travellingbennetts

Rawlins Wyoming. Day 75. We were in the second perfectly rectangular state of the nation, with the one we’d just left (Colorado) being the other one. Because their borders are actually based on longitude and latitude lines, they of course aren’t rectangles, damn you curvature of the earth. We’d heard about a pair of shoes made from the skin of a prisoner in the Rawlins Penitentiary Museum, so needed to see those. Turned out we went to the wrong museum, but we got the full story during the tour anyway. What would become the state of Wyoming was not what you’d call the most genteel place in the 1870’s, and Rawlins Penitentiary was a stark confirmation of that. ‘Big Nose’ George Parrott was a Frenchman who had the unfortunate name of Parrott while also having a big nose. No-one in the English-speaking world struggled with a nickname for George. He wasn’t a nice Frenchman and was involved in some robberies and the killing a of couple of lawmen. He was locked up in the Rawlins clink, then tried to escape and badly injured a warden in the process. The story got out, and the towns folk decided George needed some Wyoming justice and broke him out of prison and hanged him from a lamp post. The town doctor, who later became mayor of Rawlins and governor of Wyoming, decided that George’s thigh skin should be made into a nice pair of shoes, and his skull made into a door stop and ashtray. He wore the George shoes to his inauguration as governor, and no doubt they were a great icebreaker at any social event. No-one said it was weird.

North with a smidgin of west, the countryside flattened and dried out, we were hovering on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. A very impressive rock formation appeared, and there is no riding past those. It was Split Rock, a geological feature that leads to a break in the Rocky Mountains and so was used by the early overlanders to get to the west coast along the Oregon trail. There was a lot of slog on the Oregon trail, it is tough country with lots of miles between anything that looks good.

Onwards toward Thermopolis, named not because it was moved from Greece to Wyoming by property developers but rather for the hot springs, we suddenly found ourselves in the Wind River canyon. This is the US experience at its best, trundling along in not particularly interesting scenery, then OMG.

Up into Cody, we checked into our African themed motel. Superbly presented lions, warthog, kudu, springbok, and gemsbok greeted us in the foyer. Nothing compared with Big Nose George’s shoes but still a bit weird. Cody is named after the famous Buffalo Bill who had an interesting life, some of which may not have happened but regardless a bigger than life character. Next door into a bar and grill, packed because it was a Sunday and it was open, we gave our number to the girl on the desk and waited until we got the call that our table was ready. Inevitably this comes when one has decided to do something that takes 20 minutes to do, and the call says we only have 15 minutes to get there. What? It’s ready? I’ll stop writi…..

Something I was interested in, but Cindy a bit simply yeah whatever about on Day 76, we crossed the border into state No.44 and our first 2016 repeat state, Montana, and headed toward Little Bighorn. So named because in the olden days there was no word for things between little and big, these days it is known as the Mediumhorn or the Regularhorn with two shots. The nearest town is Hardin, so we needed to get there without interstate. No worries, we can go via Pryor. We turned off east, a k of bitumen, then the “pavement ends” sign. Still no worries, we are on adventure bikes, and we rode Patagonia. But in Patagonia they don’t lay on a foot of fine gravel after the snow disappears. Technical riding in thick fine gravel with the bike drifting around, at one point I was freaking out a bit and decided to give Cindy the option of going back to the highway, and if she’d said yes I admit I’d have said “OK, yes I was about to smash this, because I’ve just measured my testosterone levels and they are dangerously high, but we’ll turn around because you want to.” But she let me down by saying “Let’s just keep going.” Damn, I had to keep going. Luckily for the faint of heart it got a bit better after a few more k’s of sketchy, then we were into Pryor.

Hardin achieved, we had plenty of time to go out and see the battlefield. It is world famous and a battlefield where an optimistic-to-the-point-of-silly George Custer decided to go in headfirst and attack an overwhelming force of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. Didn’t go terribly well is the summary. Nor did our visit, the battlefield was closed. WT Friar Tuck? How could such a place be closed on a Monday? But it was. We were on a reservation, so even though it is a National Monument, the locals set the rules. Never mind, a whole lot of wasted miles are still full of interesting things that we’d never otherwise see.

Hardin had seen better days according to some locals at the AutoZone where we purchased a strap to stop Cindy’s pannier falling off while allowing the lid to be opened.

Hardin was OK enough to allow us to sneak through to Day 77 without any Custer-level incidents. Due west, the only way of avoiding Billings was via Pryor again, so we went to Billings. A Starbucks later, we left Billings. It was a hot day as usual, but for some reason lost in the mists of time, we’d decided to buy a picnic lunch which created a challenge – trees are nil stock in this part of the world. So we turned off the highway at Laurel. Maybe a building with parking in the shade amongst dumpsters full of 5-day old pork off-cuts would present itself, though even this shade is up there with a herd of unicorns in terms of likelihood. Riding around Laurel, I suddenly had to brake for unicorns – a lovely little park with big trees and shade, and even big comfortable rocks to set the picnic up on. Offerings of Diet Coke were made, it was truly a USA miracle.

The day ended early in Red Lodge, a touristy little town with plenty of shops to stroll into, and then out of. Nothing terribly exciting, but the point of Red Lodge wasn’t Red Lodge. The only point of Red Lodge is the start of the Beartooth Highway, a very famous road for motorcycling.

The road winds up into the Rockies, and is of the type that the engineers must have looked at where it was heading and said – “Whose bloody idea was this?” Into a valley, and then a heap of switchbacks to a plateau where snow was still in attendance, at least a pleasant change in temperature. No bears or their teeth though, even though signs were in abundance.

The road ignores borders and weaves out of Montana, into Wyoming, and back again. A lunch in Montana, then down again into Wyoming, and through the north Yellowstone National Park gate. A sign on the booth said the attendant was out, please proceed to another gate. We didn’t go through another gate so people without an $85 pass visiting Yellowstone from the north got a freebie that day.

Yellowstone is one of the two biggies in the US, the other being Yosemite. So there are lots and lots and lots of people. This is the place where people are killed trying to take a selfie with a bison/grizzly/Canadian goose. But it is huge so one can find secluded places where grizzlies might be lurking, yet aren’t, and the bison are a bit like cattle so just wander about ignoring everything. Bison are like all exotic wildlife, the first one you see causes paroxysms ranging from a full-blown seizure to a mild OMG which can be treated with ULTOMIRIS. Stop taking ULTOMIRIS and talk to your doctor if you are experiencing suicidal thoughts and tendencies, or have itching you know where, the usual drill. Anyway, bison were strolling the range everywhere, quickly transitioning from OMG there’s a bison! to who cares, please don’t distract me from my Snapchats.

Into the accommodation, we could wander up to the village and grab a meal from the buffet and sit in the bar which was so packed that getting a drink was impossible because the table service concept had completely broken down – staff must be able to get to a table for it to work. Never mind, we strolled back through the bush to the motel, ignoring the bear signs and scratched-up trees because bears don’t apply to us.

Day 79 was Yellowstoning. Yellowstone is divided into two main parts – the canyon part, and the steaming/smoking part. We were in the canyon part so did canyon stuff. A stroll through the empty forests, as usual not bothering to be noticeable because we know our chance of seeing bears are up there with seeing a mermaid riding a gorilla. We went into the Yellowstone River canyon with all its spectacular views, following a young and very fit looking Asian chap and his way less young and fit companion. The puffing companion then took photos of the young fit chap while he was posing and holding a can of drink for either advertising or erotic purposes, either way we were a bit short of water by this point so attempted to buy the can. They wouldn’t let it go, so obviously something was going on, not saying it was weird erotic, but it definitely was.

A lot of walking without bears later, we called it a day. Day 80 we left, because Yellowstone was easily the most expensive accommodation of the entire trip, two nights was about all we felt uncomfortable with. We did the steaming/smoking part on the way west, visiting the Old Faithful geyser because some of the other attractions such as the Prismatic Springs had a huge queue of cars lined up trying to get a park and were impossible to sneak into, while Old Faithful had no such problems.

Not far from the border of Yellowstone is the Idaho border, state no.45 and the second 2016 repeat. The target for the day was Arco, famous as the first town on earth to be nuclear powered. That was the highlight for Arco, and someone with a cynical bent might suggest that if it had all gone horribly wrong, Arco being wiped from the earth wouldn’t have even made the first 5 pages of the Arco Advertiser. There ain’t much out there. A lowlight for Arco was that the only fatal nuclear reactor incident in the US occurred there in 1961 with a steam explosion killing three reactor operators.

Anyway, we decided to proceed past Arco while it was still very hot and visit the Craters of the Moon National Monument, nothing like walking on black basalt to cool things down. It is a pretty cool place though, with the local dry climate preserving the basalt flows and the resulting weird shapes which occurred from 15,000 to 2,000 years ago.

Day 81 was a classic for spectacular scenery, with the whole trip spent in the mountain valleys. Started in the wide valleys up through Mackay and Dickey to a morning tea and chat about adventure motorcycling with a couple of local blokes in Challis. The wide valley we’d ridden up had a huge earthquake in 1983, with the entire floor of the valley dropping 7½ feet and the mountain range to the east rising 1 foot.

Then into the tight valleys with the road following the rivers. Opportunities for photos were relentless, and Cindy’s GoPro was copping a hammering. We started seeing some rafting action on the rivers, which are pretty wild. These rivers are teeming with salmon from late August, so attract a lot of bears. Of course, we were in mid-August, so bear was still nil stock.

A huge event at our lunch venue in the outdoor-adventurey little town of Stanley. A nice little restaurant in the alpine style. No-one saw it coming. Then suddenly it appeared. Lamb. The North Americans are always one short of our meal options, yes they have beef, pork, chicken, and fish, but lamb for them is like bear for us. No supermarket has a lamb section. So for people who are used to lamb and who grew up literally having a roast leg of lamb once a week, it is a notable omission. On the menu in the little town of Stanley was a lamb stew. Guess what I’m having. Then the second guessing started, the US diners sometimes have shepherd’s pie, but the US shepherds didn’t have any shep to herd so swapped the shep out with yet more cows. Maybe it is longhorn lamb. But it wasn’t.

Culinarily aligned with home once again, we continued on through Grimes Pass and into Banks. We didn’t have far to go but it was a bit warm, so we stopped for a break. Two ATV’s pulled up, and the families got out. The discussion got started when I mentioned to them that the ATV’s appeared to lack anything resembling a number plate or any other form of road legalising signage. Maybe there was a bar-code or RFID tag somewhere for the highway patrol to scan? The thrust of their explanation was this is Idaho. We can drive our un-registered ATV with inappropriate tyres on the road if we want to. Scary levels of freedom for Australians to come to terms with as we headed north to Cascade for the night.

Day 82 was back south, keeping on north would have us in northern Idaho which was too far north. The plan for the days ahead was avoid the big city of Boise and on to John Day in state No.46 and a new one, Oregon. John Day is named after trapper John Day, no need for any puzzlement there, he was famous for being stripped naked by Indians and having everything taken and managing to walk 70 miles back to a jocks and socks cache. The plan was then up north-west and just over the mighty Columbia River into No.47 and the last of our 2016 repeats, Washington. Accommodation was booked, including some with no cancellation possible. We were going alright, even though once again it was a little warm down on the flats as we followed the Payette River west. Agriculture became dominant, confirmed as we travelled through the town of Fruitland. We avoided the town of Gayway Corner just in case confirmations were endemic out there and crossed the Snake River into the confusingly named Ontario on the Oregon side. Due to states confusion, we had some fried chicken from Kentucky for lunch and continued west through endless onion fields to Vale. A choice had to be made in Vale – straight to John Day, or via Burns on some more interesting roads.

As we pulled into town, Cindy spoke up on the intercom; “I can’t change down gears.” “What?” “I’m in third and it won’t go down.” “OK, let’s stop in this huge flat area and I can have a look.” This had started happening a week or so back on the super-steep dirt hill heading up into Denver, but on that occasion I’d assumed operator error, and also on every other occasion the operator had mentioned it since. Must be something to do with where the clutch is disengaging thinks I, the Colorado Springs service people had adjusted it. On I get. The clutch was working just fine. Using a perfect gear changing technique, i.e. placing one’s foot onto the lever and pushing down with the clutch lever pulled in, the gear lever sort of flopped down and no gear change occurred. Off and lots of poking and prodding and staring really hard at it didn’t help. Uh-oh, I’ve seen this before, and it isn’t something that can be fixed on the side of the road. We managed to get it down into second gear and headed for a servo where there was a scrap of shade. Out with the service manual on the iPhone, check the gear selector diagram, and there it was. The dreaded Pivot Plate. It grabs the gear selector wheel but when it wears, it stops grabbing on the going down, a bit like Sylvester Stallone’s Gabe grabbing at Sarah in Cliffhanger. Righto. Where is the nearest Triumph dealership? Meridian, on the outskirts of what we’d just been trying to avoid, Boise. Let’s book a hotel close to that. Done, it is 65 miles back.

Then the excitement for Cindy. She selected 4^th gear as the most likely to satisfy all situations from moving away from stopped to flying down the 80mph interstate. The challenge is to avoid the habit of millions of events and not changing up gears, because it’s the opposite of Sarah’s sitch and once up it just won’t go down, and pulling away in 6^th is seriously hard work for the clutch. So we cruised back to Ontario, through many sets of lights, but as it was a Sunday the traffic was light so luckily stopping wasn’t required. Then onto the interstate. Many actually have a low speed limit, usually 40mph, but in 4^th Cindy could manage 50mph comfortably. We were still being passed by everything including Massey-Ferguson tractors and postie bikes, and trucks swerving around us was unsettling especially for Cindy at the back, but our hotel selection was just perfect as we managed to roll off the interstate and straight in.

A problem; it was Sunday. Motorcycle dealers in the USA aren’t open on a Sunday, that’s fine and in keeping with the Assyrian restrictions on chariot riding on the 7^th day, but somehow restrictions on servicing chariots in the US has extended to Mondays. Not much to do on Day 83 Monday but ride the kilometre over to the Triumph Boise dealership and hope that looking in the windows would prompt security to call the dealer principal to tell him he needed to sort some weirdos out. And go to the movies, it was a very convenient location. The dealership opened at the gentlemanly time of 0930 on Tuesday Day 84. We were there at 0900, who knows if there is a first-in-best-dressed policy, but if there was we were going to be best dressed. As per all motorcycle dealers, the workday starts well before opening as they have to roll all the bikes out. So we parked Cindy’s bike near the service door, and wandered in. Hunter greeted us, and a more positive human being is unlikely to exist elsewhere on this planet. Yeah you have absolutely no worries was his credo, and it was a transferable credo. Have a water and wait for Josh the service manager. Josh comes in, okay we’ll have a look, likely the pivot plate, if so we’ll order one.

The crisis had given us a very rare chance to relax, in fact the first of the trip. Yes of course we had laundry to do and pushing through and somehow achieving essential things like having an afternoon nap. Cindy booked a massage with Brian who looked like Ben Kingsley, fortunately in his Gandhi role rather than his Trevor Slattery role in Iron Man 3. We became regulars at Giggy D’s, a family friendly restaurant which assumes children will never compromise on IPA range and quality. Besides the lack of on-site laundry facilities, the hotel was excellent, and even had prepared oatmeal at breakfast, only the second of the trip. We had a trip into Boise, previously a source of smug condescension, but it was a very nice, neat, and clean town. Their biggest issue (according to the Uber driver survey) was the rapid increase in population caused by Californians moving north. I suggested the bloody Californian petrol sock thingos on all the bowsers was the cause, but the huge costs in California are the primary driver. We were also lucky we had a couple of true motorcycle travellers staying in the same hotel, tragically it wasn’t until they were leaving on their humungous miles Honda Goldwing that we worked up the courage to speak with them. Andrea and Gale, I truly hope you read this and get in touch, I wrote your blogspot site details down but when I try to find it via the googs it doesn’t come up.

The holidays were over on Day 86. We picked up the bike and the old pivot plate with lots of thanks to the team, loaded up, and headed off. North-west was no longer an option due to schedule issues, it was south-west now, back into Vale with commentary on the innocent state we’d had discussing onions on our first attempt. First night out was Burns Oregon. Boise people had told us that Burns was a great little town, so we were looking forward to it. Into the Days Inn, and suddenly Burns was burned.

Checked in, we parked the bikes, taking care not to park nor step in a huge pooh, species origin unknown but narrowed down to human or canine. Luckily there was a good bar and grill next door so we decided Burns wasn’t a total disaster. But back inside the room, the lino floor was so filthy that my feet were black, not noticed until the next Day 87 morning when I got in the shower. The sheets at the bottom of the bed looked like an 18^th century coal miner had got in with us and wiggled around after a big shift at the face. The basin drain had broken so until the rubbish bin was jammed underneath it flooded the bathroom. The general outline of the review for the Burns Days Inn was already well developed.

Breakfast was akin to the bog-standard USA hotel selection, except we had to wait while it was assembled. For the interested, or the disinterested but getting the Clockwork Orange matches-holding-the-eyelids-open treatment, the USA hotel breakfast food selection foundation is the waffle. A big and dangerous looking electric waffle iron takes up centre stage. Wafflers pour the required amount of batter onto the superheated iron, close it, then turn it over when the first side is brown. When cooked, the waffle is smothered in syrup, job done. The other standards are cereals, usually three, with a sugar content range of 90% to 98%. You know the ones – Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, Raisin Bran. Then a toaster for toast and sweetbreads, but not the nice baby lamb pancreas sweetbreads, these are breads with +80% sugar content. Smuckers jams and cream cheese and maybe peanut butter are the only spreads available. Then juices, usually without simple carbohydrates but sometimes with, a small sample is tasted before the full cup pour. Extremely rarely (twice) there is pre-made oatmeal. Steel cut oatmeal is announced like it is awesome, not sure if there is oatmeal cut with bone or wood or ivory, but steel or at least wrought iron seem logical for all cutting. Often it is the consistency of the concrete you had poured 4 hours ago for your new shed slab, but milk or yoghurt can be coaxed around the fully set bits. Almost always there are yet-to-be-mixed oatmeal packets, not often the original with no sugar though. Occasionally there are scrambled eggs and bacon or weird things like grits if you’re in the south. Finally there is fruit, with bananas, apples, oranges, and mandarins the most common. Quality highly variable. Of course, there is coffee with Colombian, French Roast, and House Blend, and a Decaf for people unaware of the point of drinking coffee. The Burns breakfast had packets of original oatmeal, so we compensated ourselves for the pooh and the filthy floor by taking a heap for future self-catered breakfasts.

Head west toward the coast was the plan for the day. Oregon was a bit surprising; one had expected lush forests over most of it, but it was more of the barren “basin and range” terrain that must have made those travelling the Oregon trail start to think they were victims of a real-estate development scam this far across the continent.

One of the more spectacular scenes today, and totally unexpected by me as I hadn’t paid attention to anything as usual. Into Crater Lake National Park – sounds OK, obviously a lake sitting in a crater. The ride in was amazing, up and up on winding roads to suddenly see the crater, the bike was nearly crashed due to the visual distraction. The colour of the water is seriously blue, and it is sitting in a serious crater. A bit like the volcanoes in the Andes, an idiot can see this is a volcano. The island in the crater is growing, so it is still active. The entire panorama is just stunning.

A run through the visitor’s centre to pick up the traditional National Park fridge magnet and stickers, and Crater Lake was done. Unfortunately, we had to go back down from the crater, and this day was seriously hot, well over 100°F in the old money. The day finished in the commute town of Shady Cove, which was luckily shady but still bloody hot.

Day 88 we wove our way through the Cascades Range, crossed from Oregon into our starting state of California after filling up with all the fuel we could fit in, and hit the coast at Crescent City. Unusually this episode will close at lunch in the Crescent City Dennys Diner, because what happened after the lunch was just so incredible that it deserves to be a big headline for No.10 of the series.