‘The track between Butte and Helena towards Park Lake is the most challenging part of the whole Great Divide Mountain Bike Route’, I read on the Adventure Cycling map. So, we give ourselves a day off in the mining town of Butte to prepare for this challenge. Stuffed with even more burgers (what else is there to eat in the US??) we hit the road to Basin on a paved climb to another continental divide crossing.

It must have been some perv to actually think about titties when seeing the Grand Tetons… Well, the guy was French, so maybe that says it all! 😉 I can think of many things, but I don’t associate those pointy rocks with boobies (maybe Elmar does?).

After crossing the state line into Wyoming the scenery changes dramatically. From the white peaked 14.000-ers we find ourselves on wide open, grassy land with cows and pronghorns. The first we’ve seen more than mosquitoes, but the pronghorns are new to us, but there are plenty of these animals running away from us. Not strange, since they are the fastest land mammal after the cheetah …or is it because we start to smell?!?

I guess we should not have wished so hard for water… Apparently Colorado is having the wettest summer ‘ever’! It has something to do with El Nino and some other bad weather situations and so we are experiencing a lot of thunder and lightning storms on this part of the Great Divide Route.

After being away from friends and family for almost 22 months we are cycling hand in hand towards my mom and dad, who are welcoming us in South Fork. Hugs, kisses, a few tears and a good feeling. The next week we will park our loyal Santos bicycles in a shed at Ute Bluff Lodge and Campground with the most friendly owners and we will hit the road by car!

As we cycle into Pie Town (sounds a lot bigger than it actually is with just 60 souls) we run into Chris and Alex again; father and son bikepacking the Great Divide. They are just about to leave the famous Toaster House and Chris shows us around. We pick ourselves a room, drop all our stuff and run to the nearest pie restaurant, which was about to close. Lucky us, we are able to treat ourselves to a 8 dollar (!!) a piece blueberry pie. I guess you have to be here to really appreciate it…

“Hi y’all folks, how u’re doin?”
“Great, thanks!”
“Where ya from?”
“Holland.”
“Ah, I have a cousin in Sweden. That’s close to Holland, right?”
“Uh, sure, what’s his name? Maybe we know him…”

“Do you hear that?”
“What?”
“It’s quiet…”

Our new beasts on two wheels had a good spin on the flat and straight roads from Merida to Campeche, but it was time to hit the mountains again. Away from the heat and finding cool air and a different landscape. But, before we’d be puffing and sweating our way 3000 meter up, we’d stopped to visit mysterious Palenque.

This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for! Meet our new buddies for the rest of our bicycle touring adventure: the Santos Travelmaster 2.9 with Pinion and Gates Belt Drive! No, it was definately not time to send the Travel Lites to the bicycle graveyard, they could easily keep going, but these new Pinion babies need a ride on tougher ground. And we have the honor to be one of the first (if not the first) world cyclists to show them around the globe.