Monday August
30th. Decided to go over Monte Cristo summit just to see what it was
like and no big deal in my book, seen plenty worse! Back up 30 to
Randolph again then into WY and 89N to Jackson Hole and spent the
night there. There's lots of REAL cowboys out along there, the Snake
River is beautiful and Jackson Hole is a tourist town. People would
be arrested in CA for doing what those WY folks don't think twice
about - simple things like kids and dogs riding 
around in the back of the pickup truck. It was cool. Now
the pix start, view of Grand Tetons is just right up the road from
Jackson. Waited for an hour to get the Old Faithful pic, right before
it went off somebody pulled in front of me and at least had the
grace to ask if they were in my way. Lots to see in that park, could
easily spend a week there and still not get it all. |
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01. Grand Tetons.JPG |
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03. waiting for Old Faithful.JPG |
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04. Triksie & Old Faithful.JPG |
05. Jellystone Hotel.JPG |
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Headed out of the park as the sun was rapidly falling and ran into a bunch of cars stopped along the side of the road watching a grizzly and her cub. The grizzly pix didn't come out so good, on the second one the camera focused on my handlebar instead of the distance but at least you can get a sense of how big it was and close to the gawkers. Hooked up with a group of bikers from TX visiting a friend who lives just outside the park and rode with them for awhile, that's the other bikes in the grizzly pix. The guy who lived near Jellystone was Cowboy Rick, rode with his cowboy hat on! Never saw that before but he said his windshield is big enough to keep it from blowing off (most of the time). Rode out of the park with Cowboy Rick and on over to Cody and spent the night. |
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06. Grizzly Bear in Jellystone.JPG |
07. Grizzly Bear in Jellystone 2.JPG |
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Long ride the next day, took 14E outta Cody all the way over the Buckhorn mountains to Gilette where I had an approach/avoidance conflict over whether to just hit the freeway and go another 100mi to Sturgis or stop and spend the night. Gilette seemed like a pretty cool town, big enough to have what you need and small enough to not feel lost in, kinda like Lubbock, I suppose. The western folks seem to feel like kin, the group that was riding with Cowboy Rick were from TX. Got directions from a guy at the gas station where I stopped for food and fuel who used to live over in Spearfish, people had told me along the way that Deadwood was a good place to stay and he said that was just on up the hiway (90E) a little ways further. Another 100mi and I was there and Deadwood was like a mini Las Vegas - no place I wanted to stay, so I headed back west on a road I didn't know toward Spearfish and had to go on reserve gas tank out in the middle of nowhere in the dark. Crap. But then an oasis! I was totally beat, outta gas, sneezing to get all the bugs outta my nose and they took right good care of me. Scary looking folks, unless, of course, you're used to hanging around with biker types. Turns out it was dad and son bikers from TX who got talked into buying the place after they stayed there and liked it so much during the Sturgis rally. Even had a TX flag flying out in front! |
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08. Bridger Trail.JPG |
09. Wild Horses near Cody.JPG |
10. 14E toward Buckhorn Mountains.JPG |
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Next day they bought my lunch and I bought my Sturgis t-shirt and pin they gave me directions on how best to head south through the Black Hills. Gotta go see Crazy Horse and gotta take the time to watch the movie about what's going on there the dad told me. Started in the '50s when the Indians hired an up and coming artist to sculpt the mountain for them. He died but his family is still at it, the face was just completed and unveiled a couple of years ago. All done through private donations. Eventual plan is to create an Indian university and medical center under it. Mt Rushmore would fit into Cray Horse's head. Cool. If you want a bunch of granite you can go there and get it for free - tons of it blown off the mountain to create the sculpture. The guys back in Spearfish said they were thinking of getting a bunch of it and building a granite house on the property! Outta the Black Hills on some really cool looking roads and lots of wildlife.So many turkeys and deer running around you could understand how living off the land in the old days could work. |
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12. Crazy Horse model.JPG |
13. Crazy Horse inscription.jpg |
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15. Donkeys on road at Custer Park.JPG |
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Made it down to Chadron, NB without getting rained on too much and ended up finding an excellent motel. Sat outside drinking whiskey with the owner and a couple of other bikers (father and son BMW types from the North East on a cross country ride) talking politics till way too late. Owner was a retired rancher, had lots of good stories to tell, said he liked my politics, told him I thought we gave those east coasters some things to think about anyway. Told the story of the scariest time in his life when he had to bring a small plane down in a storm and get it tied down before it blew away. The ranches in NB are so big the farmers buy planes to get around them and most don't even bother to get a pilot's license. Next
day I stocked up on whiskey again at the liquor store across the
street and spent the rest of the day zig-zagging south on All day Saturday Oct 4th bucking a headwind toward Wichita but finally made it into town late in the evening and stayed up most of the night doing laundry and computer stuff. Here to meet with Kathy, the old girlfriend of a CA friend of mine who had come out to visit earlier in the year and invited me to be shown around Doo-Da as they call it. Funny story from this part of the ride was when I stopped in a gas station just paast Lake Wilson and saw myself in the mirror in the bathroom: the wind was hitting me so hard there were hairs pulled completely up through my doo-rag all knotted up so bad all I could do was cut them off with my swiss army knife! |
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16. Lake Wilson KS.JPG |
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| Didn't get into town till late and stayed up even later washing clothes and cleaning up e-mail. Got going pretty late Sunday and went across the street to WalMart to stock up on supplies then out to oysters and martinis with Kathy (business dinner, you know; discussed her property management experience and possible future business dealings we may have ;-) and ended up closing down a biker bar (kicked us out before we could even get the friggin' 8 ball in the hole, darn it!) and taking a guy home who lived miles outta town and didn't have a ride. It was fun! |  18_ Toto sink in KS_JPG |
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Monday, Memorial Day, Kathy decided she wanted to go for a ride on Triksie so that's how my tour of the town went. (Wichita used to be kinda the aerospace capital but the airlines sorta went around it for political reasons that may never be fully understood and now it's kinda coming back as a more diversified economy.) Started out back over by the biker bar with a couple of red beers then over to visit my CA friend Ken's sister and her tribe and see the place he almost bought, then ate some burgers, then I blew on outta town, headed for Dallas on 35S. Spent the night in a fleabag motel on the south end of OKC. |
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 19_ Vagabond in Wichita_JPG |
20. almost Kens place.JPG |
21. Vikki Darren Nathan Kim.JPG |
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22. Kathy Vikki Nathan Darren.JPG |
23. Gas prices in Wichita.JPG |
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