Colorado Cruiser: 2013 Summer Ride - Day 6 - Chief Joseph Scenic Highay

Woke up at 6am. Packed up a few things, then went to get some breakfast. At 7:15 I took the Subaru to Walmart to buy water, gatorade, sunscreen, and a dirty clothes bag. All the walmart bags full of laundry is starting to embarrass me.

By 8:00 I was at the glass shop dropping off the car to have the rear window fixed. The guy said it would take 90 minutes to replace the glass, then another 90 minutes to let the glue dry. So the car can't leave Cody until nearly noon. They gave me a ride back to the hotel where we talked about the plans for the day.

Nan insisted that she would be fine staying behind, getting the car, loading it up by herself, and driving to Gardiner to meet us tonight. None of us felt great about splitting up, but Nan said she would enjoy resting for another hour or so (if we'd just get the heck out of here). So we started packing.

John pulled off his shift lever that we hadn't quite fixed yesterday. Eric left to track down a fuse for his Aux power. And for ONCE, Kyle and I were ready to roll before everyone else. It was quite the change.

John, Angela, Kyle and I headed out of town to get a picture in front of the Cody sign. The sign was setup really well, with a camera mount and everything, so we took a few pictures. Just as we left, Eric and Shauna came riding up, but just followed us back to town where we planned to visit the Harley shop. While everyone else went inside, I rode back to the glass shop to pick up some of Kyle's things that we hadn't unloaded. On the way back, I stopped by a statue of Buffalo Bill Cody for a picture. It came out pretty good.

After the Harley shop we gassed up then headed North out of Cody toward the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway. This is a beautiful road that leads North West towards Yellowstone's North East entrance. There were very few vehicles of any sort on the road, so we were able to ride very comfortably. I had only taken about 4 pictures when my camera proclaimed it was full. I couldn't believe I'd filled a 32gig SD card, and in fact I hadn't. What I figured out later, was that I hadn't put the memory card back in the camera after uploading the pictures last night. But whatever the case, my camera was out of action for the day. Just the camera Angela was carrying would have to do all the work, and she took some great pictures.

The highway climbed up and over a beautiful pass with sweeping vistas and pine trees all around us. We kept a very leisurely pace most of the way because Shauna doesn't really like steep drop offs and we were in no hurry (unlike yesterday's over heated rush). Very quickly though, we figured out one major overlooked problem. Without Nan and the car, none of us had any water. I had just bought a case of water, so that little nagging portion of my brain was sated and thought I was in good shape. It obviously wasn't connected to the portion of the brain that let Nan stay behind.

We kept going down the highway, stopping every now and then to Oooo and Ahhh at the sights, and to stop at a rest stop every now and then. As we neared the end of the road, I spotted a sign for a small grocery store and we turned off onto the gravel driveway. YES they had water and gatorade. We grabbed some liquids and munchies, then went out onto their front porch to sit in the shade and enjoy the cool breeze.

Eventually we somehow pulled ourselves back out of the chairs and onto the bikes. We quickly reached the end of the Chief Joseph highway (I could have turned around and ridden it again with joy). We turned right on the Bear Tooth Highway towards the town of Red Lodge for lunch. This is another great road up through the mountains and over Bear Tooth Pass.

We rode about 25 miles when we arrived at a construction zone and a long line of cars. Another one lane bypass. We waited about 10 minutes when the cars from the other direction finally arrived. But after the last of those cars came through, a construction vehicle started down the line passing the word that the road was closed for 20 minutes while they did some construction. We got off the bikes and chatted about what we wanted to do. We were still 40 miles from Red Lodge, and if we continued, we would turn around and have to come right back through this construction again.

Or we could turn around now and look for some food near the Yellowstone Entrance. We opted to turn around. 3 of us got turned around and back down the road easily, but Eric and Shauna were just a bit slower, and a construction truck coming up the road switched lanes to drive around the waiting cars, and blocked them in. I'm not sure just what Eric had to do to get out of there, but eventually he caught up with us.

We hadn't gone far when John spotted a large field of wild flowers and pulled over to take some pictures. We got a nice group photo out in the flowers and a few individual photos, then continued on.

We stopped again near a large water fall, and again at the Wyoming, Montana state lines. While we were getting pictures at the Montana State sign, Angela said something about the camera running really slow and she wondered if she'd hit some switch. It was too bright to read through the menus, so we figured it was taking pictures and that was good enough. I turned out she had put the camera in color highlight mode, which means it drains all color except one specific color. So most of the pictures from here on only have Green in them and the rest is black and white. It's actually very nice.

Eventually we reached the town of Cooke Montana. We picked a Bistro for lunch. It took 20 minutes to get water, paid $2 for a can of soda, and paid $9 for sandwiches with almost nothing on them. It wasn't a great lunch experience, but we had fun laughing about it. Kyle got a funnel cake from a stand across the street for desert, and it was probably the best tasting thing of everything.

A few more miles of riding brought us to the North East entrance to Yellowstone National Park. John, Kyle, and I have passes so got in quickly, but Eric had to pay. Once in the park we followed the road along a valley floor and almost immediately saw Bison (not Buffalo, those are in Africa) wandering in the fields to either side of the road.

There were allot of Bison along this road, so many that it very quickly lost its appeal to see them. We did stop once near a group of 20 right by the road. At one point Kyle said something on the radio about an Eagle, but I missed it. Apparently there was an eagle diving, then streaking along the grass headed right at the road. They said it was very beautiful. And they saw a wolf, but I missed that too.

30 miles into the park we came upon a massive traffic jam. It took us 15 minutes of constant clutch work to climb the small hill and clear the traffic. Someone walking beside the road said there was a bear nearby. Just as we passed all of the people staring down into a small draw, we saw a parking space open up, so we dashed in to contribute to the mayhem. Kyle and Eric walked over to see the bear. They said it was a small cub and was hiding behind a tree a hundred foot down the hill.

After a while, we loaded back up and continued into the park. A very light rain began to fall as we neared Mammoth Hot Springs. The area around Mammoth was really packed with cars. Right in the middle of town was a large group of Elk laying on the mowed lawns of the town. People were all around trying to get pictures.

We turned right and Angela snapped a couple pictures as we went past. From Mammoth it was only a short 5 miles out of the park to Gardiner where we have rooms in the Super 8. Right as we pulled in, we heard Nan's voice yelling from a window above us. She had arrived just 5 minutes before. So we carried things up from the car and took a short break.

We gathered back up again and headed off to get some dinner. We decided to eat at Outpost Pizza, just up the road point three miles, so we walked. I got a pizza with andouie sausage, shrimp, and peppers. Nan got a calzone with ham, pineapple and bacon. Everyone else got pizzas as well. Kyle had stayed in the room to make an important call and we were going to get him his own pizza.

When our pizzas arrived, everyone said "don't get one for Kyle, he can have some of mine".

So we began to eat, and eat, and eat. By the time we were done, there wouldn't have been anything for Kyle. We'd all eaten our pizzas completely. So I did order Kyle a Pepperoni and Sausage pizza.

While we waited for the bill and Kyle's pizza, the girls all left to walk around the shops. We caught up with them about 2/3 of the way around. We looked through a jewelry store and an animal head store with them before we started to walk back to the hotel.

But was we reached the street, someone pointed out a "CASINO" sign right across the road. Nan and Eric immediately headed over, with John and Angela along for company. Shauna wanted to go lay down, and I had Kyle's pizza to deliver. So we walked back while they went gambling. After giving Kyle his pizza, I returned to watch the slot fun for a while. After 20 minutes John, Angela, and I had had enough and walked back to the Hotel.

I lay down for a bit until Nan returned, then began this report.

Nan has gone down to the swimming pool to relax a bit, and I'm nearly done. Just need to add the pictures from today, and a few others from previous days that I just down loaded, then I'm off to bed. I hope to get up at 5:00 and go for a sunrise ride through Yellowstone.

Back window of the Subaru blown out