|
|
By Lynx, on July 18th, 2010 
Too bad we couldn’t cross the border into Canada to have a short look around just to say that we had been there and get to mark a Canadian provence on our states visited map 😉 That whole pesky pass port andbureaucratic red tape involving Native American’s sovereignty thing I mentioned earlier.
Idaho and eastern Washington were not quite what I was expecting. I knew Idaho had lots of forest next to Yellowstone obviously with the national forests there but I don’t know a whole lot about the rest of the state except the potato thing.
The northern stretch that we crossed was very thick and gigantically tall pine and fir trees with what looked like redwoods here and there thrown in, I now think those were Western Redcedars after looking at that site. Idaho had lake after lake after lake, some of them quite big too with very large boats cruising down them.
Not what I was expecting at all, I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this. Idaho is a lot like New Mexico in that everyone’s perception of it is exactly wrong and I’m guessing nobody cares to correct those perceptions so they also aren’t overrun with tourists seeking out the natural beauty and spoiling it 😉
Continue reading Idaho to Washington
Like this:Like Loading...
By Lynx, on July 17th, 2010 Oil Change the next morning before leaving Kalispell… You’d think this would be easy but we went through 3 parts stores looking for oil to use and there was very little selection in any of them, the ones that did have something usable only had 1 or 2 quarts of it. So I ended up having to take notes of what was in which store and combine them all to figure out what to get. None of them had any of my preferred oil brands so I ended up going with plain Shell Rotella T synthetic, 2 quarts from one place 1 from another (more on this later).
Went to a Valvoline Express Care carwash/oil change place and asked if they would take my oil, one of the attendants said yes but we dont do motorcycles. I told him I’d do it myself in the parkinglot and hand them the oil afterwards. I was getting ready to start and the manager comes over and tells me to leave the premises. WTF? He says we do not allow any motorcycles at all on the lot, you need to go. We’ll take the oil but you cant park here. What an ass. I motioned to the Kawi parked in the shade on the side of the building and he gets defensive, thats an employees bike we dont allow the public to park motorcycles on the premises and storms off. Jeez! I can tell you one thing, if we had any Valvoline places in NM I sure as hell wouldnt go to one after being treated that way.
Rode around the block and parked at Taco Bell next door and just did the oil change there, walked my lasagna pan of oil across the parkinglot and handed it to someone and left. The first guy tried to apologize.
Continue reading Valvoline Care?
Like this:Like Loading...
By Lynx, on July 16th, 2010 Glacier National Park and riding the Going to the Sun Road was another thing on my bucket list. Unfortunately the whole trip we had been hearing from other riders who had just come from Glacier that the road was closed and we had to make the difficult decision to cut our visit short here a month just isn’t enough time to see and do all that we wanted. We had to give Cece’s Uncle a date to expect us and once we decided a week in advance we were committed.
They say that all of the glaciers in Glacier national park will be gone very soon at their current rate of melting and this is something I want to see before they are all gone. We were already expecting the road to be closed but if we hurried at least we could see the southern side of the park for a few hours on our way through if we raced fast enough.
The water is so clear. The bottom of these lakes are lined with bright multicolored smooth rocks, reds, blacks, oranges. Very beautiful, I want to go back. We are definitely staying here longer next time when we go to Alaska.
Continue reading Glacier National Park or Bust!
Like this:Like Loading...
By Lynx, on July 16th, 2010 Now on to something that actually has something to do with the “Rockies.”
There are several well put together exhibits of early life on in Montana like this filling station. Others included medical offices and store fronts as well as a nicely done Native American wing where no photography was allowed.
These examples of early dress go with the horse drawn era exhibits show casing how the early tourists would have traveled through the west and seen places like Yellowstone.
Continue reading Museum of the Rockies (cont.)
Like this:Like Loading...
By Lynx, on July 15th, 2010 
What does Leonardo da Vinci have to do with Montana and the Rocky Mountains? Yeah I don’t have a clue either but they had a very impressive exhibit on many of his inventions and sketches built into wooden models at the Museum of the Rockies.
Leonardo da Vinci was a genius and seeing these in person is very cool. He had way too many forward thinking ideas to attempt to construct and model them all and many just existed on paper and in his mind. It makes one think what might have been had the potential of many of these been realized so far ahead of their time.
Continue reading Leonardo da Vinci
Like this:Like Loading...
By Lynx, on July 14th, 2010 
Outside the Museum of the Rockies was a very cool Living History Farm. The volunteers at this place continue to live and work in period dress and continue to do all the normal frontier chores that would have been common 150 years ago including growing all their own food and making homemade dishes from scratch that visitors can taste. I like places like this to really show visitors and their kids who grew up with the convenience of modern day civilization just what life was like out on the frontier. You can read all the books in the world and look at vintage photos but until you actually come to a historic site like this that has been preserved and continually used and see in this lifestyle in person you cant quite grasp just how much work every day life was.
We did a self tour of the home, all of the older ladies were buisy giving tours or doing end of the day chores to get ready to close up. As we went through I was showing Cece what things were and they all seemed real impressed that I knew what everything was, its function and how to use it. We explained that we were from New Mexico where a lot of this stuff is all still used.
Continue reading Living History Farm
Like this:Like Loading...
By Lynx, on July 13th, 2010 
Getting tired of super slabbing it to put down lots of miles we decided to check out the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman and take a break. We followed the signs and got off at the exit they said and went through miles and miles of construction and deep gravel to get there, like riding on ball bearings ontop of sand. It was completely on the other end of town where it would have been shorter to take a different exit. We did get to see the biggest and nicest REI I’ve ever seen though like the size of a super Walmart, crazy.
If you are into fossils, dinosaurs or natural history at all I highly recommend going if you are going through Montana, this place was awesome and had some fairly extensive and well done exhibits. I’ve been to several natural history museums and was very impressed with the collections displayed at this one. On top of the impressive fossil exhibits they also had a Living History Farm and exhibits on the human history as well with a Native American section and some nice examples of the horse drawn vehicles up through early autos.
They had several of these interesting sculptures that showed artist renderings of the fleshy side and the skeletal structure of the other half.
Honey dont move! Theres something behind you!
They had a lot of T-Rex stuff, including the full skeleton out on the front lawn. I had forgot that several specimens had been found in Montana.
Continue reading Museum of the Rockies
Like this:Like Loading...
By Lynx, on July 12th, 2010 
We had a wonderful week in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone but alas it was time to move on. We had some of the worst and miserable weather of the trip along with getting our campsite robbed but the beauty and experience of seeing this place with our own eyes more than made up for that. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
It was far too short of a time to take in everything. We will have to come back again some time. Alaska and Canada is still in our future, perhaps we’ll stop here on the way.
I’ve read many travel sites, motorcycle travel blogs, and threads on ADVrider.com and picture threads elsewhere and was a bit puzzled why so many travelers proudest moments was getting a picture of this stone arch. There was never any description or location as if the object itself was enough like the Statue of Liberty. I didn’t know what this was 4 years ago when I first saw its picture, but now I do and here I was standing before it. It almost brought a tear to my eye, here I was standing in the footsteps of some of the most epic motorcycle adventurers I’ve ever read in a place with so much history.
This was where it all began, this simple arch made of hexagonal basalt blocks and inscribed “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.” The Roosevelt Arch is the original main entrance to the countries first National Park. This is where the national park movement started. Without the foresight to put aside and preserve some of our magnificent lands so our children and grand children can see what once was America the United States no doubt would have wound up like Europe where the natural beauty was destroyed and developed or held in private hands by the wealthy.
Continue reading Leaving Yellowstone
Like this:Like Loading...
By Lynx, on July 11th, 2010  Yellowstone National Park Post Office When we first arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs I immediatly noticed that many of the buildings looked remarkably similar to ones from Fort Stanton, New Mexico where my parents worked in my childhood. It turned out that the town of Mammoth Hot Springs was indeed a former US Army fort from 1886 to 1918.
Yellowstone was the first National Park and after its founding there was still some question as to what exactly is a national park and how are they to be used? Early entrepreneurs set up rogue tourist camps, suvenier hunters broke off pieces of the natural wonders and threw litter and rocks into the colorful hot springs which choked off the flow and killed the colorful bacterial mats and the wildlife were under serious threat from poachers. Early visitors saw the park as a resource to take and exploit as they pleased and the civilian park staff charged with preserving and protecting the park were unequipped and unexperienced to deal with the threat.
 US Army Corps of Engineers Offices
In response the US Army set up a temporary camp and it was quickly realized that a permanent presence would be needed. At its height 324 soldiers were stationed at Fort Yellowstone and the park outposts along with civilian staff and families. In the winter the cavalry patrolled on skies and snow shoes.
Soldiers liked the remote rugged life in the mountains many applied to get in. The life was hard and demanding and sometimes quite dangerous but the more relaxed discipline at Yellowstone, newer facilities and amazing scenery was unbeatable.
Continue reading Fort Yellowstone
Like this:Like Loading...
By Lynx, on July 10th, 2010 
Yellowstone is a wildlife photographers dream, there are all kinds of critters large and small. Not only is there some spectacular landscapes to be shooting in but you’re also guaranteed to see something. You’ll definitely see a few bison or hundred and most likely a lot of elk as well.
We watched a movie at one of the visitors centers on how park policy toward the animals has changed over the years. It used to be perfectly fine to feed the bears for example and they had pictures of little bear cubs pressed against 50’s station wagons trying to get scraps of food out of the windows.
Now days they recommend staying away I think they said around 100 yards from the bears and 75 feet from the elk. We tried our best to follow the guidelines but I don’t think the animals got the same memo. The bears came up 3 feet away from us and the elk 3 inches, a bit too close on both counts.
The smaller guys are more numerous but faster and harder to find, just take your time along the hiking trails and you’ll be sure to spot a few. Wildlife photography takes a lot of patience to get just the right shot, far more patience than I have with a fixed schedule to be somewhere. It takes a lot of patience for landscape photography also to get the perfect lighting, clouds or weather and you aren’t even shooting a moving target. Read below where we met a real wildlife photographer.
Continue reading Yellowstone Wildlife
Like this:Like Loading...
|
|
