Colorado Cruiser: Riding to Yellowstone with Beckham

My daughter's husband's family is having a camping reunion in Yellowstone this summer and they invited me to come with them.

It's tent camping, so..... Nannette won't be joining us. Her idea of roughing it is Super 8.

I had always planned on riding my motorcycle rather than either riding with them, or driving my own car. Then I also got the great idea to have my grandson (Beckham) ride to Yellowstone with me.

SO here we are. Beckham stayed the night and helped me pack the bike (in between major minecraft constructions).

We made a pretty slow start of it this morning. Usually I'm all for getting out the door at 5:00am, but I didn't want to deal with Denver rush hour traffic and we only need to go 350 miles. So instead of rushing, we ate a leisurely breakfast. We took a few pictures and posted them on facebook, then hopped on the bike and headed out.

While riding, we are listening to an audio book called "Adventurers Wanted: Slathbog's Gold". It's about a young man who finds himself on a sword and sorcery adventure to find and kill a dragon. Beckham and I spent a couple hours last night searching for just the right book to listen to, and that's what he picked.

I stayed off the freeway and avoided all of the traffic by taking highway 83 North through Franktown and Parker where we made our first gas stop, potty break, and snack purchase. I'm trying to break the ride into 90 minute segments so Beckham doesn't get too burned out.

From Parker we hopped onto C-470 to bypass Denver via the toll road. We started the ride at 64 degrees and rain threatening. As we neared the north end of Denver it was nearing 92 degrees and the sun beating down unhindered on us. I know my Arizona friends are going to poke fun at this, but I was burning up even with the 75 mile wind on us.

When we neared Ft Collins, I thought we should stop and go see the new LDS temple being built there but I had no idea where it was. I took the first exit, then turned onto a side street and it turned out I'd pulled right into the parking lot of the Thunder Mountain Harley dealership. So rather than sitting in the sun I decided we should go in and cool off a bit.

We weren't inside more than 2 minutes before a salesman had brought us ice cold water and a couple bags of popcorn. He also offered to take us on a tour of the store and it's collection of vintage motorcycles. He kept trying to get me to take Beckham for a test ride on a brand new Harley, and maybe I should have taken him up on it but we just stuck with the tour.

Beckham thought it was all cool and kept asking me when he was going to get his training motorcycle. I told him that's up to his mother and father. There were some pretty cool old bikes and even a Harley "Snow Machine".

He also showed us their service center that was setup like a hospital. You pull the bike up outside next to a big button that you push to open the double doors, then ride your bike right inside and up to the "Operating Room" where a couple of service managers help you out. Then they take your bike into triage area where the bikes are tagged and ready for the next available technician. I had to stifle a snicker when nearly every Harley in the triage area had a few drops of oil under neath it on their pretty white floors.

Finally the bike is taken out to their massive parking lot behind the store for a test ride, then back into the detailing shop and back out another set of doors to the waiting customer. It was very cool but all I could think of was "How much does all this extra stuff cost?"

By the end of the tour we'd finally cooled down a bit so I looked up the temple's address and off we went. It was a couple more exits north, then 3 miles West of the freeway. Not very hard to get to at all. We didn't stop for long, just rode around a bit and tool a picture of the temple without getting off the bike. I didn't want to risk getting too hot.

Back onto the freeway we headed north for Cheyenne Wyoming for lunch.

Beckham is a very finicky eater. He likes peanut butter sandwiches and chic-fil-a and that's about it usually. So I started grilling him on where he wanted to stop for lunch. After pitching all sorts of mexican, indian, itallian, hawaiian and everything I could think of, he finally said he also likes Chicken Fries from Burger King, so that's what we did, looked up a BK and headed into the heart of Cheyenne.

Years ago I used to eat allot of Burger King, and then they started putting some weird coating on their fries that I hated, so this is the first time (other than breakfast) that I've been to a burger king. I guess they took the coating back off because I was pleasantly surprised at how good they were. And Beckham ate all of his Chicken fries as well which is a good thing.

At one point in the meal, Beckham said "I'm sure sorry for that guy, his truck was stolen". I asked him what he meant, and he pointed at a guy out on the street who had been talking to a guy at a stop light, and while he was talking, the truck just pulled away. He figured the guy was trying to get his truck back when the thief drove off with it leaving the guy in torn up pants and shirt. I didn't have the heart to explain the whole "vagrant panhandler" thing to him and left him with his thoughts.

While we were eating, a series of clouds started rolling in and bringing much cooler temps with it. By the time we pulled out, it was back down to the low 80s, but there were visible rain showers all around us. I gassed up again before leaving town since the next gas was nearly 100 miles up the road.

We got about half way to Casper and I started looking for another fun place to stop. I spotted an A & W in a gas station and pulled off the freeway for some root beer floats. So as I said, Beckham is a picky eater. You have to prod him to take a bite of food, then he'll chew it for 5 minutes before swallowing, so our lunch took us almost 45 minutes.

But the root beer float lasted all of 3 minutes until it was GONE!! There was no prodding needed. And since the inside of the restaurant was hotter than it was outside, we didn't stick around any longer than we had to.

Back on the bike we were on the home stretch of the ride with just 90 miles to go.

Storms continued to build over the mountains on our left, but other than a few minor sprinkles, we pulled into Casper completely dry.

I'd searched for a hotel that wouldn't be cheap but scary or too overly posh and expensive. I wound up in a La Quinta with a full breakfast and a nice indoor pool and hot tub. We checked in then headed to the room. I took a short nap to cool off and recover from the ride, then we put on our suits and headed for the swimming pool.

There was a family already in the pool area with a boy that looked exactly Beckham's age. Bex walked to the edge of the pool, screamed "CANNONBALL" at the top of his lungs and jumped in.

The other boy had been playing with his father and after seeing Bex jump in, turned and swam straight over to him. For the next 2 hours, the boys father got a break, and Beckham got an instant buddy.

I ran back to the room and grabbed my camera to get a few photos. The pool was nice and cool and felt great on my sore parched muscles.

After swimming, we went back to the room to discuss dinner. Our hotel room card keys had Papa Johns advertising on them and I thought "why not", so I called up the local store and ordered a large Pepperoni, Sausage, and Mushroom pizza. Beckham took a shower and I started uploading pictures.

When the pizza arrived, I asked Beckham if he'd like to watch a movie. I'd brought about 70 movies on a microSD card, so I hooked up my laptop to the tv and started browsing through the list. Beckham wanted "Sword in the Stone" but I noticed that I had "Second Hand Lions" on there and pushed him to give it a try.

We lay on our beds eating pizza and watching a great movie. He loved it and kept hooting and laughing at the funny parts. Especially when Hub beats the snot out of the teenagers.

Beckham sacked out within a few minutes after the movie ended and I started writing this bog. Now I just need to add the photos and we can call it good.

Facebook: "Yellowstone here we come!!!"