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Topics - marxistdisco

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Routes / Traffic in Yellowstone on the Parks, Peaks & Prairies route
« on: February 21, 2022, 06:29:46 pm »
Hi all,

My girlfriend and I are currently planning our summer tour across the country, starting in Georgetown, DC in early June and ending in Astoria, OR in late August. We're reasonably competent cyclists but this will only be our second bike tour, the first one being a week in Norway last September. We're keen to keep the route as short and flat as possible. We'll be incorporating several different ACA routes, but we're currently undecided on whether to do Yellowstone or Grand Tetons.

The current plan is to follow Parks, Peaks and Prairies through SD and WY, and then take the TransAmerica Trail from West Yellowstone to Missoula, then the Lewis & Clark from Missoula to the coast. However we're quite keen to see the Grand Tetons - partly because of the spectacular scenery, but also because we've heard bad things about traffic on the roads in Yellowstone in the summer months.

The alternate option we're considering, then, is to veer off the PPP route at Ten Sleep and head south via Thermopolis, then rejoin the TAT and do the Teton Valley Alternate route, down to Jackson and then back up to West Yellowstone on the western side of the Tetons. This would allow us to see the Grand Tetons, however it would add 150 miles and 7,000 ft of climbing to the trip, and I've also read that a lot of the roads on the Alternate route are actually no better than the TAT roads through Yellowstone.

So I guess I have three questions really:

1. How do the PPP roads through Yellowstone compare to the TAT roads through Yellowstone? Do they suffer from the same problems, e.g. heavy traffic in the summer months and minimal-to-no shoulders?

2. Has anyone done the connection from PPP to TAT via Thermopolis and then the Teton Valley Alternate route, and is it worth the additional distance/climb in order to see the Grand Tetons instead of Yellowstone?

3. Does anyone know of other ways of incorporating the Grand Tetons into a route that also includes the other highlights of the PPP, notably Badlands, Black Hills and Bighorn? (though we wouldn't be too upset about a detour around the latter, given the climbing involved).

Thanks!

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