Date: 1/10
City: Roswell, New Mexico
Miles ridden: 244
Cumulative miles: 12208
We had a nice breakfast in our hotel. The breakfast room looked great, something different from all other hotels.
We made a small detour and drove along the scenic loop out of Los Alamos.
Leaving the area of Los Alamos brought us to plains, flat and nothing to see up to the horizon. We were riding a short while on the old route 66, so we stopped at Clines and filled our bikes up. We met a fellow bike rider, Jeff. We had a brief chat and he invited us to stay at his house. It was 100 miles out of Roswell, so we would visit him when we leave Roswell. These remote roadhouses on the crossing of two main roads mostly have nice meals, this one was no exception. After our lunch, we took some pictures and went to our bike.
When I took off Sigrid dropped her bike, we both are not sure why. Two Harley rider came to aid, but when they arrived, the bike was up again (Embarrassment gives you strenght! ;)). Anyway, no harm done, rider and bike are ok.
We arrived in Roswell around 16:00 and had a lazy afternoon. We haven’t seen any Aliens so far, they all look all normal 😉
Date: 2/10
City: Roswell, New Mexico
Miles ridden: 8
Cumulative miles: 12216
Today is the day. Our mission for today is to find out if in 1947 Aliens were captured here or not. 1947, hmm, I remember the headlines a bit ;). So we went to the most trusted source – the UFO Museum/Research centre. When we arrived, we put a pin of our hometown into a world map. These pins get removed at the end of the month. Since it was the 2nd October, hardly any pins where in. Looking at Australia, there were pins in Perth and Melbourne, and I could see holes in the most remote towns in Australia. Someone must have come from a farm in wup wup. To be honest, I was surprised about the amount research that has been done for this exhibition, in particular about the events following 14 June 1947. The exhibition showed a timeline with pictures, comments and official statements to show what happened. In the end, everybody has to make up their own mind about it, so no definitive outcome. Well, until we came around the corner. There they were. Aliens, just landed in the museum 🙂
I asked if I could get a picture with them, they were happy to oblige 😀
After this revelation, we went to a shop around the corner that sold T Shirts and souvenirs, to have a coffee. And guess what, there were even more
When we saw an entry that was marked as Area 51 we had to have look.
So as usual, we got abducted; the Aliens took us into their space ship. At the beginning, Sigrid had a bit of a problem with the weightlessness,
But she got used to it after a while. We were amazed how similar their daily routine and their accessories are to ours. After work they wedge out as we do, and they were very hospitable, as you can see. One did actually a BBQ for us… But there was no beer in the cooler, they take it drunk flying very seriously around here.
After a while Sigrid was asking if they could do something about her grey hair. They said they don’t have hair but they could give it a try. So they examined Sigrid and then they tried.
Having said that, something went wrong there. When he pulled the leaver the space ship crashed. Luckily, the pilot managed to minimise the damage, so nobody was hurt during the crash 🙂
So we all got out, and the Capitan went off to call a tow ship.
After all that, we said good bye and went to a pub for a beer. Guess what…….
So is there any question if there are Aliens around ?…… 😀
What a day, we really enjoyed it. Tomorrow we will visit Jeff and then heading towards Phoenix.
Date: 26 – 27/09
City: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Miles ridden: 0
Cumulative miles: 11597
Not much happened during these two days. Since we will enter Mexico in 2-3 weeks, we thought we better have a closer look at our Mexico plans. So we looked at all the travel advisory from the US, Australian and German government. Nothing new for us, not much has changed in the last year. We looked for border procedures, how to get our tourist visa and our bike import permit and how much the ferry costs from Baja to the mainland. We adjusted our Mexico route to enter Mexico via Baja and not via the mainland. In addition we had a look where we would do our last motorbike service and where we could send bits and pieces that needed replacement. So we did lots of boring things that just chews up your time but is necessary for the trip. In addition, Wombats SSD drive (Solid State Disk, a computer hard disk without moving parts) spit the dummy. His laptop wouldn’t boot and it took Sigrid and Wombat a day to recover it. During this time it started to hail, we were really lucky that we used this day for our preparation.
At night we went out for our last dinner that we would have together for at least one year. Colorado Springs was the final place that the four of us visited together, Wombat and Val would stay in the US until December and then return to Australia, while we will continue our trip to Ushuaia, then return to the US next year and finish our trip with the Alaska bit that we missed that year. Anyway, after a nice dinner, we had a dip in the hot tub and went to bed.
Date: 28/09
City: Great Sand Dunes NP, Colorado
Miles ridden: 202
Cumulative miles: 11799
We meet with Wombat and Val for breakfast and found that the first bit of the day we could still travel together. So we packed the bikes had the last group picture of us and our critters and off we went.
We stopped at the Royal Gorge and had a look at the world’s highest suspension bridge. The right picture shows the depth of the Gorge.
There is nothing special about the grass in the next picture, I just like it.
Then we had our last coffee together, took our last group picture and said good bye to Wombat and Val. We traveled together for nearly four month and did see a lot of amazing things together, it was a bit of a sad moment.
So Sigrid and I took off to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Apparently it is great to climb up to the top and we could look over the dunes at the full moon. Guess what, today/tomorrow is full moon, so we were really lucky to be there at the right time. When we arrived at our accommodation, around 6 PM, we settled in the room,took some pictures of the dunes and the sunset, had dinner and headed off to a ranger tour in the national park.
The dunes are the small sandhills in the middle, just before the mountain.
The ranger tour was very interesting, particular the stories from the Native American about the moon and the sun. The tour ended at the foot of the dunes and the ranger gave us the option to go back to the parking lot and have a look at the moon through the telescope or to climb the dunes. By the way, we learned that the dunes were a bit higher then they looked, the top of the dunes was around 190m, but we gave it a go. We followed a ridge since the sand seemed to be a bit harder there, well for most of the time. Sometimes it got so soft that we nearly tumbled. And there was the wind that blows the sand around us, into the clothes, eyes, ears and mouth. Well the moon was out and cast a shadow, but it was not bright enough to see where we were stepping. So in the end, we turned around, ¾ of the way. Mental note, don’t try to climb 200m dunes at full moon, try it at sun set 😛. Here are some pictures of us in the dunes.
We enjoyed the climb and went back completely exhausted. Since the accommodation was completely booked for the rest of the weekend we will continue tomorrow to Los Alamos but not without getting back to the dunes and having a closer look during the day!
When I removed the cover from the bike in the morning a bison was happily strolling behind the building. I got the camera out and took a couple of pictures.
We started a bit earlier today, since we had to cover around 200 miles of mostly national park, so the speed limit would be around 35mph. It was freezing cold but we had our Gerbins heated jackets. Long live Gerbins! They were /wonderfully/ warm. After we entered the Yellowstone National Park we saw large Bison herds gazing close to the road. At one stage there was a Bison on a narrow road, so we stopped and let the it pass.
When the Bison was at Wombat and Vals level, they took off and the Bison looked a bit stressed… which was quite unnerving. I captured it all on the bike camera, but the 172 degree lens doesn’t help to show the size and how close the Bison was. Here is the first attempted to add a movie clip to the blog, if this works there will be more! (You’ll have to comment and tell me 😉 )
We continued to ride through Yellowstone and stopped at the West Thumb Geyser Basin. It’s the smallest geyser basins in Yellowstone but its location along the shore of Yellow-stone Lake is quiet scenic. We had lunch and walked around the geysers and took a couple of pictures 🙂
Not long after the break we left the Yellowstone National Park to enter the Grand Tetons National Park. At this time there were multiple wild fires burning in Colorado and Idaho and the smoke clouded the view so most of the mountains were hardly visible in the background.
At around 17:00 we arrived at our accommodation, the ‘Sassy Moose Inn’.
We had a lovely breakfast, cooked by our host ‘Natasha’ (on the right).
After such a nice breakfast, we decided to stay a day longer. We updated our blogs most of the day. Around 16:00 we rode to the Granite Hot Springs. Val hadn’t finishes her blog and opted to stay. This trip was suggested to us by our host. Most of the way was paved but the last 10 miles were dirt road, so Sigrid chose to come two up on my bike. The road was not too bad but exciting enough for me with two up. The pool was sitting in the middle of nowhere, a single wooden house with the pool surrounded by mountains.
I really enjoyed it but was a bit nervous about the way back. The sun was setting and I didn’t like to ride on a dirt road in the dark, particular when we have to watch out for wildlife as well. So we got out, rugged up, had a short look at the waterfall nearby and then went back to the Sassy Moose.
We arrived without any problems. I was happy that I managed 20 miles of dirt road without dropping the bike, but I’m sure we will have plenty of that in Middle and South America. In the evening we talked to another couple from the US and decided to have a Mad Had evening. Maybe I should let my hair grow a bit longer 😛
Date: 20/09
City: Fort Bridger, Wyoming
Miles ridden: 211
Cumulative miles: 10978
We organized accommodation in Fort Bridger, which was a distance of around 200 miles. We decided to go a slightly longer way, so we could go through Idaho. After we packed up and were ready to go, Wombat discovered that he had a flat tyre (doesn’t look as flat on the picture).
Wombat got his plug tools out and fixed the tyre.
Just to be safe, we decided to get a tube fitted. So after some phone calls, we found a bike shop that had a matching tube and would fit it as well. So off we went – only a couple of miles down the road to the workshop – where Jamie (the owner) had a look and started to work on it immediately.
After that we were off. We had a great ride through a mountain area where the trees where red, yellow and green, a magnificent view. Then we entered Idaho.
Ten miles later, we left Idaho again.
And were going back to Wyoming. Around 17:00 we arrived in Fort Bridger. There were two options for accommodation, the cheap one (left) and the not so cheap one (right). We opted for the ‘expensive’ option 😛
Date: 21/09
City: Steamboat Springs, Colorado
Miles ridden: 274
Cumulative miles: 11252
Packed up early, since we had a long day in front of us. First we had to fill up the bikes up, so we went to the petrol station. I must have still been asleep when I scratched a concert stump with my pannier, so I put the bike down gently… !@#$%, picked it up and was ready to go again. I found my excuse though, the stump had an uninstructive colour the same as the petrol pump. Easy to miss! You can see it in the picture below.
First we crossed the border to Utah, and the landscape changed from plains to mountains again.
After a while we entered the ‘Flaming Gorge National Park’, a mountain range near a huge lake. The roads became windier with some switchbacks, it was really wonderful. However the smoke of the wildfires in Wyoming and Idaho still obscured the view.
The mountain range started to flatten out gain and we entered Colorado.
The landscape became a bit more dessert like and we were riding through large plains. We read in the Tripadvisor that our next stop, the hotel in Steamboat Springs was not easy to find and they were right. After asking around we finally found it. After some maintenance on the bikes (in my case, making the small adjustments required after putting the bike on the side this morning), Sigrid and I went to the hot tub. It’s a hard life 😉
Date: 22/09
City: Estes Park, Colorado
Miles ridden: 138
Cumulative miles: 11390t
Wombat and Val were in a bit of a hurry this morning, so they left before us. We finished packing and started a bit later. I really liked the landscape with the different colours (the camera doesn’t do the colours justice).
With autumn comes low temperatures, so in the next township we stopped to have a coffee and get our Gerbins jackets out. We stopped at a nice little cafe and stayed much longer than planned. Sitting in the sun on a Hollywood swing with a nice cup of coffee, why should I leave? 😀
There were two nice sayings in the shop, I guess it is hard to read them, so they say
What wold you attempt to do if you know you couldn’t fail?
and on the right it says
Until you make peace with who you are you’ll never be content with what you have.
Anyway, we continued our trip casually, since we had only 90 miles left to our destination. We were riding along a large lake passing a car park, when we saw a luminescent yellow motorcycle jacket on the car park. As we rode past we saw that it was Val and Wombat. Wombats bike was unpacked and the back wheel was removed. Wombat had collected a nail when they left a viewing point. The tyre lost the air quite suddenly, but Wombat kept the bike under control. That was the second flat tyre in two days, if this becomes a habit we have to plan more time for our trips ;-). So Wombat got the nail out the tyre, glued the tube, put the tube in, set the bead and fitted the tyre to the bike.
After the tyre was pumped up we were riding to the Rocky Mountain National Park. We just rode through the park, over a 12000 feet mountain pass. Firstly the road started off as pine forest, but above the tree line, the landscape changed to mostly rocks.
At one view point we saw some Marmots running around, they are really cute.
The view was stunning, on the picture left below you can see the street with cars at the distance.
At one view point, Val and Sigrid performed the synchronized Gerbins dance 😛
Just before we reached the hotel, we found a deer grazing on the side of the road.
We arrived at the hotel, had some tea and had an early night.
Date: 23/09
City: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Miles ridden: 168
Cumulative miles: 11558
The plan today was just to get to Colorado Springs, it was an easy day with only 168 miles. It was a pleasant ride through curvy mountain roads. We arrived without any flat tyres 😀
Date: 24/09
City: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Miles ridden: 29
Cumulative miles: 11587
We decided to stay longer here and do some preparation and get some stuff sent to us. Val organized tickets for the cog railway to get to the top of Pikes Peak, a mountain with approximately 14000 feet (4.3km) highs. The train was quite comfortable but you had to hang on your seats since the rails had an incline up to 25%. Unfortunately the weather started to come in. We did know it, but the weather forecast for the next three days was even worse, so we took our chance.
It was freezing and very windy when we left the train at the top. I was happy to have our Gerbins under the motorcycle jacket.
There was a road leading up to the top and we saw a couple of cars and even one motorcyle, I think he underestimated the temperature. Sigird couldn’t resist throwing a snowball at me. I tried to convince her to throw it at Wombat, but with no success 😉
We arrived home safe and planned to get new tyres for Sigrid’s bike tomorrow and do some shopping.
Date: 25/09
City: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Miles ridden: 10
Cumulative miles: 11597
I called the workshop in the morning to ensure that the tyre was there and that it could be fitted. So we left around lunch time, dropped the bike off and had a stroll through Colorado Springs. We found this sign, I think Ryan will agree and we found half a Porsche sitting on a wall (he might have been divorced).
Anyway we had some lunch and during this time the weather changed. It was cold and raining. So we picked Sigrid’s bike up, briefly went shopping, Sigrid got a haircut and then we went home. At this time we were a bit wet and cold, since we forgot our wet weather gear at the hotel. We could see the mountains from our room and it had clearly snowed.
The hot tub was calling. Tomorrow we stay in our hotel and do some planning.
Date: 17/09
City: Cooke City, Montana
Miles ridden: 104
Cumulative miles: 13616
The morning was a bit crisp; we had a bit of ice on our cover. I think we should really start to move south. The scenery was stunning, just a couple of pictures.
We kept climbing and the landscape became sparse. It had rainded yesterday and at this altitude we could see some snow on the mountains and at the side of the road and Sigrid couldn’t resist making a snowball and throwing it 🙂
At one stop we saw a herd of Mountain goats passing.
We kept climbing and finally got to the highest point, the view was great.
And then there was the way down.
We took every opportunity to stop and have a look around, that meant that it took us four hours for 60 miles, I guess it’s holiday speed. After a short meal at Red Lodge we turned around and went home, this time we had to hurry a bit since we didn’t want to ride in the dark.
So we stopped only occasionally to take some pictures and made it home before sunset.
Tomorrow we will ride through Yellowstone NP, the Grand Teton NP to Jackson.
Date: 16/09
City: Cooke City, Montana
Miles ridden: 82
Cumulative miles: 13430
It was Vals birthday today. We just organized some sort of cake -a metal cookie box – and put candles on it. We sang happy birthday to Val, what a disturbing to start a new year 🙂
Before we settled our noble steeds, I cleaned our bikes, just to ensure that Val and Wombat would still ride with us 😉
It was a bit cloudy today, so we couldn’t see the Chief Joseph highway in all its glory, but it was impressive enough for me and it was fun to ride.
We had a short stop on a bridge which was going over a step cliff. We found the sign at the beginning of the bridge, not sure what else is prohibited, maybe camping?
That was the view from the bridge and to have a reference, there is Wombat taking pictures on the other side -the white dude- on the top middle of the third photo.
After we arrived in Cooke City, we had a look for dinner. The whole City only had one main road, so not too many choices. In the end we found a great pub with good food and a beautiful view. Here we celebrated Val’s birthday again, and after singing in the pub, the bartender offered Val a free drink (I guess to shut us up 😛), and as you can see, Wombat got horny…
Tomorrow we will ride the Beartooth Path, twice. Apparently it’s one of the best motorcycle rides in the USA, so I’ll keep my camera charged.
Date: 13/09
City: Cody,Wyoming
Miles ridden: 102
Cumulative miles: 13430
We waited for the sun to rise before we got up, it was freezing cold (must be below 0C). After breakfast Val and I performed the synchronized Sun Warm dance, well the results are debatable but it was fun.
The facilities provided were quite nice, with the toilet block and the enclosed dishwashing room which should ensure that bears don’t get attracted by the smell of scraps and dishwashing detergent.
So we slowly packed our stuff, some with more force than others 😛
We left around 12:00 and only had to ride a bit more than 100 miles, so no rush. But just before we left, Val saw our only bear in Yellowstone, and it was close to our tents.
We had a short stop at a house that had a stack of antlers in front of it, apparently the Reindeer loose them at the end of the year, so you just have to pick them up.
We arrived in Cody around 16:00, just enough time to settle into our room, drop Wombat’s and Val’s bike at the workshop for maintenance and go back to the city to see some actors performing a shootout in front of the Irma Motel. Irma was one of Buffalo Bills daughters. The performance was funny and noisy, since they used real blanks for the shootout.
Not much happen on this day except that we caught up with our blog. In the evening we picked Wombat’s and Val’s bike up and guess what, the workshop cleaned their bikes, they looked like new. We should see if we can get this done on our next maintenance as well 😉
We decided to stay a day longer and have a look at the Buffalo Bill Historical Centre; apparently it hosts five different exhibitions.
Lucky that we attended a guided tour, the guide did have some samples of Native American tools. We were impressed what they used from a buffalo, there was no wastage at all. The exhibition had a 150 year old Tepee, one made out of Bison hide. We also learned that not all Indians lived in Tepee’s and were hunter. Some tribes lived in mud houses and were farmers. Most of them died due to European diseases, like measeles which wiped out 90% of a village in two weeks.
After the native Indian exhibition we moved into the art exhibition, well I didn’t take any pictures there. The next and final museum on the tour was the weapon museum, which contained more than 3000 original weapons, from the first guns used by the spaniels to the latest automatic weapon.
After the tour we had a look at the Buffalo Bill Exhibition which illustrated the life of Buffalo Bill including some tools and wagons.
Then we had a look at the downstairs exhibition, which showed the Gunfighters of the time with a bit of history about each of them.
Then we had a brief look at the Yellowstone exhibition, which was showing different animals and their environment. By this time it was 17:00 and they kicked us out of the museum. On our way out we took a couple of pictures of William Cody (Buffalo Bill) with our mascots.
Well, that was another marvellous day – and tomorrow we will ride the Chief Joseph highway and stay in Cooke City overnight.
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.
Date: 08/09
City: Gillette, Wyoming
Miles ridden:204
Cumulative miles: 12752
We packed the bikes and off we went, trying to use as many back roads as we could. On the way to Spearfish we came along a beautiful gorge with nice curves and a river running parallel to the road.
We stopped at a water fall, but there was not too much water, it must be too late in the season.
And here is my attempt to get arty with our bikes.
While I was taking the pictures of our companions,
We saw somebody climbing up the mountain (on the left picture, the blue dot close to the left top corner), it must be a nice few from the top – Simon or Garth, any interest? 😛 [Edit: Simon says yes!]
We walked around the base.
On the next picture, can you find Sigrid crocs? J
And there were more rock climbers on the other side of the tower, not sure if the eagle was waiting for them?
Then we hopped back onto the bikes and left the park. On the way out, I saw some prairie dogs and here are some pictures of it J
We arrived in Gillette and had an early night. Tomorrow we will ride to Cody, just in front of Yellowstone National Park.
Date: 07/09
City: Rapid City, Montana
Miles ridden: 30
Cumulative miles: 12548
Val was better today, so we planned to see the Bear Country, a wild life park with the advertisement ‘Your car is your safety cage’. We called before we went to ensure that there is a way for us motorcyclist to visit the park, and there was, in the form of a courtesy car. When we arrived we saw some nice wood carvings at the cashier.
So we left our bikes at the car park and got into the courtesy car. First we went through the dear enclosure.
Then we had a look at the wolves, but most of them were sleeping.
Then through the reindeer enclosure
And then we entered the bear enclosure. Two bears were patrolling the entry, but they couldn’t leave due to the grid on the ground. It looked like they had their eye on the young goats in the neighbouring enclosure.
In the enclosure there were plenty of bears roaming around and we were quite happy to be in a car with closed windows.
When we were at the end of the enclosure, some bears started to run towards the exit. After looking around we saw that a service car with food approached the gate. So we decided to drive around a second time. This time we saw some more animals in other enclosures, which were sleeping before. Now they got up for lunch 🙂
So we got a better look at the mountain goats,
Mountain sheep
And then there were bears again, this time munching on their lunch (looked like huge dog food pallets).
When we left the enclosure we saw a Bison family on the side of the road. They are huge and I would not like to run into the bull with a motor cycle. Come to think of it, I’d not like to run into it with any vehicle at all.
After the second round we had enough, so we parked the courtesy car and walked to the baby zoo and the souvenir shop – no, we don’t have room on our bikes and customs don’t allow importing wood or fur products anyway 😉
In the shop we found a grizzly bear that lived in the park a couple of years ago, have a look at the size
After the shop we had a look at the enclosures with the young animals. On the way we found more nice wood carvings.
In the enclosure there were Badgers
Wolves, Lynx’s
and of course baby black bears
and a Grizzly bear (not sure if this was a young one as well).
We spend nearly the whole day in the wild life park, so in the end we were a bit tired and hungry. On our way back we had a stop at the ‘Berlin Wall’ exhibits which have the biggest bit of the Berlin Wall in the USA.
When we came back to the hotel, we realized that there is no happy hour on Fridays. Bummer! Today was the only day where we were at the bar on time. Ok, so we used the time for planning our trip to the Yellowstone national park and booked accommodation in Gillette for the next day.
It will be a shorter day with a detour past Devils Tower 🙂
Date: 06/09
City: Rapid City, South Dakota
Miles ridden: 164
Cumulative miles: 12518
Val didn’t feel well today so the three of us went to the Ellsworth Air and Space Museum, all of us curios but not sure what to expect. When we arrived we could see the airplanes outside and a building in the back. So we started to walk around and have a look at all the airplanes outside. To our surprise, we found an ‘Candy Bomber’ (Rosinen Bomber), the type of airplane that supplied Berlin during the blockade. Reading to the sign explained that a group involved in this conflict was stationed at the Ellsworth Airbase.
Then there were multiple huge airplanes but I don’t like to bore anybody, so I just put a couple of pictures up with a sign with some explanation.
The next plane was too big to get onto one picture.
Then we went into the building which housed a museum, so we went in and started to wander around when I heard an announcement that the guided tour to the air base would start in 15 minutes and that would include a walk into the missile launch facility.
Cool, so we paid the entrance fee, did the paperwork to get our clearance and off we went. A bus took us around the airplanes with some additional explanation, then went onto the airbase to a training launch facility. It was really impressive to see how the system was laid out. It has a separation of the launch facilities, the command centre and different groups. Under certain conditions, each group could launch missiles of other groups. The picture below shows the setup in South Dakota.
All the launch facilities are now decommissioned and we learned that only one missile was ever fired, with fuel for only seven seconds, and this was for a testing purpose. After the launch of the missile the launch facility melted and to build a new one would cost 1Million Dollars. The technology in the launch facility looked dated, but it was designed in the 50th and at this time it was cutting edge of technology.
Below is the rocket in the launch pad.
Security was a major concern, so to do some maintenance; two different crews had to enter the code to open the service hatch. I thought I might give it a try 😀
Anyway, it was a really interesting visit and on our way out of the airbase we saw a B52 (the big plane, that didn’t fit on the picture above) doing touch and go, this time I got the whole plane on the picture.
After looking at more planes, we decided that it was time to move on to the Badlands National Park, which has a special stone formation. On our way there was the Wall Drug, a large drugstore in the city of Wall.
When we arrived, it was time for late lunch, particular with a cup of coffee for five cents! Walking through the shop we found that they sell all types of things but luckily we don’t have space on our bikes, and definitely no space for another guy 😉
Now we were on our way to the Badlands, which was only 20 miles from Wall.
Below are just a couple of pictures of the park. As before, the park didn’t fail to amaze us again. The stone formation at the back looks like the shape of a village (well, at least for me).
At some places, the colour was just amazing.
The road on the picture shows the dimension of the rock formations.
And then the rocks open up to the plains.
And there were the prairie dogs, we had seen them before, but I still like to watch and take pictures of them 😀
Looking from a mountain onto the plains we could see how a river carves its way.
Just a couple of more pictures, trust me, this is only a small selection 😉
We had to rush home not to miss the happy hour in the hotel, we have to get the priories right 😉
