did our best to fix it, in the dark, next to the busy highway. At some point, the police came by. Apparently, somebody had called 911 because they thought we had an accident and that one of us was injured. The officer left after we assured him that we were fine without any help and thanked him for checking on us. We decide to go to camp spot plan b, which is only a few more kilometers away. The campground is already closed for the season, but we found a spot in the day use area where we didn’t even have to jump any fences. Our host for Salt Lake City the next day had spontaneously canceled and while Sebi cooked dinner, I tried to organize another accommodation. I remembered the two women from Salt Lake City we had met south of Butte and texted her. Again, we were so lucky and met with incredible hospitality, as she offered us to stay in an empty apartment of hers, that didn’t have any tenant at that time. So nice!

The next day we gave everything to arrive in Salt Lake City that day. We noticed that Halloween was around the corner by all the huge spiders and skeletons in the front yards. As Europeans, who are not used to excessive Halloween decoration, that was wildly impressive! Salt Lake City has an incredibly network of cycling paths and we spent the last 80 km to our accommodation nearly exclusively on bike paths and rail trails. I spotted the first raccoon of the trip, don’t they look so cute!

We spent four days in the city. It was surprisingly cool and colorful and I liked it a lot. We went to an organ recital in the Tabernacle and watched a show in the planetarium. One morning we went out for brunch with Toby from Canada, we had first met back at Mount Robson in Canada! We had some calls with friends and family and went to the library to work on the blog and other things.

_{Published on December 25, 2025
Experienced from 26.09. – 13.10. 2025}