Jefe's Next Chapter

Wow, it has been far harder to stay on top of these blog posts than I had anticipated. Riding all day is exhausting, physically, and mentally, plus I’ve been trying to get as far as I can each day, so I really do ride until I’m nearly wiped out, and don’t really have the mental energy to sit and blog.  I’ve been dying to share these photos, and this afternoon Barry suggested a plug-in that might not do ALL that I want, but does support most of the features that I was waiting for, to move forward.

I woke up on the morning of Day 3 feeling a little worn down, and listening to the rain come down. It was around 6:30 a.m. and I just dreaded going out in more rain, so I lazed around my cabin until almost 8:00 and went to the dining hall for breakfast. It was grey and yucky, and wet, and drizzly, and I again wondered why this all seemed like such a good idea. After breakfast I went back to pack up the cabin and begin the dressing ritual. I had seen the sign that Old Faithful was 18 miles away and I wasn’t sure if it was 18 miles toward, or away from where I needed to be, but I was going to get there. On the way I could finally see what I had been driving through the night before, it was amazing. One of the most spectacular places I’ve seen, and I’ve been to The Dead Sea, the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, but this was just stunning, in terms of color, and everything. I could see steam puffs shooting up in the distance. I guess I hadn’t realized quite how many spots around Yellowstone release a stream of steam and water, non-stop, into the air.

This is a Bison (not, as the file-name would indicate, a Moose) on the road

One of the other things that you see in Yellowstone is wildlife, mostly unafraid of humans, especially large wildlife that could damage your vehicle, so they just wander up the street, disregarding the traffic jam being created behind them, until they get bored and effortlessly step off the road into the grass and trees.

I saw a sign for the Norris Geyser Basin, according to the Yellowstone website it “may be the hottest geyser basin in Yellowstone. The Carnegie Institute of Washington, D.C. made test wells in 1929 to determine subsurface temperatures. One test hole was abandoned at 265 feet when the temperature reached 401 °F and the steam pressure threatened to destroy the drilling rig” so that seemed to merit a detour. When I got there, it was a large parking lot full or people, and a bit of a walk down to the basin. Now the rain is really abating, and it is warming up, I’m wearing boots and leather chaps and a black leather jacket, and I have everything that I’m moving to New York, including both personal and work computers, and I’m on a motorcycle so I can’t exactly take off my leathers and “lock stuff in the car” while I walk down there. I made a quick risk assessment and decided that I would leave the large duffel with mostly clothes, the work laptop bag (without lap-top inside), and anything in the saddle bags (my knife kit, a modem -yes, I’m a dork, I am driving cross country with a DSL modem- and all of my wrenches and tools, which far out perform my knowledge of how to use them), along with 2 helmets and I would carry my back-back with 2 computers, an array of cables and cords, my mouse and external keyboard, as well as my tank-bag with wallet, camera, and whatever, simply because that wasn’t strapped down by anything besides magnets,

I started walking and realized that it is is actually quite a hike from the parking lot down into the Basin, and I’m having serious considerations both about leaving my stuff behind, and about starting this hike, in the sun wearing lots of black leather, carrying 2 non-insubstantial bags along with me. Hey, I’m on an adventure, right?  By now, any memory of rain and cool from the night before is over, it is warm, sunny, and blue skies, I walked down into the basin area and took some selfies, and then headed back up to my (undisturbed) bike and stuff, quite conscious of the time, and started riding toward Old Faithful. My ride plan was to leave Yellowstone by 9:00, but it was already after 10:00 by the time I left the basin.

On the way I stopped to take a photo of a beautiful stream (everything is beautiful, it is almost not worth taking pictures, since there are already a bazillion photos out in the world and it really takes no skill to make a spectacular photo with an auto-focus camera and auto exposure, but I couldn’t help myself, I kept shooting and shooting. I think that the theme of this blog is going to be “and then my battery ran out”. OK, I’m pretty much in the wilderness, but I have charging cables with me, and the big deal geyser must have a snack bar or something where I can cadge some juice, right? I’m not going to walk away from this big thing with only cell-phone pictures, right?

Turns out that, of course, there is a HUGE visitors center and complex built around Old Faithful. I must have just missed the previous eruption of Old Faithful since they happen every 90 minutes or so (give or take 15 min +/- ) and it was a nearly 90 minute wait for the 1:00 p.m. “show”. Well that’s good, right, time to charge my batteries? All over the visitors center there are outlets, YAY! But, each of them has a laminated card over it, stating that “for security reasons”  they can not allow any personal use of the outlets for charging devices etc… And, naturally, there are game wardens, park rangers or whatever they are, in uniforms walking around.

Well, i’m resourceful, and a bit sneaky, and I do have almost 90 minutes, so I start to reconnoiter and discover that the men’s room has 2 sockets a few feet apart without the “do not use” signs. So I settle in next to the hand-washing/drying station, run a power-strip (yes, I travel with a power strip) out of my back-pack with my phone and camera plugged into it, inside the back, and I plug it it, and drop my Willie Nelson “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me” baseball cap over the cord. It’s just a black backpack, next to an electric socket in the men’s room, nothing suspicious here, right?

After almost 30 minutes standing in the men’s room, telling people “oh, no go ahead, I’m just here waiting for someone” I grab my bag and head out to the front of the building, figure I’ll wait until 30 minutes before “game time” before finding a spot to watch the show. Out front there are some benches, and I’ll be damned, a few electric outlets, so I run the power cord out of my backpack, and give my batteries a bit more juice, for about 20 minutes, before finding a seat for the eruption.

It was all quite an adventure, and I’m darned thrilled with the photos, Google even “auto-awesomed” one for me. The gallery of images below includes some panorama shots, I really encourage you to go through it as a slide-show in order to see things scaled correctly, many of the shots look great full screen.

After Old faithful, I left Yellowstone, the eruption started closer to 1:20, so I probably didn’t actually get back on the road till close to 2:00 PM, I knew that this wasn’t going to bode well for arrival at the B&B where I had a massage scheduled for early morning of Day 4. It was a 460 mile drive, but I had little sense for what type of roads they’d be. Take a few minutes to view some pictures, then catch up with me after, and we’ll talk about the rest of the day’s ride….

[Show slideshow]

I left Yellowstone and the roads away are beautiful, rich with wildlife, and mostly not very crowded. I saw birds, a jackrabbit paced with me for a few yards before darting back under the guard-rail and disappearing,  and I saw lots and lots of deer, along with bison #2, who got off the road before I could take my camera out, so I snapped him up in the trees enjoying his lunch.

It was getting quite late, and I was hungry, maybe 40 to 60 miles from the exit I stopped at The Wild Horse Cafe to really charge up batteries for the long drive, both my rechargeable electronic ones, and my own internal ones, for I had a long ride ahead of me, and a rather late start. The made in house, hand breaded chicken fried steak was served on top of, instead of under the gravy and was darned good, though some bites were a little on the salty side for my taste, the pan seared corn was amazing, and the mashed potatoes were uninspiring. It was a cute place with local radio playing classic country and lots of bric-a-brac for sale on the walls and all around.

By the time I was done eating and hit the road again, I had lost a good deal of my riding day, I don’t take the mountain turns especially quickly, the rain was all behind me, but it was getting dark and somewhat late. I gave up on getting to Custer, S.D. where I had a pre-paid room for the night, and stopped at Arrowhead Lodge, in Dayton Wyoming, barely 200 miles from where I had started the day. I was disappointed because my plan had been for Day 4 to be my first non-road day, with a massage in the morning, and connecting to work, etc… What this stop meant (aside from losing the money I had spent on a room I wasn’t going to get to) was getting up really early, and powering through another 250 miles in the morning to get to Custer before I got any work done.

I settled into my rustic cabin, dropped all of my bags and headed for the rustic bar. There was one fellow in there, playing video poker and watching recaps of Bears football pre-season games. The bar also stocked Goose Island 312 Ale, from Chicago. Turns out the old fellow playing video poker had some say in all of that, and he turned out to be from Chicago. This was to be another interesting trend, as the folks who run the B&B in Custer are also from Chicago, and we discovered an interesting thing in common, but, more on that in Day 5’s adventures.

I went to bed wearing my riding gear and woke in the morning around 5:30, this was the first day that I just got up and jumped on the bike, I was checked out of the Arrowhead before 6:00 a.m., looked at my trip odometer, and started the day with an auspicious 1234.5 miles on the road.