Surprising Wyoming

I've left LoveLand Colorado (yes there's such a place) to enter Wyoming according to plan I was supposed to head straight up north and reach South Dakota but after hearing numerous recommendations about Yellowstone We've decided to take a detour and spend the next two days riding west to Yellowstone, I'm glad we did..

At first Wyoming seemed dull, yellow plains with nothing for miles and miles ahead, on our first day we've rode around 240 miles and ended up at the second largest city in Wyoming, Casper.

After checking in to our local motel we've decided to catch a movie, walking to the theater the streets were empty everybody here seems to prefer using their cars.
We've decided to go and see "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", the ticket cost 9 bucks, at the kiosk we asked for something to drink the cashier asked us if we want the large cup or the small one?, the small one looked like the large one back home, we pointed out to a cup resembling the small one we got in Israel asking what size is that, the guy replayed "this is our courtesy cup"!

[Happy camper]
The next morning we were determine to camp as close as possible to Yellowstone, the view didn't changed much except for the heavy rain, we've stopped at the first campsite, bear warnings everywhere (it's hard enough to fall asleep in camp I really don't want to be alert all night long). Mosquitoes surrounding us but the view couldn't be better, green everywhere, rivers and waterfalls.
That night I had a hard time finding a comfortable sleeping position and the cold was unbearable.








[Sweet dreams]

Third day we've made it, entering the park we've decided not to spend too much time and see the geysers, following the sign to "Old faithful" the sight was definitely worth the journey, not to mention the beauty of the park itself. In the air you could smell the strong scent of sulfur; the geysers were a sight to behold erupting every now and reaching up to 200 feet, we took a short circular trail visiting all sort of hot bubbling pools.

I wanted to see some wildlife before leaving Yellowstone, to be specific I wanted to see Bisons luckily we did, at some points we were extremely close to them.
At this point Wyoming took a turn for the better the scenery had completely changed from the yellowish hills to green meadows with wide rivers and clear ponds, high mountains with snowy tops and plenty of trees.

 [Bison crossing]

After spending a night in our tent we've decided to reach Cody a small town with population of 10,000 people, quickly after checking in to "big bear motel" we got ourselves rodeo tickets, at the entrance a rodeo clown asked us where are we from? Israel we answered. As the show / competition began the clown announced that there are people from 14 different foreign countries here tonight, first up the people from Israel please make some noise.., the show itself was fun bunch of cowboys trying to ride wild horses and bulls.

Today morning (28.08.11) we had to choose between heading straight east or taking the bear's tooth route which should really be a great rode to ride, we choose bear's tooth, no rush heading east with storm blasting over there, the road itself climbed up to 11,000 feet not surprisingly rain caught us at the very top, and my temperature gauge read 4 degrees.
The road took us from Wyoming to Montana we're going to spend the night here at a motel six In the town of Bilings, Tomorrow we should reach South Dakota and get back on track.

As a final note I'm glad we've took our time here in Wyoming it really is a beautiful state.

[Colorado, Wyoming, Montana 885 miles 4 days]



View Larger Map


Interesting point, Wyoming is the least populated state in the US, there are around 560,000 pepole there while in TelAviv there are around 400,000, I've draw a rectangle ruffly representing TelAviv at the bottom right corner. there are almost the same amount of people in Wyoming as there are in TelAviv!



View Wyoming vs TelAviv in a larger map

Colorado

[Town of Blanding]

Before I'll start talking about Colorado I'll like to spend couple of extra words on Utah,
As you may already know Lior had a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, we had his motorcycle towed to a town name Blanding, it's a small town with mostly Native Americans and Mexicans.. We had to spend our entire Sunday there, We did took my bike to see Canyon-Land which wasn't that exciting.

On Monday we arrived at Moab to a local motorcycle shop named Arrowhead, basically the guy runs his business in his backyard. So he patched Lior's tire but there was still a minor leak.

[Balanced rock]

The last park we visited in Utah was Archs, there we saw the balancing rocks and Utah's delicate Arch which is printed on most license plates. 

[About to give up]

To get to the Arch you'll need to climb 2.5 km which I had no idea at the beginning of the trail, the sun was beating down hard on me, and just as I was ready to give up I've heard someone saying "It's right around the corner, two minutes and your there" I was filled with excitement, the hike was defiantly worth it.

[Delicate arch]

On the way up you pass by an old shack which was built about 100 years back by one of the first settlers in the area it's made entirely out of wood which I have no idea from where did they got wood in this place, the inside is simple a table and a chair. 

Leaving Archs Colorado was our goal with heavy rain behind us we got on the highway and were about to reach Colorado, we spent the night at a town called "Great Junction".

Waking up we found out the Lior tire was still leaking, we had no option but to get him a new one, being in a civilized town unlike Utah we had no trouble finding a shop nearby.
As Lior was getting his tire changed I had a nice conversation with a fellow name Richard who couldn't recognize my accent, turns out I'm the first Israeli he met.

With a new tire on we were able to make our way up the mountains and on to Aspen the view here is completely different from what we saw in Utah, Green mountains, rivers, lakes and cool air.

We've reached Aspan but decided not to stay as a big bicycle race was about to take place the very next day and the roads will be closed, so we kept on going until we've reach Leadville a small town way up in the mountains.

In the evening went out to find something to eat, the thin air caused my head to spin just a bit and it made it difficult for my bike to start the next morning.

Today we drove through the Rocky Mountains National Park, and took a short hike, at some point it started raining but this didn't stopped us from taking the time and photograph the Elks we saw on the side a hill, you need to be extra careful on the road in these altitudes as the fresh rain quickly turns into ice, and at every moment a dear might be crossing the road as it happened just recently on our way to our motel.

Tomorrow we'll cross over to Wyoming we've decided to visit Yellow-Stone, it should takes us about two days drive to get there. 

[Utah & Colorado]

View Larger Map

Not everything goes smoothly

I've left Nevada not before visiting Hoover Dam my tour guy was an old funny guy; I've visited the power plant and watched the dam from a bridge up above.

We decided to skip the Grand-Canyon due to the massive desert heat we couldn't stand, so we headed towards Utah on the way suffering the desert sun hopefully for the last time.

[overview of the dam]

Utah is mostly canyons the view here reminds me of Warner brothers Roadrunner cartoon,

  

Bryce Canyon, we decided to spend the night here, reserved a spot, pitched the tent and sat down for a quick Texas-Holdem game just to pass the time, while we're playing a car pulls next to us and an old guy named Bruce presented himself, he asked us if it will be ok if he'll place his tent next to ours (the camp site is big enough) because all the other places are full, we didn't mind, Turns out Bruce is actually Mordechai a Jewish fellow from New-York, he was excited to meet up with us, we had an interesting conversation with him.

Once the night creeped in we had a clear night sky to finally watch the all of the stars you usually can't see because of city lights, I've been waiting for quite awhile to this moment.

The next morning we headed to Capitol Reef on our way out of Utah and into Colorado, we drove above and within canyons varying in colors: dark red, white, gray and even yellow.

From a far the skies were dark and lightning could be seen at the distance, we pulled over at some small community for lunch. Once we got ready to leave rain start purring down. We decided it will be a good time to test our rain suits, zipped up in my water proof suit we continued the rain wasn't that bad and it cleared up pretty quickly, it's wired how fast the temperature changes here, at some point it can be around 30 degrees and in a matter of minutes 20 degrees and right back to 30.

At this point we were far away from any major city, you can say we were in no man's land, absolutely deserted, nothing for miles in every direction you look.  Riding in this wilderness we've reached a spot where a yellow canyon stretched out what looks like many gray arms. It felt like I'm no longer on earth but on some other planet.

As we got closer to the Colorado River crossover it started raining again only this time a thick and heavy rain drops followed by strong winds hollowing through the canyon walls.

Riding slowly but surely we've reached a magnificent view of the Colorado river.

Couple of miles after the bridge Lior says to me that his tire pressure is getting low, we pulled over at the side to find out he has a flat rear tire.

In my opinion one of the most irritating break downs you can have on a motorcycle, As I'm low of fuel and none of us has any phone reception we were deserted.

we decided to leave Lior's bike on the side and ride together on my bike to the first pay phone we'll find, after a couple of miles we found an abounded lodge with the sign saying "private property no transpassing",

I decided to try my luck anyway, peeking inside the place looked deserted as we head back someone crawled out from one of the many rooms, after a quick chat with him we've learned that there's a pay phone in the next national park (natural bridges nother couple of miles down the road) he also added that we've found the worst place to get stuck at (thank you for the encouragement),

Reaching the park Lior placed a call to triple A, We've been told that a tow truck will pick us up at around 20:00 and that the sheriff is on his way to check up on us.

[Night sky at natural bridges]

The truck finally showed up at around 22:30, I've left my bike at the junction out of the park and joined Lior and Frank our truck driver, it felt wired seeing the road and not actually driving the close compartment we we're in felt warm which was nice at this time of the night, I kept falling asleep until we've reached Lior's bike which was still there! Another 30 minutes we had the bike anchored on the truck and headed back to my bike and to the closest town, on the way Lior asked Frank if his bike will hold? Frank replied "I've never lost one" (this guy was towing for the last 35 years) you know what? There's a first time to everything.

As we we're on our way to Blanding a 5,000 person city I saw lior's bike slips on its left side…
his left beg got some scratched on it and also his front end nothing serious, we pulled at a gas station to reanchor the bike and finally checked in to our motel at around 01:15.

Tomorrow morning we should get his tire fixed and reach Colorado, I've had enough of nothing but canyons for miles and miles.