An Old Broad's Motorbike Travels: Onward to Yellowstone National Park

Sunday, August 18, 2013

This day I drove from the Denver area up to West Yellowstone, Montana. I was meeting my friends Jimmy and Lois and their friends Pat and Lonnie.

I passed fields of wind turbines. The size of these things is amazing.

(The following photos were taken with my cell phone.)

OOoo, big mountains in the background.

OOooo, Grand Teton ahead.

Unfortunately, there were fires burning and it was too smokey to take pictures. These were the only ones I got. :(

I clipped the edge of Idaho and saw the amazing hay fields there. It was beautiful.

Well, it was a long day of driving. Twelve hours and I finally arrived at the Rainbow Point campground. It was a nice Forest Service campground. The sites had electric but no water. That was fine. There was a water spigot nearby and we were able to fill tanks as needed. Jimmy & Lois and Pat & Lonnie had their rv's; I was tent camping. I left my rv at home due to the cost of fuel. But tent camping long term isn't really for me any more. My old knees don't like getting down on the ground to get in and out of a tent. Ugh.

I set up my tent and saved the rest of the setup for the next day.

Monday, August 19, 2013

I needed to set up the rest of my stuff which meant unloading everything off the trailer and out of the truck. Plus I was just exhausted from that drive so a day to rest was in order.

Pat and Lois made an awesome breakfast. Throughout the rest of the trip, they would make fabulous meals for breakfast and dinner. Wow, did we eat well!! Since I didn't have anything for storing food, I was grateful for their taking care of that for me.

Jimmy, Lois, and Lonnie went for a dualsport ride. Later on, Pat and I took the truck and went into town for supplies. Then we went exploring near the campground.

We saw this herd of horses running across the field to the corner but only got the end of the run.

We went to look at this lake near the campground - Hebgen Lake. There was a sign for Horse Butte Lookout so we decided to check it out. We were glad we did!! It was beautiful although a bit hazy due to wildfires in Yellowstone. That's a big plume of smoke in the background.

There were butterflies everywhere!

Just beautiful.

It was really stunningly beautiful up there.

Then it was back to camp for the rest of the day.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

This day we took a street bike ride. Sort of a scoping ride. Plus Jimmy wanted to ride over Beartooth Pass.
We rode through Yellowstone. This was my first time through the park.

Jimmy and Lois

Pat and Lonnie

SHEEEEPP!!!

Madison River

Yellowstone scenery.

A steam vent!

Wide open spaces.

We got stopped by these SHEEEEEEEPP!!! as they scooted down the hill into the road.

Dead trees from the 1988 fire.

It was amazing that a lot of them were still standing after all these years. And the ones that fell over are still laying there. I guess they don't have the decomposers there like we do here!