Google Maps and "Bike Trails"

On Sunday we packed up early from the condo in Wilson, WY and headed north to Yellowstone.  The plan was to drive to Old Faithful, watch it go off then head further north for a hike.  Along the way, Beth found a geyser that was accessible by mountain bike on a forest road.  We stopped there, dropped our forest road tandem and took a short ride to Lone Star geyser.  It was a very easy 5 mile ride and a really pretty area with "less" people.

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Just a few folks gathered to watch Old Faithful erupt on a Sunday afternoon.

We drove on to Old Faithful.  We saw the crowd was gathering when we finally got parked and walked out to the geyser.  We guessed the expected eruption time was close, but decided to try to make it up to an observation point a half mile from the geyser on the hill side, but in the process missed the eruption.

We hiked on and found Solo geyser which erupts every 4-7 minutes... but you better be watching.  It gives up one really good gush of water and it's over  until the next time.


There is a large field of geysers near Old Faithful, so we wandered the paths (along with a lot of others) watching them bubble and spew in differing sizes and shapes.  Then headed back for the next eruption of Old Faithful.  It is pretty impressive when it goes.

Old Faithful

It was after 2PM and we had to decide if it would be Bozeman or Butte, Montana for the night, so grabbed some lunch at a picnic area and headed north and west.  We decided on Butte simply becuase it would cut driving time the next day.  Butte is an old mining town with a large open pit copper mine just on the north edge... and a "Superfund" site. After dinner and already drinking the water, Beth read all about the years of remediation that has gone on with the water system.


Now on to the Google maps part of the story. 

One of the ways I plan bike rides in a new place is to use the "Bicycling" feature of Google maps.  It will highlight the bike trails with green lines on the map.  So I was checking out Google maps and noticed a large stretch of bike trails a few miles south of town.



Snap-shot of Google Maps near Butte

I use MapMyRide.com to plan routes, see what the distance is and total elevation gains will be.  I laid out a route that would include the major portion of the bike trails on the map from our hotel.  It came up at 30 miles and about 2200' of climbing, so a pretty long morining ride, but doable and Beth was game.

I broke one of my own rules and didn't check the satellite view of Google map to make sure the route was paved.  We were about 7 miles into the ride and 2 miles down a dirt road when a large German shepard came out to "greet" us.  She was very friendly but didn't listen to her owner too well.  We stopped and talked with the guy.  He tells us, in a very friendly way that we are on a private road and yes, there is a gate up ahead into the Thompson Park area.  He said we could ride on, but looked at our road bike and said we might not make it much past a turn-off a half mile ahead or so.  We told him our map showed this as a bike trail just ahead and should connect up with Hwy 2.  He said it used to be an old railroad bed and there are some tunnels futher up, but he wasn't sure how we were going to get the highway. 

He finally rounded up his shepard and we went on our way up the road which slowly deteriorated from a nice dirt road to overgrown jeep trail.... but it was beautiful country.  The trail slowly climbed up the mountain side and we did find the tunnels.  But no head light or flashlight, made getting through them a little of an adventure of it's own.   I tried using my iPhone "flashlight, but tunnel just seemed to suck up the light.

We kept riding on and my iPhone GPS app (Runmeter) showed we were making steady progress toward Hwy 2.  It finally came into sight.  Intially we were at least 100' above it with a large ravine between us.  As we continued on, we reached the end of the ravine, but the highway was 50' straight above us.  The path seemed to have come to an end, but we found some tire tracks to the right and followed them up a gully to what was part of the path and to the highway. 

There was at least 10 more miles of "bike path" left in our route and at least 2 pretty steep decents.  So we optted for the highway and headed back to Butte.  It was a beautiful descent back down the mountain on the highway.

I am glad that Beth has a great sense of humor and adventure when it comes to some of our bike rides.   This one was a classic.  We laughed about it most of the way to down the hill and into town.

End of the "bike trail"

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