This isn't a full "day" from our trip, but is worth of a post of it's own.

After leaving Yellowstone, we headed to Hunter Peak Ranch, our next abode for the night.  I found the place with a combination of Google and Garmin's Mapsource.  In short, we could only get two nights in Yellowstone Park, so I started hunting for a close place to stay for the third night.  Hunter Peak Ranch popped up and seemed to be the nicest of the batch. 

We pulled in around 6 pm or so, as dinner was scheduled for 7.  When I made the reservation, I was informed that dinner is cooked based on the number of guests and that we'd better be there by 7, otherwise food would be wasted!

Shelley greeted us and showed us to our quarters.  There was an explanation of it not being the rooms we'd requested due to other families wanting the loft, staying longer than we were and not having enough people to use the room they'd originally planned on.  I was kind of expecting that meant we were getting something less than we'd originally booked, but I was quite mistaken.

What we got was the entire bottom floor of the lodging house...  Four or five bedrooms, six beds, kitchen, laundry room, two bathrooms, living room, huge dining room and two entrances.  WAY better than the "two rooms" we'd originally booked.  We had plenty of space to bring in everything off the bikes, reshuffle all our gear, do laundry, set up laptops for routing, lounge on the couches drinking local beer, etc.  Very nice compared to the rest of our accommodations. :)  If you check the picture above, we had the ENTIRE bottom floor of that building.

There was also an abundance of ground squirrels.

We did a quick cleanup of ourselves and headed over to the main office for dinner.  Dinner was "family style", meaning they bring out a bunch of food, set it on a table and everyone goes and gets what they want.  Blackened chicken, string beans, nachos, potatoes and smthng else I forget filled my plate.  All of it cooked on a wood burning stove or a fire pit out back. :)  Desert was peach cobbler, huckleberry ice cream, and/or huckleberry crumble.  I chose the "and" route and it was all excellent. ;)

After dinner, I wandered around a bit and talked to some of the hosts and guests at the fire pit.  I managed to get a couple of pictures before the light disappeared and made friends with the two very well-behaved dogs.

I then retired back to the lodge and joined Jim and Rich for laundry, frosty beverages, lies and politics.

We finally ran out of frosty beverages and decided to check out the night sky away from our usual city light pollution.  Wow!  I don't remember the last time I was able to actually see the Milky Way band of stars.  There wasn't a cloud in the sky and it literally looked like a sky we never get to see.  We were able to easily see satellites and planets.  There were so many stars, we couldn't find any real constellations other than the big dipper.  I'm used to being able to pick them out instantly, but there was just so much that it just looked like one big field of lights.  Shooting stars were constant, at a rate of one every 1 to three minutes.  Keep in mind that this was about a month before any scheduled meteor showers!  I can't imagine what it would be like with a full on shower. 

When our necks got sore enough, we headed back in, did some basic packing for the morning and called it a night.

The next morning, we awoke in time for breakfast.  Home made sausage, french toast, really good bacon, fresh yogurt, eggs over easy, excellent coffee, fresh orange juice, huckleberry jelly, and I don't remember the rest.  We showed some restraint, as we had a full day on the bikes ahead of us, but it was awesome. :)

I wandered a bit more after breakfast and got some more pictures in decent light.  The ranch property is actually quite a bit bigger than the area we were using.  The main selling point is horse rides through the forests and mountains, which is what most of the guests were there for.  There is a river (possibly Soda Butte Creek) running through the property, which crossable either on horse, or via a trolley bridge.  For those that haven't a clue what I'm talking about, a trolley bridge is basically a cable system with a trolley suspended on rollers.  You sit on the trolley and pull yourself across on the cables.  I didn't have time to play with it, but one of the families staying there assured me that it works and that one of the daughters had gotten kinda "stuck" on it in the middle of the river. ;)

It was finally time for us to get going, so we finished packing everything up and cleaning up our lodge.  We ran over a quick final check of the route for Rich (he was heading back to Utah, while Jim and I continued on "Eastward").  After everything was all packed, checked, etc., we said goodbye to Rich and Jim and I headed towards Cody, WY.

That'll be in the next post!

The second day of our stay in Yellowstone National Park started with us packing everything up and checking out of our humble cabin in Lake Village.  I was able to pack efficiently enough to be able to get two additional "bits" into my luggage...  a six pack of some local amber ale (which was surprisingly good) and my Sidi Vertigo boots.  While my Sidis did a great job, they were HOT!  We were expecting mid to high nineties in the park, so I chucked the boots in the Givi case and wore my Solomon shoes that day.  It's rare for me to not have "all the gear all the time" (ATGATT), but I knew we were going to be doing a lot of low speeds and a lot of walking.  It was good call!

We headed north up the bottom loop from Lake Village and stopped at the Mud Volcano.  It isn't a volcano any more, as it blew itself apart a long time ago, but it's still a pretty neat spot.  There were several mud geysers and springs, plus we got to see another elk and a bison, both at reasonably close range.  This was probably the biggest geologically active area we'd seen up to this point.

We headed up to the bottom of the upper loop and shot West over to the Norris geyser basin and the porcelain basin.  This is a HUGE area with LOTS of activity.  But, it also had a LOT of people, lots of steps and it was hot.  I checked out Steamboat geyser and a few other areas, but I wasn't walking around in the heat, so I found a nice shady spot under a tree and waited for Jim and Richard to finish their meanderings.  They tried to talk me into checking out the porcelain basin, but I was just being a lazy twit, so we got back on the bikes and headed up to Mammoth. 

We stopped a couple of times at overlooks for scenic shots, but pulled off into the Mammoth spring area to drive a loop around the springs.  This was pretty cool, with lots of activity and some pretty strange deposits and formations.  We probably spent an hour or more taking pictures and just checking stuff out before we took off to Mammoth for gas and fewd.

Getting gas was a bit interesting.  They have the old gas pumps with the handle and spinning dials in Mammoth.  Unfortunately, they were old enough that they couldn't handle prices as high as $4 per gallon.  So, they had set the pumps for "half-price".  It was smthng like $2.18 per gallon.  It was kind of cool to fill my tank for $9.50 for a change.  Of course, when I went in to pay, they doubled it to get back to "normal" prices.  There were signs everywhere explaining this, but it was kind of funny and quaint.  It was just neat to see how they'd adapted the old technological dinosaurs to deal with current prices.

Anyway, we stopped and grabbed lunch, which wasn't very good, quick or cheap.  There were a LOT of bikes out.  I'm guessing a lot of people go to Yellowstone on their way out to Sturgis.

We then decided we'd seen just about all of Yellowstone we needed to see and proceeded to head out towards the Northeast entrance.  It was quite a haul, so we still had plenty of time in the park.  I don't remember stopping anywhere in particular, but we did see quite a bit on the way out...  bison herds, a bear with two cubs (too far away to get pictures), and some more elk. 

I'm about to go on a rant here...  There wasn't much traffic, but there was enough that there was always some other vehicle in front or behind us within about a minute or so.  Most were polite and either pulled over for us or at least altered speed slightly until there were clear passing areas.  However, there were exceptions.  One in particular really torques my shaft drive!  We managed to get behind a pair of Hardley baggers (Harley Davidson touring bikes with full luggage) who were doing the speed limit...  Until there was a corner.  These two morons would be doing the speed limit and then would drop down to about 20 miles an hour as soon as there was any type of curve.  They'd creep through the curve, then whack the throttle wide open to get back up to speed whenever they got out of the curves.  Rinse, repeat...  repeat... repeat... 

Don't get me wrong here, I wasn't looking to do 80 mph or anything around the park, but I was planning on maintaining the speed limit (which I think was 45 mph).  A slight curve isn't going to change that.  If it's a curve I can safely manage at 70 mph, I'm not going to be happy doing it at 20.  I was fine doing the whole thing at 45.  I would have been even happier if the morons on the baggers have either made room for us to pass or just not whacked the throttle every time we could have passed.  All three of us would have been around them in less than a minute and we all could have enjoyed the remainder of our riding. 

Baggers take note...  You absolutely cannot outrun or even keep up with a decent rider on a four cylinder sport tourer.  It's not possible.  Unless your last name is Hayden and you are just playing a really cruel practical joke, it's not going to happen. End of story!

What happens when you try this is that we get closer and closer every time you block us.  Then instead of doing a nice pleasant pass, we do smthng obnoxious like drop the bike into first gear, wheelie past you and cut you off HARD when we complete the pass.  This makes us happy and we leave five or six miles of pent up frustration behind us (preferably in your air intake).  We then either do the same maneuver to you or make it even more obnoxious (my personal preference would be eating a pop tart in front of you while going barely fast enough to keep the bike from falling over, but that's a different story).  Once we think you are frustrated enough to try to pass us, we then start the engine again and make sure that you are only going to see our tail lights fading into the sunset.  You might also hear us giggling over the horrible noise of your loud exhaust pipes.

It should be noted, that I would never do this.  I've just heard that this happens.  Occasionally. ;)

Anyway, with the baggers dispatched, we continue on US 212 towards the park exit.  This is a really nice part of the park and I think a lot of people miss it.  It's basically a huge valley with a river and some grass plains.  Absolutely gorgeous country!  A few people obviously know about it, because we saw quite a few fly fishermen on Soda Butte Creek.

A final surprise on our way out of the park was trotting towards me down the road.  I stopped (in the road) and waited patiently while a mangy looking coyote trotted past me in the other lane.  He didn't care at all about me, my lights, the horn, the other two bikes, the three cars behind them, or the SUV that was following him.  He was just out for a stroll on the road.  I did notice that he had a dark green park radio collar on him, but he really didn't seem to care about that either.  It was kind of cool to get that close to one, but they are nasty looking little critters.

After leaving the coyote to his walk, we got out of the park and stopped at the Yellowstone sign to take the required "I was here" pictures.  We then continued up Beartooth Pass through Silver Gate and Cooke City (hello Montana).  This was pretty much a miserable let down.  There was massive construction going on and we ended up in a "convoy" of about 30 vehicles, being led by a construction truck.  The road was dirt and rock... which meant huge dust clouds being thrown all over us.  To make it more interesting, the construction guys apparently decided to water parts of the road so it wouldn't be so dusty.  Dirt plus water equals mud.  Not real fun for a 600 pound motorcycle with about 100 pounds of gear on it.  Still, no mishaps occurred and we cleared the construction in a few miles.  I then promptly got "bad" and passed all the traffic that was previously in front of us.  Sorry, I was "done".  I stopped and waited for Jim and Richard later. ;)

Beartooth Pass was a nice ride with good scenery, but it wasn't the motorcycle Mecca we had been led to think it was.  Maybe we just did one piece of it or smthng and missed the good bits, but I wouldn't go back for it.

Anyway... we stopped for more pics and then turned off highway 296 to Hunter Peak Ranch.

That'll be it for now, but I'll post up separately about the ranch in the next post.  It was a cool place and I'll probably find an excuse to go back some day. :)

The roads in Yellowstone make up a "figure eight".  We decided to do the lower portion the first day and the upper portion the second day.  We started from our cabin in Lake Village, on the east side of the lower loop.  We stopped first at Pumice Point on Lake Yellowstone.  We snagged a few pictures and moved on.  The next stop was Potts Hot Springs Basin.  There's a bunch of pools and steam there, but not much else.  You can't get very close, as there are no trails or anything.  Still, it was our first sighting of geysers, so we had to stop.

Then we hit the West Thumb Basin.  Way cool!  There's a whole area of springs and geysers.  There's a nice boardwalk that goes right through the basin and you can get really close to a lot of the features.  We spent a fair bit of time here and this was probably the main cause of my camera battery dying later that day. ;)

On the south portion of the loop, I noticed a large male elk at Scaup Lake.  Unfortunately, by the time we'd parked the bikes and gotten out cameras, he'd decided he liked hiding in the bushes.  We hung around for a few minutes, but he was uncooperative, so we continued on until we found Kepler Cascades.

Kepler Cascades is a set of falls on the Firehole River.  There's a viewing platform, but the best views are afforded to those who are brave enough to climb out on some rocks (that would be me).  We took the requisite pictures and then headed to Old Faithful.

Old Faithful was still faithful and spewed pretty much on time.  It was hot and crowded and honestly not that impressive.  But, it's one of those things you have to see if you're there.  We then had lunch at one of the restaurants. Food, acceptable.   Service, horrible.

We then saddled back up and headed to the Prismatic Spring.  This is a really big spring with a lot of bacterial/algae growth.  It flows down into the river and it's a pretty cool place with boardwalks to get you out over the area.  Elk and bison don't use the boardwalks, as we did see quite a few hoof prints in the hot muck.  I guess the local critters are used to it.

We then headed up through Madison to the northern part of the loop.  We stopped to get some pictures of a bison who was hanging out on the side of the road.  They are actually bison...  buffalo are in Asia and Africa.  BTW... the picture doesn't do it justice.  Bison are HUGE!  Especially at night, when driving down the road. :S

We also stopped at another set of falls on the Gibbon River.   I think it's just called the Gibbon Rapids.  I left Jim and Rich for a few minutes and ran up to the next overlook.  That gave me an opportunity to get pictures of them riding (trust me when I tell you that it's a rare thing to actually get a picture of yourself on a bike in motion).  They weren't great shots, but they'll do.

From there, we continued on to Artist Point.  I managed to get a few pictures, but that's where my camera battery called it quits.  After hte sun set, we headed back to the lodge. We passed another couple of bison and some elk.  There were a lot of people stopped to look at the elk, so we didn't bother. I started some laundry, had a "frosty beverage" or two and settled down on the lodge porch to write up some of the ride.  While waiting, I saw a coyote go trotting down the road in front of the lodge.  A few minutes later I saw a baby deer (I think) come flying up the road from the lake.  Then, there were all sorts of hoots, howls, yips and other strange noises before a pack of coyotes surrounded it and pounced on the thing.  They demolished it in no time flat!  Coyotes make some weird noises when they're getting ready to tackle smthng.  It was truly creepy, but way cool.

Anyway, I finished up my laundry and turned in for some much needed sleepz.

Sunday started out with us repacking everything on the bikes and seeing our wives off to the airport.  We headed north on I-25, not quite realizing how far much of "nothing" there was that way.  We managed to make it to the last exit before I-80 before we stopped for gas.  We were all running on fumes and really nervous about running out.  A lesson for later rides.

We then jumped on I-80 West and pretty much just hammered for a couple hours (150 miles).  We did stop at exit 323 to check out the Lincoln Memorial and take a couple of pics, but then we just continued on to Rawlins, WY.  Jim was leading as we approached Rawlins.  He apparently wasn't paying any attention to the GPS, his map, or the big brown sign that pretty much said "Yellowstone - Exit here", as he sailed right on past it.  I jumped past him, pulled off at the next exit and had a few choice words with him. Jim was officially done leading that day. ;)

We gassed up in Rawlins, after another little roadside discussion, where Richard (Jim's BMW rider friend) convinced us of the need to get gas instead of relying on the three little dots on the map to have gas stations.  This was a good call... I apparently hadn't learned the previous gas lesson... We wouldn't have even made it close to the next station if we hadn't gassed up in Rawlins.

From Rawlins, we headed North towards Yellowstone on rt. 287.  This is a long, mostly straight road across miles and miles of nothing.  It's some huge basin or plateau or smthng.  It's a good road to be on... for about 5 minutes.  Then it's all just more and more of the same nothingness.  I vaguely remember a couple of curves and maybe a hill or two within about 100 miles of each other.

We took 287 up to 26 and headed towards the Tetons from there.  26 was a lot nicer than 287, but it's still a long way to go.  Wyoming is big.  We stopped somewhere near Brooks Lake at the Lava Mountain Lodge for a quick rest before hitting what looked like some interesting roads.  Ginger ale, windshield cleaning, a guy playing a guitar and some pictures later, we were back on the road approaching the Tetons.  From there, 26 does get interesting.   Twisties, canyons, beautiful views, etc.  Amazing stuff!  Unfortunately, we were looking directly into the sun by this time. 

We made it to the Grand Teton National Park just as the sun was setting.  We made one photo stop, but the light was going and the mosquitos were horrible!  Then, it was on to Yellowstone!

We made it through the GTNP and into Yellowstone right around 9:15 pm or so.  Way dark.  We continued into Yellowstone on 191... a road that runs along a river and then a canyon.  No guard rails or anything, just a big drop into a canyon if you miss a curve... at night.  Tons of bugs... my faceshield and windscreen were nasty!  We stopped at Grant's Village to clean up and get gas, as I didn't know if there was any where we were staying.

We continued on a bit more and passed a buffalo wandering down the road.  I slammed on the breaks to make sure we could get past without it making any sudden surprises for us.  It was about 12 feet away from us.  Richard and Jim didn't even see it.  I guess that's why I was leading. ;)

We finally arrived in Lake Village at the cabins and lodge at about 10:30 pm.  We checked in, parked the bikes and we were pretty much done for the day.  All's well and we're where we wanted to be. :)