Day 9:

We left Cody on Route 20, headed due west toward Yellowstone National Park. Route 20 (also called 14 and 16) runs beside the Buffalo Bill Reservoir, and then beside the reservoir’s source, the Shoshone River. The section from Wapiti to the park boundary ran through spectacular canyons with tasty switchbacks and twisties, but the river below was high and muddy and I hoped the condition of the river wasn’t a harbinger of the conditions ahead in the park. There were some annoying construction hold-ups as we entered the park, and a few soupy, dog-paddling moments, but we got into the park without incident. We saw more bison up too close, and a moose and a bear at safer distances. The weather deteriorated to sprinkles, but never got any worse, and the road was good the rest of the way through Yellowstone. When we reached the lake’s edge for the first time, we could see the hot springs bubbling at the shoreline, and, unfortunately, crowds of people examining them. Feeling asocial, we didn’t stop.

We made the big left turn at Fishing Bridge, and headed south out of the park toward the Tetons. We skirted the lake for a good 30 miles, and my mind wandered to what kind of pristine fish a man might catch in such a lake. I have since discovered that 400,000 pounds of carp were “removed” from Yellowstone Lake between 1997 and 2000. Evidently Yellowstone had the same problems with carp that the Tennessee River system does, with overpopulation and turbidity. The carp final solution worked, and walleye, musky and northern pike are doing very well. Sounds like just another reason to go back.

The Grand Tetons were breathtaking, and we didn’t even attempt to take photographs that would fail to capture the magnitude of what we were seeing. The peaks all lined up in a row across the freakishly beautiful lake made for an excellent backdrop for our riding, and the drizzle stopped and the pavement dried, and we went fast, and it was good. And then we saw the golf course. I am sure all manner of celebrities play there, but it just looked wrong, after all that natural art, to see a big green “Birdie King” screen superimposed over the earth. It would be a signal that we had entered Touristland, otherwise known as Jackson. There’s a Ripley’s Believe it Not (believe it or not!) in Jackson, and we ate lunch at an overpriced café next door. The traffic was dreadful, and I found myself longing for a pit toilet, for some reason. We bought some camera batteries and film (also overpriced) and headed out of town on Route 89/189 to Hoback Junction, where we turned southeast (but still on 189). The land opened up and became more arid, and we basically went as fast as we felt the motors would run, since Mark was leading with no speedometer. We passed Fontenelle reservoir, which looked about as fecund as a Martian sea, and just past the dam we turned left onto 372, and ran straight into the worst mud of the trip. Out in the middle of nowhere, there was more construction and about 6 inches of ochre pudding for our riding pleasure. I had to make a few dabs to stay up, and the bike was bogging down with the sticky crap all over the wheels. Crawling, trying to stay out of the mud slung by cars and trucks, we finally got onto clear pavement outside of Green River, and hit the grocery store for grillables and beverages.

We boogied out of Green River as the sun was heading down, trying to beat some weather we could see in the general direction of our stop for the night, Flaming Gorge and the Buckboard Marina campground. We missed the weather completely, and made it to the mostly abandoned campground after the office had closed. There was a self-serve box, so we paid our fee, found a campsite, and discovered we had nothing to cook over. There was a great grill at our campsite, but nothing to burn. We scrounged empty campsites and found some half-burned ends of lumber and sticks, and I felt like the homeless guys scrounging half-burned butts out the ashtray at the scruffy grocery near my house.

The campground itself was beautiful. I found out the next day that it had originally been a USGS free campground and then was nearly abandoned before being restored and converted to a private campground supporting the marina on Flaming Gorge Reservoir. The campsites all had fantastic mid-century modern metal cabana shells, oriented in approximately the same direction to block the prevailing wind, which puffed at a decent clip while we sent up our tents. The campsites were planted with grass and watered and groomed, and the place was a green island in an ocean of scrub sagebrush. It was hard to believe that we had spent the night in Cody, ridden through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, and then ended up here all in one day. The terrains changes were so great that it seemed we would have needed a plane to cover the distance. 

As the sun went down, the jackrabbits came out, just like in the end of On the Beach. We were discussing another night of freeze-dried macaroni-based meals when one of the few other campers in the campground came home to his RV, and we struck up a conversation that ended in his giving us some wood, a few charcoal briquettes, and some lighter fluid. Manna! Mark cooked up the best camp meal of the trip, with delicious buffalo burgers and corn on the cob. We toasted the lepus and our good fortune under one of the biggest skies I can imagine and stayed up too late, knowing that the next day would be our last day on the bikes. But it would be one of the best days riding of the trip.

Day 10:

We left Buckboard Marina early, because we had most of the state of Colorado to cross, along with a corner of Utah, before we could crash into the beds at David and Erica’s place in Golden. We continued south on 530 and crossed into Utah, the fifth state of the trip, at Manila. The entire Flaming Gorge area was beautiful, and 530 skirts the western edge of the gorge, on the boundary of the Ashley National Forest. At Manila, we rode onto Route 44 and headed due south, turning west near Green Lake. The area was a geologist’s wet dream, with signs identifying each new rock formation as Cretaceous, Mesozoic, etc. The roads are a sport biker’s wet dream as well, with magnificent clean pavement winding through spectacular scenery. Route 44 tees into Route 191, and we turned right on 191 and headed south to Vernal, where Mark, again in the lead and flying with no speedometer and apparently no map, boomed away down 40 west, when we were supposed to take 40 east all the way across Colorado. Not wanting to give chase, we sat and relaxed until we heard the V11 Sport’s titanium “off-road use only” pipes returning up the road. 

He sheepishly stopped and inquired if he had made a wrong turn as we all pointed East. Vernal was a low, level oasis of lush green land along a little feeder of the Green River. Although we still a few miles from Colorado and the town of Dinosaur, Vernal has an excellent giant pink Tyrannosaurus Rex beside the road, welcoming us to fossil country! Highway 40 took us back up into the rocks and pines again for a while, and then the terrain flattened and became more arid around the state line. 

We would be on 40 for almost 300 miles that day, across two-thirds the width of Colorado. The first section of 40, which I hadn’t been on before, was a scene from a bleak black and white western, except the sky was eye-poppingly blue. At Blue Mountain, ominous signs warned of no gas for 75 miles; I looked at the trip odo and saw 90 miles already on that tank. Kim, who on the Sprint had the best range of the group, got Mark to turn around and gas up. She didn’t want to be the one running back with a gas can to rescue the rest of us.

Mark did Buffalo Bill tricks on the green V11 (at 90 mph) to ease the boredom on the long stretch of desolate road, but I thought it was beautiful. I backed off a little in a passive-aggressive attempt to get Mark to slow down, but he just eased out of sight, and that was perfectly cool. I knew where he was going. The scenery got greener as we approached the back side of Steamboat Springs, and we stopped for a quick outdoor bite downtown at a convenience store/sub shop. After lunch it was the home stretch to Golden, and this time no flood to ruin our dinner with David and Erica, who had returned to Colorado and were looking forward to going out with us to sushi.

Up the long hill leaving Steamboat Springs, Mark and I got pretty throttle-happy in the higher gears on the V11 and Mr. Bandito. I knew this would be the last good riding of our vacation, the weather was perfect, and I hadn’t gotten a ticket yet on the trip. In fact, no one had, another advantage of wide open spaces. We saw signs warning of construction on 40 between Kremmling and Granby, and with the ochre pudding fresh in our minds and still coating our poor bikes, we opted to divert down to I-70 on Route 7, which followed the Blue River past Green Mountain Reservoir. It added maybe 27 miles of interstate to the ride that day, but if it avoided another 20-mile-long mud pie, it was worth it, and Route 7 was a fine road it its own right.

We drove right to David and Erica’s place, past the signs for Buffalo Bill’s grave, and greeted them in the late afternoon sunshine. I was so happy they were back before we had to leave, because I felt funny staying at their beautiful house without their being there. The bikes were horrible, but they would be going home that way. We cleaned up ourselves and drove to the Sushi Den for a fantastic meal and a great time with our friends, and then wandered next door to a tequila and dessert bar called Lola. After a quick primer on tequilas from the helpful bartender, we sampled a few varieties and proclaimed them all excellent, but one or two were really tasty. 

We drove back to Golden (designated non-tequila-drinking driver) and crashed hard, after a long, fun day. People in the world should have such a great day as this one, at least once in their lives. We packed up and hit the road early, and caravanned with Mark and Barbara all the way to Athens, Tennessee, where we said our goodbyes at our last co-gas-stop and they headed back to North Carolina. We were home before dark and collapsed in the arms of our lonely kitties.

I was slow in documenting this adventure, with work, good weather and old bike projects beckoning. Putting it all down to silicon reminds me I need to do it again. I wonder how many miles it is from Denver to the Kootenays? Soon.