Heading East

Leaving Missoula, I took to the interstate for a couple hundred miles to Bozeman, then dropped down to Yellowstone National Park. I’ve had the opportunity to visit the park in the past and while I’m certain that I haven’t experienced a half a percent of what the park has to offer, I was interested in making progress eastward so I merely dipped into the park so that I could exit to the east.

The mountains of northwest Wyoming are amazing to ride through. To make a comparison, the roads in the Jasper/Banff area pass near the mountains, along the relatively level (but winding) river. But in Wyoming’s Rockies, the roads pass right through the mountains, offering willing motorcyclists the opportunity to climb and descend. And turn. A lot. Given the right weather, it’s a great playground.

The mountain passes in the area provide terrific views from 9,000-11,000 feet. It seems that I didn’t take any good pass-view photos on this trip. Is it cheating for me to post one from five years ago? (Researching the rules of my travel post, I determine that no, it is not cheating – besides, seeing a photo of Griffin is far more appealing than seeing yet another of me in my power ranger suit). Here is a shot of the world’s best dog at Bear Tooth Pass. . .

It was later this day that I rounded a corner and came across the accident scene. And leaving that scene I saw what at first appeared to this nervous biker to be a bizarre cloud formation. The prevailing consensus is that it was actually the rising smoke from a nearby wildland fire. So much for my previously-rock-solid “mystical sign from mother nature’ theory.

After leaving the hospital the next morning, I again took to the interstate for a few hours and made my way to northwestern South Dakota to visit the Black Hills and the Badlands. Rounding one corner, I looked in my mirror to see George “Peekaboo” Washington lurking over my shoulder. I pulled over to re-create the angle.

Badlands National Park seems completely out of context with its surroundings. In the middle of an open and flat landscape, the Badlands present an eerie collection of jagged hills and spires. Pretty cool!

From the Badlands, I continued east. A mixture of highway and secondary road riding provided a mixture of fast-paced riding through mostly-flat grass and corn fields and slow-paced riding through mostly-flat grass and corn fields. I visited Sioux City for an oil change and went for a run that evening in which I took a bridge over the Missouri River into Nebraska. I’ll need to check the regulations of this thread, but I’m pretty sure that visiting a state briefly by foot does indeed contribute to the states-visited metric.

Yesterday I rode through Iowa and to Madison Wisconsin. Later today I’ll ride an hour or so to West Bend where the BMW Motorcycle Owners Association annual rally is already underway. It’ll be nice to be among 9,000 other riders for a few days!!