Yellowstone National Park 2002
I'm moving a few posts to the blog from my posting library... I'll update the photos and links over the new few days...
So... this was the "Outwest" trip I talked about a few months ago. Me and two friends completed about a 4000-mile trip in 10-days or so back in August. The trip began in Chicago and went to Sturgis, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and back to Chicago with a few stops along the way.
Here's the Microsoft Streets & Trip overview:
[photo]
Who rode along with the group? Dan (me), Antoine, and Adam. Dan rides a BMW K1200LT, Antoine rides a BWM K1200RS, and Adam rides a Harley RoadKing Classic. Pretty cool, huh?
We left Chicago on August 8, 2002 and intended to ride to Souix Falls, SD. The route was about 541 miles and was through Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and just over the South Dakota state line to Souix Falls. All in all, a very uneventful ride - we did highway riding most of the way. The Street Pilot III came in very handy on this trip, although we didn't use it much on this segment. Can't remember where we did the overnight - some local hotel. Us three rugged men had decided to camp out early on... but wimped at the last minute and decided to stay in hotels. Good choice!!! ha!
The next day, Friday, brought us into Sturgis, SD - just in time for a day or two of the Sturgis Rally. About 370 miles or so from Souix Falls to Sturgis. None of us had been to Sturgis so we decided that two nights would be good - although we had to stay in Rapid City, SD - about thirty miles down the road from Sturgis. It was highway driving again on Friday. We decided to cab into Sturgis Friday night so we could drink - pretty interesting night. We watched more than anything else and I got a pretty big kick out of watching all the stupid people tricks.
Saturday was a goof-off day - we thought we would do more Sturgis, but, frankly, I could only handle so much Sturgis. We ran down to Mount Rushmore and through the Bad Lands National Park.
[photo]
The ride down to Mount Rushmore was fantastic - there are some pretty decent highways in the area - we took the nice roads on the way down, but found some great roads with lots of twisties on the way back. We ended up going for a spin on Alt 16 and found one twist back after another going up and down mountains - although the roads were two-laned, most of the way, it seemed that every tunnel through the mountain was a single-lane road - pretty cool. There were a handful of situations in which we found a bunch of tourists who felt they had to drive 10 miles an hour up and down the roads - passing was a chore...! We ended up going south of Rushmore on 16A over to 359 and to Greyhound Gultch Road - well worth the ride.
Sunday was a ride back up to 90 to Sheridan, WY. This was an easy day - about 300 miles, again mostly highway riding.
[photo]
Monday was about 350 miles into Yellowstone National Park. Wow! If you've never been to Yellowstone, get on your bike right this second and get going. It's unbelievable. God - I'll do this trip again just for the Yellowstone portion. We took a ton of pictures in Yellowstone. (All of the pictures in this post are fairly low resolution and haven't been color corrected...!)
[photo]
We spent Monday night in Yellowstone and got over to Old Faithful around 7:00p or so - good time for pictures. Pretty neat if you've never seen it up close. So the three of us are sitting there waiting for it to go and the perfect little Ward Cleaver family comes up and sits next to us. Now keep in mind there is seating for about 1000 people and there are maybe 10 people waiting for this thing to go (we just missed the last one). Not that I'm antisocial, but it was a bit odd. Then the eight year old kid chimes in and starts out like an encyclopedia on how Old Faithful works. Pretty interesting until he starts telling us that the plumes and gas leaking from Old Faithful means "she's teasing us" and that "it'll spurt and spurt and spurt" until "it blows" - the three of us just couldn't tell if this kid was screwing with us or not. It was pretty surreal.
[photo]
Tuesday was a ride down through the Grand Teton National Park - another awesome place to visit if you've not seen it. About a three hundred mile day - give or take.
[photo]
Wednesday saw us go from Rock Springs, WY to Estes Park, CO. This was originally scheduled to be about 400 miles or so, but due to a wrong turn from the navigator (me... and also the guy with the GPS), we ended up having to backtrack about 75 miles or so. I wish I had kept a journal, or had documented this earlier, but somewhere before the Rocky Mountain National Park I took a wrong turn and the three of us ended up in a diner to figure out where the heck we were - maps, a laptop, and a GPS didn't seem to help much. To make a long story short the lady in the restaurant told us we could take a 20-mile gravel road to get back to where we were headed... and we did it. Ha! I think we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when we hit the paved road again... although there was some absolutely beautiful territory back there in the woods.
We cruised through the Rocky Mountain National Park and, with one exception, was a superb experience. The twisties were phenomenal. Traffic was generally pretty light, but turned into a pretty intense backup on the first major set of switchbacks on the west side of the park... turns out some guy on a Ducati lost it on a curve and bounced off a minivan and then into the wall. He looked pretty bad - unfortunately. There seemed to be a few folks working on him and there were a bunch of bikers trying to lend a hand, so we all carried on - I figuered that since none of us were medical-types,we might be causing more problems than not. We continue up the road about three of four miles to a great overlook and sat there and shook our heads with a bunch of other bikers - that's when we saw the life flight come in. I thought they were going to land in our rest stop but they seemed to have found a spot closer to the accident site. Bummer. The rest of the ride was somewhat sobering, yet the views were incredible. There's a pretty neat visitor center, the Alpine Visitor Center at the top of the the park - about 15,000 ft. The ride down the other side of the RMNP was staggering - there were so many places I wanted to stop and take pictures... but no place to stop. I can't believe that folks actually walked across that land years and years ago. Wow.
Thursday brought us to Omaha via the interstate system and Friday brought us back into Chicago.
Next year I'm doing the Grand Canyon. I'm going to factor RMNP into the ride - it's too awesome not to do it again.
danbrew
So... this was the "Outwest" trip I talked about a few months ago. Me and two friends completed about a 4000-mile trip in 10-days or so back in August. The trip began in Chicago and went to Sturgis, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and back to Chicago with a few stops along the way.
Here's the Microsoft Streets & Trip overview:
[photo]
Who rode along with the group? Dan (me), Antoine, and Adam. Dan rides a BMW K1200LT, Antoine rides a BWM K1200RS, and Adam rides a Harley RoadKing Classic. Pretty cool, huh?
We left Chicago on August 8, 2002 and intended to ride to Souix Falls, SD. The route was about 541 miles and was through Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and just over the South Dakota state line to Souix Falls. All in all, a very uneventful ride - we did highway riding most of the way. The Street Pilot III came in very handy on this trip, although we didn't use it much on this segment. Can't remember where we did the overnight - some local hotel. Us three rugged men had decided to camp out early on... but wimped at the last minute and decided to stay in hotels. Good choice!!! ha!
The next day, Friday, brought us into Sturgis, SD - just in time for a day or two of the Sturgis Rally. About 370 miles or so from Souix Falls to Sturgis. None of us had been to Sturgis so we decided that two nights would be good - although we had to stay in Rapid City, SD - about thirty miles down the road from Sturgis. It was highway driving again on Friday. We decided to cab into Sturgis Friday night so we could drink - pretty interesting night. We watched more than anything else and I got a pretty big kick out of watching all the stupid people tricks.
Saturday was a goof-off day - we thought we would do more Sturgis, but, frankly, I could only handle so much Sturgis. We ran down to Mount Rushmore and through the Bad Lands National Park.
[photo]
The ride down to Mount Rushmore was fantastic - there are some pretty decent highways in the area - we took the nice roads on the way down, but found some great roads with lots of twisties on the way back. We ended up going for a spin on Alt 16 and found one twist back after another going up and down mountains - although the roads were two-laned, most of the way, it seemed that every tunnel through the mountain was a single-lane road - pretty cool. There were a handful of situations in which we found a bunch of tourists who felt they had to drive 10 miles an hour up and down the roads - passing was a chore...! We ended up going south of Rushmore on 16A over to 359 and to Greyhound Gultch Road - well worth the ride.
Sunday was a ride back up to 90 to Sheridan, WY. This was an easy day - about 300 miles, again mostly highway riding.
[photo]
Monday was about 350 miles into Yellowstone National Park. Wow! If you've never been to Yellowstone, get on your bike right this second and get going. It's unbelievable. God - I'll do this trip again just for the Yellowstone portion. We took a ton of pictures in Yellowstone. (All of the pictures in this post are fairly low resolution and haven't been color corrected...!)
[photo]
We spent Monday night in Yellowstone and got over to Old Faithful around 7:00p or so - good time for pictures. Pretty neat if you've never seen it up close. So the three of us are sitting there waiting for it to go and the perfect little Ward Cleaver family comes up and sits next to us. Now keep in mind there is seating for about 1000 people and there are maybe 10 people waiting for this thing to go (we just missed the last one). Not that I'm antisocial, but it was a bit odd. Then the eight year old kid chimes in and starts out like an encyclopedia on how Old Faithful works. Pretty interesting until he starts telling us that the plumes and gas leaking from Old Faithful means "she's teasing us" and that "it'll spurt and spurt and spurt" until "it blows" - the three of us just couldn't tell if this kid was screwing with us or not. It was pretty surreal.
[photo]
Tuesday was a ride down through the Grand Teton National Park - another awesome place to visit if you've not seen it. About a three hundred mile day - give or take.
[photo]
Wednesday saw us go from Rock Springs, WY to Estes Park, CO. This was originally scheduled to be about 400 miles or so, but due to a wrong turn from the navigator (me... and also the guy with the GPS), we ended up having to backtrack about 75 miles or so. I wish I had kept a journal, or had documented this earlier, but somewhere before the Rocky Mountain National Park I took a wrong turn and the three of us ended up in a diner to figure out where the heck we were - maps, a laptop, and a GPS didn't seem to help much. To make a long story short the lady in the restaurant told us we could take a 20-mile gravel road to get back to where we were headed... and we did it. Ha! I think we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when we hit the paved road again... although there was some absolutely beautiful territory back there in the woods.
We cruised through the Rocky Mountain National Park and, with one exception, was a superb experience. The twisties were phenomenal. Traffic was generally pretty light, but turned into a pretty intense backup on the first major set of switchbacks on the west side of the park... turns out some guy on a Ducati lost it on a curve and bounced off a minivan and then into the wall. He looked pretty bad - unfortunately. There seemed to be a few folks working on him and there were a bunch of bikers trying to lend a hand, so we all carried on - I figuered that since none of us were medical-types,we might be causing more problems than not. We continue up the road about three of four miles to a great overlook and sat there and shook our heads with a bunch of other bikers - that's when we saw the life flight come in. I thought they were going to land in our rest stop but they seemed to have found a spot closer to the accident site. Bummer. The rest of the ride was somewhat sobering, yet the views were incredible. There's a pretty neat visitor center, the Alpine Visitor Center at the top of the the park - about 15,000 ft. The ride down the other side of the RMNP was staggering - there were so many places I wanted to stop and take pictures... but no place to stop. I can't believe that folks actually walked across that land years and years ago. Wow.
Thursday brought us to Omaha via the interstate system and Friday brought us back into Chicago.
Next year I'm doing the Grand Canyon. I'm going to factor RMNP into the ride - it's too awesome not to do it again.
danbrew
1 Comments:
We just returned from the Black Hills area and it was a wonderful trip. We plan to "do" Wyoming next summer and will begin soon to research great rides and best routes there.
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