Cptnrydr - Road Trip 2009 - part 5

[captainryder]

July 12 – Saturday


IT’S MY BIRTHDAY

Awoke early at Grant Village in Yellowstone. There was a few drops of rain on my Spyder cover.

Blue Sky, with white clouds. Cool 47 degrees, however, by the time we started moving it was 53 deg F.

• Pesky mosquitoes have not stopped swarming, ( don’t they ever sleep?). We decided to drive the 18 miles to Upper Geyser Basin and Old Faithful Inn for breakfast and our first viewing of Old Faithful. I’m taking the trailer this morning, as we are wearing a lot of cool weather gear early but probably will discard it as the day heats up. Our plan is to go to West Yellowstone, MT just outside the west entrance of the park so we can say “ We visited Montana!” It’s also a tourist trap, so probably will need the trailer for those souvenirs as well…
• Arrival about 20 minutes after we started out. The drive from Yellowstone Lake to Upper Geyser basin crosses the Continental Divide twice in its winding path. If you have never seen a big log cabin before, well you got to see Old Faithful Inn, the 8 story log cabin of cabins. Breakfast in the sunny back of main floor room is a treat. The help at these lodges usually are college or foreign students, they have their first name & country of origin on their name tag….. ( Reminds me of on a cruise ship, as they do the same thing.)
• First checked the hotel information desk about when some geysers are estimated to erupt. Old Faithful is pretty consistent within 5-10 minutes, but 3 other geysers are times and their expectation of eruption vary within 1- 2 hours. Don’t know if I can expect my travelling partners to wait that long for an eruption, but there are a lot of geysers bigger than Old Faithful and more spectacular. DID YOU KNOW OVER HALF OF ALL GEYSERS IN THE WORLD ARE AT YELLOWSTONE !
• Walking around Upper Geyser basin is easy as at the other geyser areas in the park there is a boardwalk, miles and miles of boardwalks to keep you off the geothermal features and also from stepping into soft mud or crusty areas which you can fall through. The sulfur smell sometimes is overbearing at these areas, but it’s worth it. (BY THE WAY THE BOARDWALKS ARE THAT PLASTICIZED WOOD… ALL FROM RECYCLED PLASTIC COLLECTED AT THE PARK TRASH CANS!)
• Old Faithful erupted, we dispersed and headed further north towards Norris Road. Passed more geothermal features, and a swimming hole in the Firehole river that all those hot thermal springs and geyser waters flow into….. And yes the water temperature is elevated…. Must be pretty good heat, the swimming section of the Firehole River is about 5-8 miles from last thermal feature and I saw babies with their parents enjoying the water as if it was a hot summer day… but the ambient temperature on Spyder showed 64 degrees. ( And we know that that it might be cooler than that as Spyder’s temp gauge sometimes has engine heat distorting it)
• Town of West Yellowstone is really cute! Yeah, cute. There’s a swell welcoming station, museum, and the tourist traps are all on 3 blocks theme decorated like a western outfitter’s town. The “Big Sky” state showed its stuff today, as the sky was a vivid blue with fluffy white clouds streaming across. As I rested in the shade of the museum’s front entrance, I could see thunderheads building back in the park… about at Upper Geyser Basin. We better get moving back.
• Found a nice place along the Madison River to eat late 2pm lunch, as we had made reservations for 8pm back at Grant Village for my birthday dinner. Across the river lay two elk and after a few more minutes we discovered two calves….. Its almost like magic, I pull my camera out to take some pictures and then one motor home stops to see what we are looking at, then another, another, pretty soon we have a traffic jam. We caused this one!
• Heading back to Grant Village via Upper Geyser Basin, and we better stop again at Old Faithful Lodge as this thunderhead in front of us is going to let loose. We arrive under the huge front porch of the log cabin to find the sky open up. It’s about 4pm and we are relaxing in the huge main floor lobby of the inn when the showers let up for a moment and we decide to walk over to one of the other two lodges at this site…. Old Faithful Snow Lodge. Then I remember that there is a live webcam always facing Old Faithful, let’s call our relatives back at home and have them get on line and “wave” to them. After about 10 minutes of phone time, instructions to go to Nat Park Service website, etc…. success !!!!! That was fun and wouldn’t Lewis and Clark loved to have something like that when they were exploring this area!
• Arrival at Grant Village just 30 minutes before reservation time. Sun stays up a lot later here in these upper latitutes. Dinner was Bison Tenderloin with a Plum Sauce. Bon Apetite!
• That night it looked like it still might rain. But we kept the window open all night as it still got stuffy in the rooms without some air. WE had a lot of gear to repack, so we moved everything from the trailer to the room to re-organize.
• We start the 2nd week of our trip tomorrow, and start also travelling back towards Kansas City as well, via Colorado and Kansas. Stay tuned.

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8KF_risEjk"]YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.[/nomedia]


The night cooled down to below 51 degrees before the sun set today. We only travelled about 110 miles, but it did not seem that long, as we took lots of long breaks visiting thermal features. By the way, we missed Grand Geyser by 30 minutes returning from West Yellowstone that afternoon. That geyser is spectacular but they only can predict it within 2-3 hours….. Oh well.

If you want to see my trailer in action, here is is. The helmet cam I bought VHoldR- is being handheld by me as I broke my visor on my helmet at a gas station fill-up. So I am holding the camera and swinging it back and forth ( front and back) as I ride. Can't do that with your left hand on the SM5 but the automatic SE5 it can be done as you can see.....

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geBfVOQefkY"]YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.[/nomedia]

[teacherbob]

Ken,
Sounds like a great trip. We missed you on the "First Annual Small Town Kansas Dice Run". we're palnning another run for October. Hope you can make it then.
Bob

[jnt]

Happy b-day (late).

Looks like a great trip. A couple scenes took me right there. Could almost smell the mountains!

[ataDude]

[SpyderRyder810]

Yellowstone is one of my favorite places to visit. We (RLS and I) just returned from a trip out west. Our original plan was to ride the Beartooth Pass. But when we were told that it was under construction we changed our minds. Have you had the opportunity to ride this pass and do you know if the construction is completed? ...Joan
P.S Happy Birthday!