Another day and we’re off at the crack of 11:00am!  I love vacation!  No real schedule!  The goal for today is driving through Yellowstone and getting well into Wyoming to put us in a great position for Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Mammoth Site and the Badlands on Monday.  We turn off I-90 to hit the 2 lane road, toward the Tobacco Mountains.  These are dark, tall mountains laid out before us, nothing but the open road and green pastures between us and the mountains.  I really want a picture of the mountains, so I get on the CB and ask Terron to take a photo. (Unfortunately I forgot my camera!) I don’t think he hears me, so I take off a glove and wrangle my phone out of my tank bag and try to take a picture, but then we hit a stop sign and I figure it’s not worth dropping the phone, so I put it away and try to get my glove back on.  I take off from the stop sign, still struggling with the glove and my bike dies.  The oil light comes on.  I can’t get it restarted.  I yell into the CB, “My bike is dead.  My bike is dead.”  Terron pulls over on a little pull-out down the road and amazingly, I coast a good half mile to him.  We spend a few minutes working on it and get it started again and keep moving.  Whew!  Not a major problem.  (20 minutes down the road, I realize that my struggle with the glove caused me to hit the kill switch!  Ok no blonde jokes!  It happens!)  Now, moving down the two lane road again, in the middle of nowhere, I stare at the Tobacco Mountains.  This is beautiful country!  And we’re on our way to Yellowstone.

We’ve been here before, 3 years ago, also on our motorcycles, so this time it’s more relaxed. I have more time, it seems, to really take in the scenery.   The bison are everywhere!  Dozens of them, here and there, some off in the distance in herds, others lounging or grazing just fee from us, just off the road.  When I get that close view, I see that they’re shedding their winter coat.  Interesting, since I’m freezing right now!   I forget that this park has some altitude, averaging 8,000 feet.  Though the temperature never dropped below 48 degrees, it was cold to me!

A grizzly bear was hiding in the trees toward the East entrance and a moose was lounging along the road, appearing to pose for photographers walking up close, while a park ranger stood nearby to keep everyone moving along.  The most entertaining animal of all for me today, was the prairie dog!  There were so many, darting in and out of traffic; I don’t know how they do it!  At one point, I watched one dart around Terron’ s bike in front of me and then dart into oncoming traffic and turn back, just as it seems to hit the tire of a minivan!  So agile!  (And now Terron reminds me that they’re not all fast and agile since he spotted a few lying dead on the side of the road.)

Getting through the park definitely required some patience, through traffic and even a little bit of construction.  At one point, Terron rocked a gravel divot so hard that he said it launched him up off his seat!  I have to admit I chuckled at the site!  Seeing how it bit him, I avoided it!  Then another gravel patch and a smaller launch hit him, but this time, I also see a plastic bag flying under his tire.  I think, “Man, who is littering in this beautiful park?”  Then I see that it’s actually a bag of beef jerky Terron bought at the butcher in Seattle before he left.  So I bellow into the CB, “Hey your beef jerky just went flying!”  I see him quickly look around then he responds, “What?”  I repeated, “Your beef jerky went flying off the bike!”

Then, while Terron is looking for a place to turn around to get it, I see the cooler flying off the special carrier Terron made to hold it on his trailer hitch.   Then I yell into the CB; “And there goes the cooler!”, as I watch the cooler bounce off the carrier in the middle of a bridge over a creek, a diet Dr. Pepper now rolling toward my tire!  I stop in the middle of the bridge, flick on my hazard lights and try to kick the cooler off to the side to get it out of traffic so that I can walk back to retrieve it.  An older man from the SUV behind me, comes up, picks up all the pieces for me and moves them to side, as I see Terron go past me in the opposite direction to retrieve his precious bag of beef jerky!  We finally get all of the lost pieces back in our procession and Terron schools me on how to properly secure the cooler to it carrier.    Apparently I was the last one to use it earlier in the day!  Sheesh, I don’t even eat beef!

Before we leave the park through the East Entrance, we skirt the edge of Yellowstone Lake.  It’s just stunning and huge!  Now it’s time for fun, leaning through the curves of a winding canyon.  This road is along the Buffalo Bill Reservoir, created by the Buffalo Bill Dam.  What a canyon!  We rock and roll through the curves, leaning left, right, left, right!

Now the sun is beginning to set and we don’t want to fall into the same trap as last night.  There’s still a lot of road ahead.  We decide to get gas in Cody and at this point, have to make a decision on where to stop for the night.   We choose Greybull, an hour away and I call a motel for a reservation.  I get her last room!  I also ask where we can eat dinner when we get there.  She says, “Nothing’s open, honey. It’s Sunday in Greybull, Wyoming!”  So we pick up sandwiches in Cody and enjoy the glow of the sun reflecting on the mountains in front of us on our way to Greybull, passing through quaint little towns along the way.  My favorite is Emblem, with a standard city sign that reads:  Population 10, Elevation 4,449′.   All I see are 2 large farms, then a post office!  Terron jokes on the CB, “With only ten residents, I wonder if they just rotate who is the mayor.”

The Greybull M

otel, completely decked out in flowers greets us.  Inside the office, a young girl excitedly states, “You’re on a bike!”  I said, “Yes, my husband and I are on two bikes,” thinking she’s just excited to see a woman who rides.  Maybe, but really the statement is to confirm that we get a cold beer!  Yep, the Greybull Motel greets every biker with a cold beer upon check-in; Budweiser, Bud Light, or Coors Light!  So we settle in with a Coors Light and Bud, but I’d rather sip the wine I brought from home, so I pop that cork and we enjoy our buffalo chicken wrap sandwiches and Hot and Spicy Cheez Its!  I’ve never seen this flavor before; it’s okay.