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By Lynx, on July 7th, 2010 We were on a mission to get to Lake Village for something to eat after the second freezing cold and wet morning and we were happy just to have sunny skies and dry roads just 5 miles from the camp. With rain clouds just up ahead and already being wet and cold we turned off as soon as we could to wait out the coming storm.
We wound up at Bay Bridge Marina where a small crowd of people had gathered. A boat tour of Yellowstone Lake was leaving in 5 mins, SWEET! Funny that this exact same scenario happened to us back at the Tetons, we wound up on a boat tour of Jenny Lake while spontaneously pulling in to avoid a rain storm.
Heres our boat, captained by a tiny little woman not much taller than Cece who took her job very seriously. The boat was fully enclosed so we could dry off, thank god! and built to withstand the severe sudden storms that develop without warning on the high alpine lake. Our tour guide was very funny and informative with lots of stories of old Yellowstone. I highly recommend going on the lake tour if you visit Yellowstone, it was awesome, and doesnt require any walking 😉
Continue reading Lake Yellowstone
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By Lynx, on July 6th, 2010 What a rough way to start the morning! Dead bike, drenched with cold freezing rain, and exhausted from pushing the bike up and down hills.
Only dedicated motorcycle parking in one of the countries biggest National Parks
So far on our trip we have used our Coleman single burner lantern and our little Coleman stove almost daily, usually several times a day at morning and at night for cooking and to keep warm. We had taken a small spare can of Coleman fuel for them and with all of the heavy usage we’d already burned through it so last night I unhooked the gas line from the bike and refilled everything. I can already hear the bikers in the audience snickering at what happened next who’ve all experienced it themselves. I FORGOT TO HOOK UP THE GAS!
I love these old metrics a trio was riding cross country, both guys were bike mechanics.
Arg! so embarrassing! Sure I’ve left the gas off before and when the bike sputtered and died a few mins later after starting it up I always realized it right away. What made it so bad this time was how hard it was raining, and how miserable we were back at camp, we wanted to get out of there right away and the bike would not fire up. What the heck? Full choke, nothing. The bike would just crank and crank. I thought it had to do with being parked in a rain forest for hours of steady drizzle all night just above freezing and kept trying to start it and fussing with the choke.
Continue reading Give me fuel give me fire
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By Lynx, on July 5th, 2010 The Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone National Park is an otherworldly sight of vivid colors and has been featured in nearly every TV program mentioning Yellowstone that I’ve ever seen. This was the place that I wanted to see above all others, not Old Faithful with its hordes of tourists or the bubbling paint pots or the stepped Mammoth Hot Springs. I wanted to see the amazing splash of colors that is the Midway Geyser Basin and it did not disappoint.
The Excelsior Geyser had some of the deepest blue waters I’ve ever seen. It also put out huge amounts of steam that reflected the blues and oranges from below, very ethereal and dreamlike. The full scope of the Grand Prismatic Spring below is hard to see from ground level, you can just make out the rainbow of colors stretching away from you when the wind is blowing just right, this one you really need to see from the air to fully appreciate but its still worth checking out on foot.
The Midway Geyser Basin was crowded with the narrowish walkways but not too bad compared to Old Faithful. The parking-lot is relatively small and was filled to overcapacity, times like this is when its really an advantage to be on a motorcycle where you can park anywhere. Because of the small parking lot I don’t think it could ever get much busier than when we saw it.
Continue reading Midway Geyser Basin
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By Lynx, on July 4th, 2010 Its always been our philosophy to take the road less traveled, to stay off the Interstates and major highways of sameness with a McD’s and Walmart on every corner and experience the Real America along the back roads. So of course on our first day in the park we made a bee-line for some of the smaller sideroads within Yellowstone mentioned by our fabulous Frommer’s Yellowstone and Grand Teton Guide.
Firehole Spring
The spectacular Firehole Lake Drive is a small one way loop down the road from Old Faithful and the Midway Geyser Basin. If you want to escape the crowds and have some beautiful scenery mostly to yourself check it out, its not on the way to any of the major tourist spots and the enterance is easily passed by and missed by those hurridly rushing around to get to the next thing on their must see list. Like I said earlier, take your time to enjoy and see places in Yellowstone or in your haste to quickly see as much as possible you’ll end up missing everything.
In-fact I was looking for the road and still ended up missing it and had to turn around and go back 😉
White Dome Geyser
Continue reading Firehole Lake Drive
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By Lynx, on July 3rd, 2010 What could these hundreds of people be sitting around watching?
And waiting for over an hour for?
Watching a big hole in the ground, waiting for a pot of water to boil. Kinda amusing.
Note: When you show up at Old Faithful and there’s hundreds of people walking the other way, its best to just walk down the trails and see the other geysers in the area instead of waiting. Our feet were killing us from walking all day anyway and a rest break seemed nice and we got front row center seats, best in the house, unfortunately its a heck of a long boring wait for anything to happen. A couple of other motorcyclists joined us and then a few more a while later.
I guess the bikers are ok with sitting down and taking their time to take it all in while all the other tourists are too busy rushing around to see everything and wind up experiencing nothing at all.
Continue reading Old Faithful Geyser Basin
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By Lynx, on July 2nd, 2010 Ok, On to Yellowstone! Like I always say it’s never an adventure if everything goes according to plan.
Thanks to a tip from our campground neighbor we knew we had to leave super early to beat the road construction near the southern entrance that starts at 8am. We left early, and they decided to close the road extra early as well. It was about 40 degrees and we were stuck on the side of the road in the shadows of tall trees on a mountain pass in some light rain, we froze our butts off!
They held us there shivering for a half hour in the rain. We were so misirible and cold that when they did let us go Cece had us pull over at one of the first campgrounds we came to instead of Norris, one of the better more secluded ones with less people that several people had recommended to us as well as my guide books. Grant Village campground is still along the mountain ridge on the southern side of the park, and unfortunately for us it stayed under a permanent cloud bank and rained every night and off and on through the days we stayed here. A few miles north of our campground the rain ended and it stayed mostly sunny. We picked the worst place to camp! After a few days of never ending rain back at camp we pulled up stakes and fled to a different campground.
Continue reading On to Yellowstone
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By Lynx, on July 1st, 2010
Antler Arches on the Plaza in Jackson Hole Wyoming. With huge herds of elk that shed their antlers every year you have to do something with all of them. The local Boy Scouts collect them each year and sell the antlers at public auction on the plaza each May. So of course besides the arches there were antler wreaths, antler chairs and furniture, antler chandeliers etc all over town.
I like Jackson Hole, it has that old west feel like where I grew up in Lincoln County, NM.
They also had killer sculptures at art galleries all over town. It reminded me a lot of Santa Fe my current home. One of the gallery owners was also a bike rider and also used to live in Santa Fe gave us many great tips on good motorcycle roads and places to check out. He told us that the 5 biggest art markets by dollars sold were: New York City, LA, Santa Fe, Chicago, then Jackson WY. Wow who knew? both Santa Fe and Jackson are tiny population wise.
Continue reading Jackson Hole, Wyoming
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By Lynx, on June 30th, 2010
Emily had graciously let us crash with them for a night but unfortunately Mother-in-law was coming that weekend and we got the boot. Cant have those unsavory bikers hanging around.
Went to get a camp site and this is what they gave us. We couldnt figure out how exactly you’re supposed to lock this bear box, it was the only one like this that we saw, and ontop of that theres a big fresh bear print right on the side that hadnt been washed away by all the rain. Uhh no thanks! We went back and complained and they kindly gave us another spot.
Our new site next door was much nicer, with a bear box that actually works! I was a bit concerned that we were supposed to leave all our stuff in here and it didnt actually lock to keep other people out. More on this later.
Like most other campgrounds almost everyone was friendly. Our neighbor for two days was a retired technology consultant for the pharmaceutical industry now living just outside the park in Idaho and here for some photography for a book he was working on. We’d talk and laugh and chat for hours of each others travels around our lantern, in fact it was hard to politely tell him we needed to get some sleep. Thats the great thing about these national park campgrounds, you never know who you’ll meet.
We talked to everyone in our loop of the campground, everyone was curious about the motorcycle with the strange yellow plate and how we ever fit so much stuff on it when it takes an SUV to carry the same for them. Everywhere we’ve been so far people have come right up to talk to us, I suppose with a little girl in pink we arent as threatening as a bunch of pirates on loud Harlies 😉 Everyone except the campers on the other side of us that is who didn’t talk to a soul and never looked at anyone and only rarely seen outside their tent.
Continue reading Robbed
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By Lynx, on June 29th, 2010
Finally made it to the Tetons! The area is as beautiful as I had imagined it would be. My parents tell me I’ve been wanting to come here almost my whole life, any time we were given a family vote on where to go for vacation this is what I said. It’s been an interesting life’s journey to get here but I’m finally here where I almost feel like I belong.
We did end up getting lost though. We were supposed to meet Emily at her house in Moose but instead of following the directions in my head from the phone I thought I must have heard them wrong and turned around literally like 1/2 mile from our destination. Instead we wound up 8 miles down a rough and muddy backcountry dirt road full of deep pot holes. Pretty trail but after the very long haul all day the engine was nice and toasty and the exhaust much louder than normal. All the hikers and wildlife photographers just glared as we rumbled past weaving through the potholes. Sorry! Its not normally this loud 😉
Emily and Matt who kindly loaned us their 5th wheel for a night and gave some welcome recommendations of what to see when and sent us to try the outstanding nachos from Signal Mountain Lodge. The kids have gotten big since I last saw them.
Continue reading Grand Teton National Park
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By Lynx, on June 28th, 2010 Not so much from our day across Wyoming, not a whole lot to see except rolling hills till we got into the mountains. I will say that Wyoming has the nicest smoothest pavement I’ve ever been on. They even had warning signs: 40MPH Caution Road Damage Ahead. The first couple of them we’d slam on the brakes to see one or two grapefruit sized pot holes.. That’s it? That’s what I had to slow down for?
Fossil Butte was barely a speck on the map and we only found out about it a day or two earlier, its tiny, hours from anything, and ended up being pretty darn cool.
I made the mistake AGAIN of believing that just because there’s dots on the map that one of these places must be big enough to have a gas station. We almost didn’t go to Fossil Butte, by the time we got there we passed through several non existent towns, not even a scrap of wood or foundation to show there had even been something there and we were way low on fuel. Fossil Butte was 4 miles off the road, or 8 total, it’d be close.. a coin toss decided that we’ll never be this way again we might as well go and deal with running out of gas later. I’m glad we went, its an amazing place.
They had a timeline of earth’s history spread out along the four mile road and up the railing to the building. Pretty cool to get a grasp of just how long a geologic age is and how short of an eye-blink of geologic time humans have been around.
Continue reading Fossile Butte National Monument
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