Jackson to Big Sky, Montana (Yellowstone Part 2)

Even though taking the interstate to Montana would be faster, I decided to go back through the slow-ass tourist traffic in Yellowstone. How often to you get to experience a world famous national park like this?

So since I'm desperately trying to catch on blog posts, this will be another photo-heavy, text-light post. But really most of the day was me riding up to through Yellowstone taking photos. Here we go...

The mandatory Yellowstone sign-and-I photo.

Saw my first ever wild otters in one of the lakes.

At one point in the trip, I saw a whole bunch of people milling about near some venting steam. Thought it would be worth checking out, damn I was glad I stopped.

Me next to the Emerald Pool.

The Emerald Pool.

The Emerald Pool again from a different angle.

Another spring in the same area.

More spring action.

The walkway around the springs eventually led to a track, where it said "1 mile to mystic falls". Seemed like a reasonable idea.

Walking the trail, looking out for Bears
(so I could kick them in the nuts)

Runoff from Mystic Falls.

Mystic Falls. After this photo I promptly lost my
lens cover into the river.

Me in my most practical-for-hiking motorcycle
jacket and Kevlar jeans.

Mystic falls from higher up.

Finally got one a photo of one of these little fuckers.

You've got to remember I was moving pretty fast, my hangover had faded away but again I was trying to beat sundown. I knew it got pretty cold there at night. So after seeing the springs, I found another place with a whole heap of them.

Run off from one of the larger springs.

One of the grand geysers, doesn't go off anymore but you
wouldn't want to be close to it when it did.

More springs and geysers.

These red areas were apparently full of microbes that feed off
nutrients in the water.

It was so windy in that area, many a lost
and unrecoverable hat.

A big-ass spring.

From here I rode about 20 minutes, where there were a heap of gathering tourists. I knew what that meant, maybe I'll get to see a bear? 

Nope, an elk... I think...

A big fucking elk-maybe-deer-I-don't-know though.

This is what happens when tourists find some wildlife.

The area that the maybe-elk was in was pretty sweet.

I eventually rode out of Yellowstone into Montana. I thought I was staying that night in a motel in "West Yellowstone", but upon further investigation that morning I found out that hotwire put me in a town called "Big Sky". I did however stop in West Yellowstone to get my first ever pulled-pork sandwich. 

West Yellowstone.

The road from West Yellowstone to Big Sky was actually really pretty, but unfortunately I didn't have my GoPro attached and I was way too tired to get off and take photos.  

I did get a sunset in Big Sky though.

That night I had a few Montana beers at my motels bar, and talked to a nice young couple road-tripping through the US. But it was a pretty early night (around 11:30), it was way too far for me to walk to any other bars in the area.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

I had a couple of days set aside to hangout Jackson. Many people told me how awesome this town was, even though it was very well known to tourists.

Luckily Chris - my couch host's roommate - had all of Sunday and weekday afternoons off to hangout. Chris is an awesome dude, he is a one quarter Cherokee, one quarter Apache, half white recently-gay guy who comes from Mormon background. Chris is the kind of dude that has an esky full of beers in his truck, spends whole summers camping out in the mountains and knows the Jackson Hole roads like the back of his hand. Everyone in Jackson seems to know Chris and Chris knows everyone. He is a super nice guy, and so damn chill he could almost be Australian.

On my first full day in Jackson, Chris and I went to breakfast then drove around the Teton National Park in his truck. This was pretty sweet for me, most of the roads were very rough dirt which on a bike would have been pretty hairy. The first thing we went to was an old farm where the buildings were popular photographic locations for tourists.

Doing my best cowboy, the Tetons are in the background.

My next host's place.

I call this one "Pole and Mountain"

Everyone likes old barns, right?

After that we drove through some other pretty areas of the Tetons National Park, where I was only allowed to take one photo. Chris was sick of people taking hundreds of photos. I took a whole heap more than one, don't tell him that though.

Teton National Park

Swimming area in Teton National Park.
You can see a raft in the background.

We then drove up one of his favorite camping spots: Shadow Mountain. There were a few campers on the road up, and even a guy painting the landscape below. Chris has had many a party up this mountain apparently, and had even stayed in a tent up here for an entire summer. He used to get up in the morning, take a shower at April's (my host) place then head to work!

Afterwards, we headed back home where Chris cooked me a massive lunch (steak the size of a plate, and then a plate full of vegetables). I then spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on blogging and couch surf requests. That night we headed back up to Shadow mountain to drink and get photos of the Sunset over the Tetons.

The Tetons at sunset from Shadow Mountain.

That barn from earlier at sunset.

View from Shadow Mountain.

The next day Chris had to head to work, so I went for a ride through Teton Pass, through Idaho then back to Jackson. Round trip was a bit less than 3 hours. The ride was pretty awesome, a great set of curves and well surfaced. Very pretty scenery as well. I filmed some one it with the GoPro, and whenever I get some time I'll clean it up and post it online.

Near the end of the trip I had lunch at a place called "Yankee Doodles", which was a super American-themed diner. It was all red, blue and white and had a whole heap of pro-American paraphernalia on the walls. It is interesting to me that this sort of diner didn't seem to be aimed at tourists, whereas a similarly themed Australiana cafe in Australia would only be aimed at tourists. I guess Americans themselves love this patriotic kind of stuff.

That night Chris and I went to a bar quite a distance out of town. The bar was in some sort of "resort" called Dornans, where there was a bunch of touristy things to do. There was currently a "Hootenanny" going on, which was explained to me as some sort of band-focused open mic night. Chris wanted to start here as this is where he worked as a kitchen hand and he knew the people. It was quite a nice bar and I finally got to see a Moose in the wild on the way there!

Finally, a wild moose appears!

Anyway we met up with some older ladies to play a dice game at the bar. This was a weekly event for Chris which he kindly invited me along to join in. The game (called "horses"? maybe?) was mostly luck-based, where each round cost a dollar to play. I think I won 2 rounds and broke even. Afterwards he and I hung around with some of the workers at Dornan's, just drinking and chilling around their dorms.

Pensive Chris, along with some of the other people we
were playing the dice game with.

Eventually we headed out to many bars in Jackson. One of the more memorable bars had saddles for seats at the bars, and Chris went and danced with a few girls there. He is a really good dancer! As for me, I just drank a whole heap, I dance like a tall white guy.

Oh and I met maybe my 4th or 5th Australian at another bar. Again with a heaver accent than mine. This guy felt the need to wear an Akubra hat, seemed like a nice enough dude though.

The next day I said goodbye to Chris and headed back through Yellowstone to Montana. Many thanks to Chris, one of the most genuinely nice and fun people I've hung out with in the US!

Cody to Jackson, Wyoming

Yellowstone!

My ride from Cody to Jackson was to be my first pass through the Yellowstone National Park. After I left my motel and filled up with fuel there were 2 things I was worried about:

1. Running out of fuel
2. Bears

The first one was because I saw the distance to Jackson was very close to the maximum range of my bike. What if there were a lot of hills? Then I'd be stranded in the middle of nowhere. 

Which bought me to point #2; if I'm stranded in Yellowstone, how long would it take for a bear to find that cinnamon scroll I stole from my motel's breakfast? Should I buy some bear spray? What happens if I see a bear? Play dead? Stand my ground? Take photos? Kick him the nuts? Fuck me I should have done a bit of research last night. I'm like one of those dumb-ass tourists in Queensland who go swimming in the crocodile infested waters, or travels across the outback with fuck-all water and food.

Motherfucking Buffalo.

Luckily, right after after getting my 5 day Yellowstone pass at the toll booth, there appeared a service station. I asked one of the ubiquitous Harley riders what his range was on that thing. It was way less than mine, so how will he reach the other side? Turns out there a heaps of petrol stations throughout Yellowstone, I'd have no issues with fuel, I just pay through the nose for it.

I then found some bear spray in the local store. $50? Fuck that I'll just take my chances. Mind you it might come in handy in the dodgy areas of NYC... Oh by the way, for ignorant people like I was, bear spray isn't like "bear repellent" (which is pretty fucking funny), it's just really powerful pepper spray.

One of the many falls in Yellowstone.

The start of the ride was actually pretty damn cold, but luckily for me I remembered that my awesome bike has built-in hand warmers! It did to start to warm up later on however.

What happens in Yellowstone is that you follow a massive glut of tourist traffic going at a super slow speed through some very pretty areas. Eventually you get the shits and overtake 10 cars at a time (what's better than Yellowstone scenery - seeing Yellowstone scenery at the speed limit!), but you have to be careful, there are rangers everywhere. 

Every now and then there will be cars randomly parked all over the place, and the traffic slows down to 0.01 miles per hour. This happens when some well-sighted tourist spots some wildlife. But the great thing is that you can use everyone else's eyes to find the allusive Yellowstone fauna!

Gawkers waiting to see
Old Faithful go off.

Rather than going all the way to Jackson, I took a detour to go see the "Old Faithful" geyser; possibly the most famous geyser in the world. The thing goes off every 45 minutes or so. I found the surrounding area is pretty crazy though, there is a huge infrastructure around a tiny little hole that explodes water every now and then. There is a massive carpark, cafeterias, lodges etc. And it is needed, there were a lot of people there - took me quite a while to find a place for my bike. 

I walked down the the geyser where I saw hundreds of people just sitting around waiting. Surely there must be some schedule, right? Well anyway one of the rangers was talking about the thing so I went and listened in. Apparently Yellowstone is one of these weird geological anomalies where there is volcanic activity but the area is not near a fault (like Japan or Hawaii). These areas are called "hotspots". When the volcano eventually goes off in Yellowstone it'll be epic. But the most useful part of the talk: The geyser goes off in 45 minutes, plus or minus 10. Off to lunch!

I came back to the viewing stands at t-minus 10 minutes to the famous geographical ejaculation. It went off pretty much on time, and at that point there were hundreds more people than before. And it went pretty high I guess, maybe 30 feet?

Old Faithful's all like: "Eurrrruglllllaahhh"

Once Old Faithful had finished I headed to Jackson.

Not before getting very tired photo of myself near some waterfall!

Once I hit Jackson I rang Fay (someone I met in Laramie) to determine where I was staying that night. Apparently she was pretty sick, but luckily my super friendly couch surfing host for the next night was available to put me up a night earlier.

More Yellowstone to break up the text!

April was my first host that obviously did this sort of thing a lot. She had a printed sheet answering all the possible questions of surfers, had a big basket of towels and already had a surfer in the top room. April had a job where she would be away for a few days, so I only got to chat with her for a 20 minutes or so before she left. 

That night I went and had a few beers with Chris; April's temporary housemate. We did ask the other surfer if she wanted to come out too - but she was only 20. I realized then how much it must suck to travel in America between the ages of 18-20, no going to bars! We went to a dive bar or sorts (again, dive bars are pretty nice over in the US) where you eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. Chris and I played a few games of pool - which he flogged me at - then we headed back home.

A long fucking day that one!

Cody, Wyoming

I headed out early-ish from Sheridan to arrive in Cody. The town was well known for it's Buffalo Bill museum and rodeos etc. I was, however, too fucking buggered to do any of that. But on the way, I did ride through "Bighorn National Forrest", which was pretty amazing - and unexpected, it's just the route my GPS picked.

The ride was really good actually, the most fun on the bike yet due to the higher speed limits and tighter corners. I finding that most of the recommended "good rides" in America are either packed full of tourists (cars) or have excessively low speed limits. And I know back in Australia there is a bit of leeway with the police on how fast motorcyclists can go, but over here you never know. The only real limitation was the road surface as a bit crap in some places (Americans love their squiggly line fixes) and the wind pushed me around a bit.

As I'm trying to catch up today - this post will be less text, more photos!

I love cloud.

Fucking squiggly lines!

In the Big Horn Canyon.

More Canyon.

Weeee...

...eeeee...

....eeeee...

eeee!

Oh and Cody was kind of crap in terms of night life. The motel was kind of cool though, they had a "motorcycle wash station" (a hose, some detergent and some rags), but I appreciated it. But the town was full of Harley riders coming back (apparently) from Sturgis.