I could really use some pavement right about now

Will said to me after we climbed out of the Reservoir basin, "I could really use some pavement right about now." From the start of the Blackfoot Reservoir access road to this point, we had ridden 15 miles of some of the toughest gravel road in our lives. Granted, we have ridden everything from singletrack, dual track, old farm roads, and rights of way, but none of that compares to the roughness the gravel on this road.

Sometimes you would find a smoother patch and ride that or in the shoulder but that was more than not sandy and worse to pedal on. At one point I was riding trail that paralleled the road for a bit but that didn't last long, either.

Susie's Nipple Gravel Grinder

Fitzgerald's also talked about riding in Teton County, ID, the valley on the west side of the Tetons. In the words of the shop owner, they have a shit ton of gravel roads over there because it's all farmland. In my pre planning stage I had seen that and drawn up a few routes that looked fun.

In looking at some of the routes that the bike shop suggested the thing that stuck out in Will's mind was riding along the state line. The Tetons are completely in Wyoming and the state line runs up the east side of the Idaho Teton County valley so I incorporated those rodes with my own route that focused on Susie's Nipple, a small hill top on the western edge of the valley to come up the with Susie's Nipple Gravel Grinder.