Date: 09/09
City: Cody, Wyoming
Miles ridden:243
Cumulative miles : 12995

We started a bit earlier today since we had to ride more than 200 miles. After the first seventy miles, we had a coffee stop in Buffalo. Up to then we were riding on the Interstate 90, which is pretty boring. From here the Rocky Mountain range started, and the riding got more interesting. We crossed the Powder River Pass and had a short break there.

Val was praying that her bike would start…   just joking, Val tried to take a picture of us.

After a ride through a great mountain range,

.

 

we had another stop at a town called Ten Sleep on a nice green lawn area, which meant it was time for a power nap.

From here it was around 60 miles to Cody, our destination. The landscape changed dramatically, from flat plains to mountain ranges.

We arrived at Cody and checked into the cabin that we booked in the morning.

Date: 10/09
City: Grant Village, Yellowstone ,Wyoming
Miles ridden:104
Cumulative miles: 13099

We didn’t sleep very well last night, it was a bit loud. Around 6AM people started to drag their luggage across the pebble way on both sides of our log cabin, then the bus came, reversing with a beep, beep…, then closing the luggage compartments with a loud bang and then, finally, blissful quiet.

Well at least for the next ten minutes. Then the next bus arrived, and so on, you get the picture.

At 8 AM we were really aggravated and Sigrid went to complain, so we got a free breakfast voucher. The breakfast was very nice and after breakfast we booked a camp site in Yellowstone and packed up. On our way we passed the ‘Buffalo Bill Dam’

On our way to the park, we passed by a very unique house, the Smith Mansion

Not long after that we arrived at the entry of the Yellowstone National Park. On our way we saw large areas of dead trees most likely due to a bush fire. From one view point we could see the Yellowstone Lake; which was much bigger than we expected.

An hour later we arrived at the camp site. We realised that we were in a communication black hole, no internet and no phone service. Can we survive this for three days ?!? 😛
The camp sites were large enough for the four of us, so we cancelled the booking for one site. After setting up the tent we went shopping for food and some fire wood.

We started a bonfire and tried our dehydrated food, it tasted quite nice. We topped it up with some chips and some beer. Went to bed early, but before we had to pack every food and toiletry item into a bear safe locker.

Date: 11/09
City: Grant Village, Yellowstone, Wyoming
Miles ridden: 67
Cumulative miles: 13166

Got up at 8AM, it was still freezing cold. After cooking some coffee and having some cereal, we decided to do a short loop to the Old Faithful Geyser. The picture on the right shows Wombat and Val trying to get warm in the sun.

Our first stop was at the Kepler Cascades. We took a couple of pictures on our way back we met Rob from Amsterdam. He does the same trip as we do (Alaska to Argentina), only on a pushbike, and we thought we were the adventurous ones!

The next stop was the Old Faithful Geyser. We sat around the geyser and waited until it blew off some stream..

After the eruption, we discovered that there was a 1.8 mile hiking track that led to other geysers, so we took a hike. I was surprised to see how many different types of geyser you could have, in particular the blue colour in some of them.

On the other side of the small river was a Bison, just grazing among the geysers. The geysers along the river looked like bonfires.

Some trees close to a geyser where completely white and reminding me of winter.

There were all sorts of different shapes and forms of geysers around, some of them erupting every couple of minutes others only once a day. Below just a couple of pictures from different geysers.

You can imagine, it took us much longer to do the short hike than we thought, so a change of plans was in order. We decided to go to Madison, the next township, but guess what, we didn’t make it either, we got stuck at the Midway Geyser Basin. We saw a small steamy creak running into a river, so we stopped to have a short look. We got onto a board walk.

At the top of the hill we saw a crater covered in steam.

The other side of the boardwalk was always covered in steam, which made a nice backdrop for pictures.

By this time it was too late to go to the next township, so we returned to the restaurant at our campsite and had a nice meal. The huge advantage was that the restaurant was heated, unlike like our campsite. As the predicted lowest temperature for the night was -3C, we thought we give breakfast at our campsite a miss and have something at a breakfast place in the store around the corner.

Date: 12/09
City: Grant Village, Yellowstone, Wyoming
Miles ridden: 162
Cumulative miles: 13328

When we got up in the morning, we found some traces of ice on Wombats and Vals bike, so it was quite cold and were happy with our decision to have breakfast at the store. Well, that was the plan. When we arrived at 8 AM at the breakfast place we found the shop still closed, they open at 9AM! F@#$%. So we decided to ride to Old Faithfull Geyser and have a breakfast there. For this ride, we put everything on that we had, long johns, Gerbings heated liner under the bike jacket and heated gloves. As soon the bikes where running we cranked the temperature dial to get warm and toasty in our gear. A little while later, I opened the visor for a moment and notice that it was still freezing out there. On our way we passed a Bison which was just grazing along the edge of the road. We waited a moment to see if the Bison moves, thinking that at this temperature he might have been frozen overnight and just standing there. In the end he moved.

We arrived just after 9AM and had breakfast. Then we had to give in, we needed an internet connection to book the service for Wombats and Vals bike in Cody next Friday. So we moved to a hotel and booked the service plus accommodation in Cody for Thursday and Friday. After all that work we needed a rest, have a look how stressful a long vacation can be.

We continued our trip around 12:00 but we didn’t get very far before we stopped at the next attraction, the Fire hole Lake Drive. There were a couple of geysers, so we stopped, took a couple of pictures and continued..

When we came to the White Dome Geyser, it just erupted.

Most of the geysers have names, some are better than others, I liked the following one.

We had a walk around one geyser when we discovered Val trying to get a hot bath, she must be really cold.

I couldn’t resist taking plenty of pictures around the steaming geyser.

On our route were plenty of waterfalls, so we stopped and took some pictures. It is really hard to get a good picture of waterfall, but below are a couple of attempts.

Val enjoying herself after a hard day of waterfall watching.

Just before our half way mark, we were riding on impressive road structure on the Golden Gate, a light coloured volcanic rock face. The street was just tucked onto the rock face.

Then we arrived at the Mammoth Hot Springs, had a look at the springs before we continued to the township to fill up the bikes.

Just behind the petrol station we saw a deer family grazing, completely ignoring the people around.

By now it was around 15:00 and we had to rush home to make it back by daylight. The plan for tomorrow is to go back to Cody and get Wombat’s and Val’s bike serviced.