Dodge City Boot Hill Museum

We got into Dodge City, Kansas fairly late but there was a few hours left until Boot Hill Museum closed so we decided to check it out. Its about as much of a tourist trap as you can expect to find with lots of curio shop trinkets in the gift shops that you can get in other curio shops just about anywhere else and the Front Street mock up is just a facade like an old movie set. That being said I still thought it was a interesting place to see with all the artifacts, guns and things inside. You can get a sarsaparilla and watch a can-can show, unfortunately we were too late for that, see mock gun fights or get your name printed on various wanted posters from an antique printing press. People really into life in the Old West would enjoy the museum parts and kids would like the touristy and show bits.

Talking to some of the old locals in town later there seemed to be a bit of a love hate relationship with the Boot Hill Museum. First they didn’t like it because its fake and not authentic and too touristy and detracts from the real history of Dodge City. I can understand that, many places in New Mexico have done the same thing. They also said that they were sad that at the same time that pretty soon the Museum would be the only place left where people could see our history and the way things were. Apparently theres still a bit of a sore spot that all the graves were moved from Boot Hill Cometary and those old wounds had been reopened as more artifacts and things were discovered and relocated during the course of building a new highway through town that was still being worked on when we were there. I didn’t get the whole story on that. So these residents anyway loved that the museum had worked hard to collect and preserve and display all the artifacts showing how life used to be but at the same time the buildings and setting is artificial.

continue reading "Day 11 – Boot Hill Museum"

Tulsa 5 and Diner

It had been nice taking a break from the road to see the Zoo and hang out with my sister for a few days but we had to keep on going. We had wanted to see the Aquarium too but there just wasn’t enough time and tickets there were more expensive and they weren’t open as long, whats up with that?

The previous day we had taken my sister out to eat and on the way home passed by a old timey diner, conveniently located right next to the Harley dealership. You can guess where we ended up for breakfast the next morning. The Tulsa 5 & Diner was fabulous. The food was good but decor and ambiance just puts it at a new level. The diner had plenty of old motorcycle memorabilia on the walls and was complete with soda shop inside. Did I mention all the employees wore vintage uniforms as well, cool!

continue reading "Day 11 – Oklahoma to Kansas"

Green Acacari

More Tulsa Zoo pictures. They have quite a selection of stunning beautiful birds with vibrant colors. I didn’t have the patience to sit and wait for good shots of the birds, many were just too hyper active. If I couldn’t get a nice one in focus in 2 or 3 shots I moved on, its a big zoo The ones behind glass did not come out as well as I had hoped, the glass throws off my autofocus a hair. Of course the alternative is having them in a cage, those came out sharply in focus but then theres distracting bars in the foreground.

All in all we had a awesome time at the zoo and this was a great way to take a break from the road for a day, but by the end of walking miles and miles for 4 or 5 hours in motorcycle boots my feet were killing me. These boots were not made for walking. For our next epic motorcycle cross country trip we need to schedule more off days like this.

Heres some of the better bird pics we took for the day, enjoy.

continue reading "Day 10 – Tulsa Zoo (3): Birds"

Poison Arrow Frogs

The poison arrow frogs in the rain forest exhibit at the Tulsa Zoo were pretty amazing. They just had a small wall separating them from the walk way, I’m surprised they don’t jump out.

Cece’s a huge reptile fanatic and wanted pictures of everything for Bob, her boss at the American International Rattlesnake Museum, and I’m most interested in the cool fish so thats what the majority of all our Zoo pictures are of. Unfortunately, fish and reptiles are also the most difficult to photograph because everything is behind glass, camouflaged behind leaves, or in dark murky water. Some of them managed to come out ok, here they are.

Again, I tried to take pictures of the signs for everything so we’d know what they were later but if I forgot to label something that you know what it is, let us know in the comments. Thanks.

continue reading "Day 10 – Tulsa Zoo (2): Fish, Reptiles & Amphibians"

Taking the day off from the motorcycle journey today, about 3000 miles so far and another 5 days to go. We went to the Tulsa Zoo for most of the day and had a blast. Except for the fact that every elementary school in the surrounding area must have decided to take a field trip on this same day, each school class wore color coordinated shirts. The poorer schools just wore whatever. Lots of shouting screaming kids in enclosed places is not fun for the animals or me. Whichever direction they went we went the other.

Together we took close to 350 pictures at the Zoo so I’ve split this up into 3 posts for the better ones. I tried to put down the names of some of the exotic species, if you know what something is that I left off feel free to let me know in the comments. Enjoy.

continue reading "Day 10 – Tulsa Zoo"

Cypress Trees

continue reading "Day 8 – Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas"

Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church moved from Rodney, Mississippi

On our way to Vicksburg from Natchez Trace Parkway we saw a tiny sign for a civil war museum. The Grand Gulf Military Park was a pretty cool place, many original earthen fortifications were still in place. They have quite a few interesting artifacts from the area. Most of it is Civil War related but theres everything from mastodon bones to Indian tools to a bootleggers submarine too. Its definitely off the beaten path, its a ways down a narrow 2 lane road deep into the woods that feels like you must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. There was also these odd roadsign markers in tenths of a mile measurements that I eventually figured out were distance markers from a nuclear power plant hidden back in there too, yikes! I dont know what I was worried about, I lived in Los Alamos and think the Trinity Site is a cool place to visit, we already glow in the dark.

If passing through the area check it out:

- www.grandgulfpark.state.ms.us

(I’ll put up these new July Trip posts here for a while, then backdate them to July where they belong when they fall off the first page)

continue reading "Day 8 – Grand Gulf Military Park"

The AIS or Air Injection System on the Yamaha V Star 650 is designed to dilute the exhaust stream with fresh air to help burn unburned or incompletely burned fuel so the bike can pass emissions tests. Many cars have similar systems to get oxygen to the catalytic converters so the breakdown can happen. As far as I know the AIS has been on these bikes from the beginning and predate the later years where catalytic converters were put in the pipes and indeed other types of motorcycles had AIS or Pulse Air systems as BMW called it back into the late 70’s.

It seems to be the first thing people do with these systems when customizing their motorcycle is ripping them off and throwing them in the trash. Some of the reasons for this are simply to clean up the looks, and get rid of excess parts that could potentially fail and introduce air leaks. More importantly for people who install aftermarket pipes removing the AIS helps stop that annoying backfiring on deceleration, however, if it was tuned properly it wouldnt do that. If it was optimally tuned for your riding conditions from the factory it also wouldn’t need it, but bikes get shipped all over the world to many climates and altitudes so they have to use general settings that will work anywhere.

There is also the theory that removing the AIS causes the bike to run cooler because it is burning extra unburnt fuel and generating more heat that it otherwise wouldn’t have. I can confirm by closely monitoring my crankcase temperature gauge that my motorcycle does seem to run about 5-7C cooler with the AIS gone, on the other hand, I also had been doing lots of carb tweaks that week and cant entirely attribute it to only the AIS.

continue reading "V Star 650 AIS Removal"

I mentioned earlier that Vaughn and Encino were pretty cool towns to photograph. I snapped a few photos out the window of the car on my way through to visit my bud Lalo who’s recovering from a bad motorcycle wreck. Again in a hurry I didn’t get to stop for long, maybe in the future when I’m not in a rush I can look around off the main streets for some other cool shots.

continue reading "Vaughn, NM"

Was an absolutely beautiful day today. I spent the morning putting the bike back together and headed up the mountain to check out the fall colors and de-stress. The weather was perfect! Not too cold, not too hot. The sun was out with outstanding lighting.

I guess many others had the same idea as the roads were packed with cars and a fair number of bikes too. All were enjoying themselves. Got a few thumbs up from a few of the other motorists too, it felt good to be out.

continue reading "Fall Colors"