Day Thirteen - Chief Joseph & Beartooth

Today was our last day in Yellowstone. We woke to 32 degrees (yes, you read that right and we are not joking) with ice on the motorcycle covers from an early night rain. Upon hearing this, Julie said “I’m not happy about this. How much do you think a cab ride to Billings would be?” The guys packed the bikes quickly given the cold, we got to breakfast at 7am, and were on the road at 8am. By then the temperatures had risen to 37 degrees.

Not five minutes after our departure, we were met with a wall of thick fog. Michele joked that all we needed was a bison to be standing stubbornly in the middle of the road (they are not shy about doing this, as we’ve discovered over our four days).

 Her prediction came true soon after as a rather large bison sauntered right out into the road in front of us, took a look at us and kept going across the street!

The fog quickly lifted as we made our way towards the park entrance and Yellowstone provided us with some great parting views.

After about an hour’s ride, we made it to the southeast entrance of the park and sadly said goodbye to Yellowstone. (Michele’s note to future travelers, do NOT use the toilets right at this entrance as they do not meet any standards whatsoever.)

With the sun shining, the temperatures climbed quickly into the high 40s and into the 50s. We were thankful to enjoy the Buffalo Bill State Park this time with blue skies. The rock formations to our left and river to our right made a beautiful combination. Right after the park there is the Buffalo Bill dam, which is built into the yellow rock spires. With the cameras working and weather favorable, we finally got some great pictures through this area.

 

Our route took us to Cody, WY for a brief stop before heading towards the Chief Joseph Highway.

 This Highway must have been made for motorcyclists because it is full of twisties up and down the mountain.

We rode on this for about 60 miles, enjoying the views of the mountains and steep valleys along the way. Once we hit the “T” in the road, we headed to the right up the mountain towards Beartooth Pass.

Not soon after a black bear bolted across the road and shimmied up the rocky mountainside! Tom and Julie came on the CB together and said “Cool!” We think it was a juvenile due to its size and speed. He had silky black fur—what a treat to finally see one in the wild, and at such a high altitude!

Speaking of altitude, we were steadily climbing towards the top of the Pass, and Tom gave us updates on our altitude—9500 feet, passing 10,000 feet and upwards. Rob soon announced “I see snow!” that was embedded within the crevices.

Of course, we finally encountered the construction we had heard about. Luckily they were small patches of packed stone/dirt that were easily maneuverable. There were many of these as we were going uphill. Near the top, we got stuck behind two large construction vehicles moving extremely slow—walking pace would have been faster. Tom and Rob again got to practice their slow rolls (not that they appreciated it, though!).

Once past the construction areas, we were at the top, and greeted by the “Beartooth Pass” sign.

Tom’s altitude reading was over 10,992! For all of us, this was the highest altitude we’ve ever experienced while on a motorcycle. At the top, it was 49 degrees, but the wind made it COLD. Despite this, the view was really spectacular. We could see straight across to the other parts of the mountain, but instead of looking up at them, we were at the same level!

Beartooth is a really interesting and complex mountain range with multiple layers as far as we could see. After taking pictures, we were back on the road for our descent. The descent had just as amazing twisties as was going up the mountain.

We entered Montana and shortly after reached Red Lodge.

We fueled up, ate lunch and were back on the road by 3:30pm.

We headed out 212 to I-90 on our way to Billings to drop off Julie for her 5:30pm flight. We entered Billings (about 60 miles away) around 4:15pm and were greeted by yet another road construction project. This one was just outside of the airport. Once again, Rob and Tom had to slow roll up a hill for 5 minutes while cars slowly filtered through the construction site.

We got to the terminal building, Julie and Tom got her things together and Julie checked in and was on her way to board her flight. Rob, Tom, and Michele got on the road again and headed east up I-90 and then I-94 for another 100 miles to Forsyth, MT.

We made it to our hotel for the night by 6:30pm. Our ride out I-94 actually parallels the Yellowstone River. Quite fitting that we started the day near the origins of the Yellowstone River and continue our journey along side Yellowstone as it journeys east as well.

Today saw several extremes. We had a 58F temperature swing. We went from 8k feet in elevation to 2k feet up to 11k feet and then back to around 3k feet. We experienced dense fog and then cloudless skies, mountainous terrain and flat plains. I can think of no better way than to experience these than while riding the motorcycle with friends and loved ones.

Tomorrow we continue east towards North Dakota, which is a new state for the trip.

Day Twelve - Grand Tetons

We were up and out early today with a 300+ mile trip ahead of us to the Grand Tetons. We were at the Canyon Lodge for breakfast at 7am and were on the road by 8:30am. Although not as cold as yesterday, the temps hovered around 45F for the first two hours, slowly rising to around 55F when we got to the Grand Tetons National Park south of Yellowstone in Wyoming. Although layered in six items of clothing, Julie did not appreciate the brisk morning and damp, foggy air. We didn’t hear anything from her on the CB until our first stop.

We had heard about construction between Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. After looking at the routes we would have to go 2.5 hours out of our way to miss the construction. We figured the construction delay wouldn’t be nearly that long, so we stuck to the original route heading south out of Yellowstone via the Southwest entrance and take 191 all the way into the Grand Tetons.

Approximately 26 miles south of Yellowstone we hit the construction. The delay wasn’t the issue as they were forcing traffic to share a single lane except for a small 100 foot section. The issue was the 8 miles of mud-packed road! Again, the ever wise Wyoming DOT demolishes the entire road and forces vehicles to drive on hard packed dirt (mud if it has just rained) while they work on the road!

The road was damp and, in one section, very soft and muddy. The bike wallowed and fish-tailed in the mud, but we had no choice except to go with it. Rob told Michele at one point “hang on” in a very serious tone.

If that was not bad enough, the road was also littered with potholes, forcing some evasive maneuvers and a bumpy ride for the ladies. The best speed I was able to do was 25 mph at its smoothest point, but was soon crawling at 15mph through this road from hell.

Once we got to pavement again, Rob almost stopped to kiss it. It felt soooooo smooth! We promised never to complain about a bumpy, potholed asphalt road again. Looks like we’ll be taking a bit of Wyoming back with us as the bikes have a pretty good collection of Wyoming mud stuck to them. ;-)

Now back on blissfully smooth pavement, we approached the park. The Tetons were half covered in clouds in the early morning, and we were all thinking we came all this way to see only half a mountain. As Julie reflected later, “what’s so grand about that?!”

We rolled south on part of the Jenny Lake loop on our way to the visitor’s center in Moose, WY (what a great name for a town!). After looking at the exhibits at the visitor’s center we headed north along WY191 back into the park and up to Jackson Lake Lodge for lunch.

The Jackson Lake Lodge has a spectacular view of the Tetons, and by then the clouds were steadily clearing allowing us a full view of the mountains in all their glory.

 We ate in the Mural room where we could view the Tetons through a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows.

It’s amazing how suddenly they jut upward from the flat valley below with no foothills like other mountain ranges. This view also created a reflection effect from the mountains right outside our lunch window, so people were standing right in front of us pointing a camera at us through the window.

Rob went outside to take pictures of the Tetons and with his “big lens”. The women at the table next to ours commented that with that lens he could examine their dental work!

It was also during lunch that Julie had a Moose sighting!

After lunch, we headed back south down WY191 into Jackson Hole, WY and cruised through the ski town. We stopped short of the WY22 exit to top off with fuel and allow Michele and Julie to add more layers in expectation of cooler temps when going through the pass over the Tetons into Idaho. The temps in Jackson at this time were 70F. Very nice!

We wound our way up the pass, enjoying amazing views up the mountain and into Idaho. We then turned north and drove along the back side of the Tetons. We continued north on Idaho 20.

We saw vast rolling fields of various crops including, what we suspect, were potatoes. We even had a little rain cloud decide to give us a shower (of course we couldn’t go one day without some rain), luckily just for a few minutes.

We left the beautiful country side of Idaho behind and entered Montana briefly as we entered West Yellowstone. West Yellowstone is just outside of Yellowstone N.P. The temperatures were now hovering around the high 50s. We decided to push on through back to the lodge to avoid another nighttime ride and rapidly dropping temps.

The temps dropped to 50F once in the park and it was evident that rain had been through not too long before. We made our way through a few “Elk Jams” and arrived back at our cabin at 7:30pm.

Tom and Julie headed out to the do a load of laundry and then we all headed to the Canyon lodge for our last dinner at Yellowstone. The bikes have been “converted” for touring duty and our items are packed up and ready for departure early tomorrow.

Tomorrow we alter our original plans and instead heading out of the park via the Southeast entrance towards Cody via the Buffalo Bill State Park. This is due to construction between Cook City and Beartooth. We are also looking forward to riding through the Buffalo Bill park again--hopefully the weather will be more kind to us on our exit than it was on our entrance. We’ll then head north up 16, take the Chief Joseph Highway to the Beartooth Pass and then Beartooth down into Red Lodge. We will drop Julie off at Billings airport for her flight home. Tom, Michele, and Rob will continue onward to Forsyth, MT for the night.

Day Eleven - Southern Yellowstone

Today was our last riding day through Yellowstone Park, our itinerary focusing on the southern portion of the Grand Loop Rd. It was colder than yesterday at a chilly 38 degrees when we woke up. We slept in a bit today and got to breakfast at 9:30am. We were on the road around 10:30am.

Our first stop was the Sulphur Caldron. It would take awhile to get there, as we encountered buffalo. Little did we know how much buffalo we’d see today! They were blocking the road in several areas of our morning journey with people in cars stopping to gawk and take pictures. At the first “buffalo jam” the park ranger finally got over to us and scurried them off the road. As we cruised along, we came across a very large herd of at least 50 crossing the street to get over to a stream along a lush grassy area. There were several baby bison in the herd, a much lighter chestnut brown color than the mature adults. We noticed that several of the male bison were protecting the females quite aggressively. Some were very close to us and afforded great video and pictures. We discovered the sound that bison make is like a very deep grunting, and they seem to stick out their tongues when they did this.

After all of that excitement we were finally on our way to see the geothermal structures. Reading some of the park’s informational pamphlets told us that Yellowstone holds half of the entire planet’s geothermal structures in the park alone, at 10,000.

Our first stop was a sulphur caldron. We could smell it before we saw it. There was boiling acidic liquid and a great deal of white steam, which really makes one think about how alive the park is beneath its pretty surface. One of the placards at the caldron described the pH levels in comparison to other liquids/compounds. In comparison, battery acid has a pH of zero, and the sulphur caldron has a pH of one! With that information, Michele decided that she will not be testing the waters by sticking her fingers into anything anymore.

The next stop was another area of caldrons and a volcanic mud pots. One of the areas was called the Dragon’s Mouth. It made an amazing noise as the gases echoed off the cavern from which it bubbled out. Later, Michele and Julie were getting ready to go into the restroom when a male buffalo came walking down the parking lot and casually strolled by them. He must have been no more than 10 feet from them. They were both ready to run into the restroom and barricade the door should the buffalo decide to charge them!

Rob walked up the ½ mile trail to see more structures and was also greeted by a bison that snuck up on him. For such a large animal they move exceptionally quiet.

 We enjoyed an hour drive along Yellowstone Lake. It was placid and had gorgeous mountain views in the distance. Along the ride we encountered a few spells of very light rain. Not enough to get us wet but enough to be noticeable and dampen the roads. It was during one of these little rain spells when we encountered a new weather occurrence for the trip--sleet. We didn’t want to believe it when Tom first came on the CB and said that it was sleeting. Perhaps we’ll get some snow tonight. Short of tornados and hurricanes, it’s all that is left for us to experience on this trip. LOL

We crossed the continental divide three times on our ride around the southern portion of the park. We stopped at the second one for some pictures.

 

Our next destination was Old Faithful and lunch at the Old Faithful Inn. This Inn is the original structure of the park and was built in 1903-1904.

 The interior is the result of a brilliant architect, using timbers to create a gorgeous 5-story effect unlike anything we had ever seen. We enjoyed a very good lunch (the roasted red pepper gouda soup was, according to Michele, probably the best soup she’s ever had). Rob said the gouda soup was some “good-a soup.”

Afterwards Julie and Michele shopped in the gift shop while Tom and Rob went up to the second story observation area just in time to catch the very tail end of Old Faithful’s 3pm eruption.

That day the eruptions were spaced 90 minutes apart so we decided to move on with our itinerary, hoping to catch at least one geyser later. As we were taking pictures next to the steaming Old Faithful, another one close by erupted (we think it might be the Bee Hive Geyser). It was spectacular and erupted with a good amount of force for about ten minutes. We lucked out seeing that one.

Next we headed 16 miles up the road to find the Prismatic Springs, which is the blue and yellow pool that is always featured in photos of Yellowstone. The Midway Basin actually held several of these pools and had a boardwalk around the entire area that allowed for close-up pictures. The colors varied from light turquoise to deeper blues, most of which had yellowish rings around the edges. The microbes are very active here, forming bacterial “mats” which in one square inch create their own ecosystem. Fascinating! Although seemingly very powerful with boiling, steaming water, the area does look very fragile.

The last item on the itinerary for the day was the canyon very close to our lodge. Along the way we took three diversion scenic drives: Firehole Canyon drive had spectacular high canyon walls and a fast-moving river; Fountain Flats drive was a large meadow with a meandering stream, some geothermal vents, and a few bison enjoying the waters; lastly, we took the Virginia Cascades drive with its road clinging to the edge of a deep canyon featuring a raging river with waterfalls and rapids. Michele actually told Rob to drive closer to the edge so she could get good pictures.

 We arrived at the canyon area and went to the lower falls first. The lower falls took all of us by surprise—deep, yellow and orange canyon walls led to a white and green waterfall and river. We were lucky that at 6pm we still had decent light to take pictures with beautiful cloud patterns in the blue sky.

Tom and Julie headed back to the lodge to warm up (it only got to 55 today and windy—brrr!) and Rob and Michele went to check out the upper falls. Although not as spectacular as the lower falls, the actual waterfall was impressive and had a strong current to it. Originally, water seeped through lava rock and the softer sandstone underneath eventually gave way allowing the waterfall to occur.

Rob realized that we may not get a chance to do laundry for several days, so he and Michele headed over to the laundromat before dinner. As we got off the bike to head into the laundromat, a male elk came strolling into the woods only 20 feet from us! Unfortunately, we had left both cameras back as the cabin. Rob took some video using the GoPro. We’ll see how that comes out.

As we finished up the laundry, Rob had been looking at our routes for the next two days on his laptop, and a man asked him “who is the one to hold the laptop on the bike while riding?” He was a nice guy from Minnesota and gave us good tips for our Teddy Roosevelt National Park visit during our return trip.

Today’s mileage was 105 miles with many cool sights. Yellowstone is an amazing place. We have only been able to barely scratch the surface in the last two days. We’ll just have to return here for an extended stay in the future!

Tomorrow we will wake up early and head south towards the Grand Tetons. We hope the weather is clear so we can see the mountains.