Final Installment Years Later

I'm playing around with my google account and find my blog from 3-1/2 years ago. Never finished. What the heck! Lets get-r-done.

Originally, Terri was to fly home out of Billings and leave me a 2-day ride home alone. I'd get to stop at Little Big Horn and take a side trip through Spearfish Canyon. I changed that plan when the snowstorm led to us renting a car for the Yellowstone leg of our trip. With 20' of snow over Beartooth Pass and Dunraven Pass also blocked, we had no way to get to Red Lodge. So we decided to double back to Jackson and let Terri fly home from there. It worked out perfectly for both of us. I got my adventure and Terri got two days alone without me :-)

We pulled into Jackson after the relatively short trip down valley from the Old Faithful area. Picked up the bike at the bed and breakfast, returned the rental and got a room. After asking the clerk, we got a recommendation to try the Blue Lion for dinner. Luckily we got a 5:30 seating and had a remarkable time. Live music in the waiting area, lots of terrific people having a great time and very unique food. All in a two story house that was very intimate. Wonderful evening. Best of all, it was two blocks from our hotel.

Next day was breakfast at the Wort Hotel, Silver Dollar Saloon. If you're into historic buildings (and I am) then this is the place to explore. Pictures of Jackson from the 1800's and original memorabilia including visitors. It seems Jackson was as rough and tumble as any other western town.

Then Terri to the airport. It's kind of funny pulling into the parking lot on the Harley. She took the T-Bag and helmet as her luggage and the bike was another 20lbs lighter. Now I was ready for my adventurous ride south from Jackson (Rte 189 to 191) through Pinedale to Rock Springs.

The country south of Jackson is absolutely amazing for motorcycles. Mountains, gorges, history, rivers, ghost towns (ok, there may be someone living in that trailer), and curvy roads. Pinedale is the home to Mountain Man museum. I'd love to follow the Snake River into Idaho but that's for another trip.

It was very near Pinedale that mountain men held a couple of their annual rendezvous. These very remote mountains are home to some of the best fishing, hunting, trapping, hiking and any other conceivable outdoor excursion you can think of. Even though it was before Memorial Day and the weather was crappy, the town was packed with pickups and 4-wheel drives towing trailers of mountain bikes, ATV's, camping equipment, etc.

Jackson's elevation is approx 6200'; Pinedale approx 7200' and Rock Springs 6300'. So the weather is unpredictable. It was sunny and 65 degrees when I left Jackson. Temps dropped rapidly. Rain (bad) started 15 minutes north of Pinedale. I decided to stop for lunch hoping to wait out the bad weather. You might say this was a mistake since it was snowing hard and accumulating when I got back on the bike an hour later. By the time I was five miles south of town I was in the most lonely, featureless and slippery area you can imagine. This is the main road from Rock Springs (I-80) to Jackson so the truck traffic was at 55-65 regardless of the weather. They didn't like it one bit that I was putzing along at 25-30 mph. It was very fun when they passed me. Once I got the hang of snow riding I punched up my speed to 40-45. The Ultra's low center of gravity, no T-Bag and no passenger helped the bikes stability. Hardest part was wind gusts. But with winds mostly out of the north (and on my tail), I began to enjoy the ride even though it was red knuckle all the way. Anyone who's done this knows how you have to absolutely concentrate on the task at hand. You cannot sight see or mind drift. With no break in concentration for over two hours, I pulled into Rock Springs as the sun came out and the temperature warmed to the 50's. What a relief (albeit temporary). All in all, I really enjoyed the ride! How often does one get to ride on the edge of disaster, alone, over 1,000 miles from home, with no cell phone coverage, and, literally, in the middle of nowhere (it even got better (worse) on my way to Rawlins).

So it was an adventure. My heated jacket liner and grips worked perfectly. But at 25 degrees, there's only so much a heated grip can do. So the finger tips got pretty cold. I'll think about heated gloves on the next winter trip.

So I gas up and drink coffee in Rock Springs. The weather clears and I'm thinking I'll make Laramie (200 interstate miles) tonight. NOT. 40 miles west of Rawlins I see a wall of black clouds climbing and getting closer. The wind picks up and I'm actually on the ragged edge of losing it as I crest a couple hills. By 10 miles west of Rawlins, with a good 1-1/2 hours of remaining daylight, I'm completely engulfed in dark. I'm fighting the cross winds constantly. (Riders will know what I mean when I say this is actually enjoyable. You really feel like you're "making it happen" when you have to constantly adjust everything with no relaxation. Using a Hunter S. Thompson free association it's like this: gust-countersteer-lean; prepare for next gust; approaching semi-pass now so no more danger-wait, that truck may pass the car in front-slow-yes it's pulling over in the passing lane right in front of you-dirty air-broadside wind gust-countersteer-lean; should I speed up and get past these vehicles or slow down; prepare to respond; what next? wind blast-truck dirty air-drop back-prepare again to pass; curve coming-what if i get a gust-will I get to that car before the gust-that curve is at the crest of that hill, what if I get a full broadside gust; look at those clouds-maybe I should speed up to get to Laramie-maybe I should stop at Rawlins, that weather looks bad; speed up, speed down, countersteer; truck approaching in passing lane/move far right/slow so they get past quickly/dirty air/wind gust/ will those antelope run into the road; etc. etc. )

Enjoyable as it was, I was getting too tired to make it to Laramie. So I stopped at a motel in Rawlins. 5 minutes after I'd locked the bike, unloaded and got the cover on, the proverbial shit hit the fan. One of the most violent storms high country storms brought 60 mph wind gusts, horizontal rain and 20 degree drop in temperature. I don't want to think about how riding through this storm if I was still on I-80 trying to get to Laramie. But it was warm and comfy in the motel room.

I laid down to watch some TV and woke up at 6am the next morning. Eleven hours of sleep. I felt great.

That's it for the trip. The next day was over 640 miles into Omaha. The weather was perfect: cool morning and into the 70's in the afternoon. I took my time with a leisurely breakfast in Laramie and lunch in North Platte. Safely home and glad to see Terri. What a wonderful trip.

May 21 2008

The Lake Yellowstone Lodge is a fantastic place. But old. The lobby areas are terrific. The views of the lake are terrifice. The rooms are very small. Dinner in the dining room was awful and expensive. Breakfast buffet was adequate (certainly better than the dinner). I guess when you're feeding the world and know the tourists won't be coming back soon there is no reason to provide an adequate meal. We found this true at each of the park restaurants visited with the exception of the Snow Lodge dining room. With that out of the way, I can only say the staff was one of the best compared to any hotel or restaurant I've ever visited.

We were booked into the Lodge for two nights, but after the awful dinner and knowing we were headed to Old Faithful in the morning, we found a room at the Snow Lodge. This is a more contemporary hotel and turned out to be a terrific choice.

It started snowing about 9pm at the Lake Lodge and didn't stop until early evening the next day. Parts of the park had over 12". Note the picture at the Continental Divide on the way to Old Faithful. I'm glad we left the bike in Jackson and had all wheel drive to tour.

The entire day was for touring and ogling the park. The Old Faithful side is completely different than the Hayden Valley/Canyon side of the park. There are many books with much better descriptions than we can ever provide about the contrast between classic mountain vistas of pine, aspen and rivers juxtaposed against steam vents, boiling pools of water and multicolored mineral crusts over barren and moonlike landscapes. I'm thinking of the Mountain Men first vistiing the area without the benefit of novels, pictures and Disney movies of Old Faithful and geyser areas. I'm probably the classic tourist. I've seen hundreds of pictures of Old Faithful and thought "that's cool. I want to see that". But, in fact, Old Faithful is a letdown. Been there, done that. Then you start walking around the geyser basin and you can't believe how big an area and how many steam vents/geysers are around. Then you drive north towards Madison and you pass miles and miles and miles of steam vents. And you keep thinking about the mud pots and vents you saw yesterday on the Hayden Valley side of the park. You realize you're on top of a rocket ready to take off.

Again, the Xanterra folks ran a great operation at the Old Faithful Lodge for dinner. But the food is below mediocre. A big disappointment. The historic lodge is an architectural wonder and a must see. Overall, this was a terrific day.

Disappointment

Weather Channel, May 19 evening: The weather report for NW Wyoming is bad. Very cold temps and rain. In Yellowstone, highs in the mid 30's with snow and rain and slush and sleet. Not good motorcycling weather. I'm worrying about this report all night and finally fall asleep thinking we need to head home on the last good day of weather and stay ahead of this crummy front.
We're not real scared riding in the rain and cold. We have all the right gear for this. But now we're talking snow and high winds. I have a fully loaded bike with a high profile t-bag. And Terri is with me. My decision is not to chance riding with Terri in this weather. But instead of heading home, we decide to rent a car and go spend our 3 days in Yellowstone anyway. Our innkeeper, Sherrie Jern, of the Wildflower Inn says we can keep the bike parked at her house We can also use their Hertz discount to rent a car. So that's what we do. Heck, it's only taken us 50 years to get out here so lets stay and see what happens.
So it's off to Yellowstone on May 20 in a car. You can say I wimped out. I feel like I wimped out. But when you read my next post and see the weather pictures from the park on Wednesday I think you'll agree it was a good decision.
So Tuesday, May 20 was another beautiful day for vacationing. Yellowstone is everything it's cracked up to be. With snow moving in that nightwe decide to head for the mud pots along Lake Yellowstone, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, upper and lower falls and Hayden Valley. Then off to check in at the Lake Yellowstone Lodge for, we hope, a nice relaxing eveing watching the snow roll in over the lake.

Grand Teton National Park

May 19, 2008:
Here we are standing in front of the Wildflower Inn. Its a couple miles south of Teton Village. This picture was taken about 3 minutes after I finished taking 20 moose pictures from the front yard (see previous blog). It turned out to be another fine day in Jackson Hole.
The frozen, but thawing, lake pictures are from Jenny Lake. There's so much snow that we couldn't do the Hidden Falls hike I'd been planning all winter. But we did have a great couple of hours walking in the sun and hanging around the lake and Cottonwood Creek.
Back on the bike and up to Jackson Lake, over the dam and about 1 mile further north. The road runs directdly along the lake with a huge turnout. It's no wonder. This is the place most of the pictures of the Tetons reflecting on Jackson Lake are taken. And I had to get my own pictures. The water was perfectly still, but there is still a lot of ice. So the pictures aren't perfect. But there were no crowds anywhere so I think we won on that.
The Signal Mountain restaurant just south of this turnout and the dam turned out to be our best meal of the trip. We only had lunch but the quality was terrific and the choices were unexpected. We sat by the windows looking over the lake and off to the Tetons. Very pleasant. Then another hour walking along the gravel strewn beach in the shadow of the mountains.
Did I mention the Tetons are completely snow covered? Take a look at the pictures above.

Over the pass to Jackson Hole

Sunday, May 18: We left Dubois to head to Jackson. Up and over Togwotee Pass on HWY 26. This is definitely the payoff. It was 75 degrees in Dubois. 10 miles out of town we stopped to put on our coat liners. There were about 50 cars on top of the pass with snowmobilers having a great time in the meadow. On May 18th!
then 15 miles later we stopped to take the liners off again and take a picture of our first view of the Tetons. Oh my goodness. I've seen the pictures, but having a full horizon to horizon view is breathtaking.
On into Jackson and the obligatory Snake River Pale Ale (I discovered it in Dubois last night) while sitting on a saddle at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. This was Dana's suggestion as a "must do". One drink and we were out of there. But where else can you view a 'Spurs' collection?
Unfortunately, we rode into town too late to eat lunch at the Chili Cookoff Fair. Darn it. Terri had a good time checking out the stores. She especially wanted me to try on the $900 leather windbreaker in one store. I respectfully declined :-)
After lunch and some more walking around we headed for the Wildflower Inn Bed and Breakfast. What a wonderful place. Now I feel like I'm on vacation. Yes, that moose above was 50' from the driveway. I got as close as 20' to take pictures but Sherrie, the innkeeper, yelled that it wasn't a very good idea to get too close. Good idea.

May 17 2008

You'll have to sift thru the pictures. 3 or 4 from Scotts Bluff, one from downtown Casper and then the bear Dubois Bear picture.
Dubois is small western town surrounded by mountains. The Wind River is high and muddy. Must be huge amounts of snowmelt.
Yesterday was a long day of travel, even though it was less miles. We started out at the Scottsbluff National Monument. Another one of those Pioneer things. Great views of the North Platte valley but a long way from Dubois.
The trip to Casper was uneventful. Scenic farm and ranching country. We got to Casper right at lunch time and ate at the Wonder Bar and Brewery. I actually had some of the best fish tacos ever. My only regret was limiting myself to ice tea. This is a place I want to come back to when I can sample a few beers. We walked around a very pleasant downtown in the 80 degree sun. Very nice respite from the trip. But this pleasantness was the prelude to a fall.
Hwy 26 from Casper to Shoshoni has to be the longest 90 miles on earth. Ok, thats an exageration but you get the picture. This stretch is literally the middle of noplace. The promise of mountains are far in the distance (and you can see the snow covered peaks thru the haze). But this is only a temptation. The price to get there is this drive. I could feel Terri's helmet laying on my back as she nodded off. At least she got a chance to snooze. Yes, this country is beautiful. It's hilly and green. But it is Wyoming nothingness.
After a 1/2 hour nap in Shoshoni, gas, a couple cups of coffee and a walk around, we were ready for the final 90 miles of the day. A local on an Ultra pulled up next to me at the pump and confirmed a shortcut around Riverton for me. This was terrific Wind River farm country. After about 45 miles we started seeing new geology. Rock, hills, badlands, curves (only a few at the start), etc. This last few miles into Dubois was terrific and a great end to the day.
JW

1st Day

NOTE: Trip 1st day is May 16. Blog post date is listed above.
This was planned as the longest day. We're fresh, excited and ready to go. See Terri ready to hit the road in the attached photo. Packing was a real fun experience (as always). Plenty of complaints about how little she can take but mostly in good fun. It's a right of passage on these MC trips for her to comment on the lack of stuff she can take. I did a pre-pack the nite before and discovered our lists were pretty darn close to right. I only had to shuffle a few things and pull out 3 shirts and a couple pair of shorts. Now we're both down to our zip off pants if we need shorts :-)
450 miles and 9.5 hours later we landed in Scottsbluff, NE at the Holiday Inn Express. Actually it wasn't too bad. I listened to XM talk radio, the George Strait channel (17), my beloved bluegrass (14) and the first Crosby, Stills and Nash. The new IMC 7mm speakers fit great in the Shoei.It's always fun traveling I-80 on a motorcycle. You get in those 10 truck-15 cars jam-ups with everyone slowing to 70 behind the one slow truck and RV blocking both lanes. There were strong gusts out of the NE at about 35mph combined with the dirty air behind these crowds leading to lots of fun keeping the bike on the road in a straight line. I kept playing tag with 2 or 3 cars between Lincoln and Ogallala. You know this type of driver: it's light traffic, they could easily pass, I'm at 79 on cruise control and they're at 79.25. So they never quite pass and they're always too close at just that time you need to pass that slow moving truck. I speed up, pass the truck, settle back into the right lane, and this other driver just stays right where they are. It would be so easy for these folks to speed up to 81, pass me and stay out front. But NOOOOOO!
US 26 past Lake McConaughy is very nice after the 300+ miles of interstate. After a long hard winter, it's still a few days early to get the beautiful green springtime grasses. A break at the Oregon Trail Trading Post in Lewellen led to a great cheese/braut and lots of coffee for the final push to S-bluff. The trading post was making plans for the Horse-Bike Festival. Now that could be a good time! Chimney Rock looms out of the plain after several miles. I am fascinated with the history of this location. Almost every pioneer diarist mentions this place. This is an icon of the american pioneer migration. Some say the St. Louis arch is the gateway to the west. I say it's Chimney Rock.
After a soak in the whirlpool we went for margarita's at Ole Mexican next door to the hotel. These were some strong drinks and kicked my butt. Terri ordered somethinig with a star. We asked the waitress what the star meant and she said "it's extra popular". Well she didn't tell us it was habanero based. It was fantastic, but Terri just couldn't handle it. The fried ice cream cooled here down.
Today is about 350 miles to Dubois. We'll see our first mountains. And we'll get into town in mid afternoon with plenty of time to explore and rest.