Today was to be a short day, but not an easy day. We planned to get to Grant Village Campground in Yellowstone National Park and stop there around the 40-mile mark, rather than trying to go 70 to Madison Campground, or 85 to the town of West Yellowstone in this hilly country. Plus we don’t want to rush through this beautiful place! Fortunately because it was cold there were fewer mosquitoes out to hassle us when we woke up and disassembled our tent. We put the tent away with a wet rainfly and groundcloth knowing that they would quickly dry when we set it up later today at the Grant Village Campground. Greg and Bill left camp before we did, and Vanesa and Jesse and I all took off together, but Jesse quickly went ahead because Vanesa and I were stopping fairly frequently to either take pictures or take care of the dog. The road was beautiful as we rolled through the north end of Grand Teton National Park and then up into Yellowstone. There wasn’t much traffic and the traffic that was there was extremely polite and gave us a lot of space on the narrow roads. Riding into and through Yellowstone is always a concern for cyclists because of the narrow roads, frequent blind curves on hills, big RVs, and often rental RVs with inexperienced drivers. But none of that was a problem today and we reached Yellowstone with no problem, where Bill/Jesse/Greg were waiting for us because we had the annual pass that we had purchased for all five of us to enter Grand Teton National Park yesterday. We took pictures at the Welcome to Yellowstone sign and then when we got to the entrance point, we showed the annual pass card I’d purchased yesterday and the super nice, super cute, Asian ranger girl that helped us let all five of us in with the same pass (after we told her that the supervisor at the Grand Teton entrance site yesterday had told us that it would work for all five of us…apparently an annual pass will only work one carload or group of four people and the fifth person was supposed to pay, but she gave us a freebie and let us all in). We then all five together made our way north through the southern end of Yellowstone, stopping and taking pictures at various pullouts and really having a wonderful time in this beautiful part of the world. When we crested the last hill before the descent into Grant Village, I could see the Grant Village entrance maybe a mile down the road and I got into my tuck for the final descent. Then suddenly, about halfway down, I felt and heard something at my handlebars and I looked down just in time to see my phone go flying off the bike and I looked in my helmet mirror behind me and watched my phone bouncing edge over edge and rolling down the hill at 30+ miles an hour. SHIT!!!! It was my fault, as I had forgotten that two of the four locking points on my (7-year-old) Quad Lock phone case had broken recently on bumpy Colorado roads, and I haven’t been able to use the phone mounted on the handlebars when riding on bumpy roads since. I had simply forgotten that and placed the phone on the handlebar mount after I’d taken a picture, and then when I hit a small bump in the road on the descent the phone went flying. Looking ahead and then looking behind in my mirror, I quickly realized that I had a small break in traffic and I basically slammed on the brakes at 30+ miles an hour and skidded to a stop and turned around and started pedaling furiously back up the hill to reach my phone, which I saw laying in the downhill lane, right where a car/truck tire would run over it if they weren’t paying attention or didn’t swerve a bit to avoid it. As I got closer to the phone, I saw a big RV coming down the hill and I waved frantically at them for them to slow as I rolled into the lane and quickly swooped my hand down and grabbed the phone and then got off onto the shoulder as the RV passed me, having only slowed a little bit. I looked at the telephone and the screen was working and was not cracked. I quickly checked a couple of functions and it seemed like the phone was working perfectly!! Wow, that’s a really good advertisement for Quad Lock cases and iPhones that the phone could survive a fall and and end-over-end roll like that, especially at that speed. I checked that my RideWithGPS app was still working and recording my ride, and then I put the phone in my pocket and continued down the hill to the Grant Village entrance. We all as a group got the lay of the land, finding first the gas station/convenience store, the general store, the restaurant, the showers and laundry, and then the campground. We checked into the campground and chose a regular site, which were priced better for a group of five than than paying individually for hiker/biker sites. The prices were different than those at Colter Bay, but we got a regular site for about $34 and split the cost five ways. It turned out to be one really big site where all five of us had plenty of room to pitch four tents. It was a hot, sunny, and windy day and when we assembled our wet tent it was dry in no time. We all took off from camp together with the intention of sitting down for a meal, but when we got to the general store, on which the sign indicated that the Village Grill was inside, we got in and all it was was a place where you could only get an ice cream, a pulled pork sandwich, or a hot dog. None of us wanted any of that so we thought we’d go to the restaurant next door but as it turns out it was closed. So we all got some groceries at the general store and sat outside and munched while we tried to find out when the restaurant would open. What a pain in the ass that was, because no one at the general store seemed to know anything about the restaurant and as it turns out they’re two separate companies, the federal government running Yellowstone, and the private company running the restaurant inside Yellowstone. We couldn’t get a phone number for the restaurant, we couldn’t find a general store employee that knew the hours of the restaurant, or whether it was open at all, or whether it was open for just breakfast, or whether it was open for just dinner, or whether a reservation was or was not needed. Nothing. Eventually, after asking around with enough people, we found out th at it opened at 5 o’clock for dinner but you couldn’t get in without a reservation and they didn’t have one available until 930 and 10 o’clock that night. So clearly that was out because none of us were going to dinner that late. And we found out that you could drop in for breakfast at 6:30 am, but they said that tour buses all showed up at 6:30 so if you weren’t there early, you weren’t guaranteed that you could quickly get in to eat. Again that wasn’t going to work because we needed to eat and get to riding early. So we all went back into the general store and picked up enough overpriced food for dinner and the next morning’s breakfast and then we headed to the laundry and the showers. It took a couple of hours to do laundry and Vanesa and I didn’t wanna pay for overpriced showers again so we just took an antibacterial wipe bath because we hadn’t really sweated too much on a short 40-mile day in mild temperatures. We finally got back to the campsite at about 7 PM, after having arrived at 2:30 or 3:00, feeling like we just wasted a whole bunch of time and did not really accomplish much of anything. We scarfed down some mediocre food for dinner that I don’t even remember now and went to bed. It was much warmer that night, with a low of about 47, and Vanesa used for the first time hee down booties that I bought for her to wear inside her sleeping bag and she said that they kept her magnificently warm all night long. That was my luxury purchase for this trip and I’m glad that one of us has now used them. Maybe I’ll have a chance to use mine on future days if it gets cold again in Montana.