The weather when we arrived in Cody Wyoming, or more precisely rode through Cody to the Wheels of Wonderment Motorcycle Campground, 14 miles on the Yellowstone side, was just perfect. We booked for 3 nights and set up camp. The plan was 2 whole days exploring Yellowstone. However, the weather had different ideas.
Around midnight it started raining and the temperature dropped alarmingly. Our awesome tent stayed watertight and we stayed warm, but when we got up to a forecast of heavy rain all day we decided to give Yellowstone a miss. Instead I went searching for a new back tyre which was wearing at twice the rate Id expected. And what a search that turned out to be. Apparently unless you have a Harley, no one wants to know. The only place in town (Cody is about the size of Goulburn) that would lift a finger was a Suzuki Power Sports dealership, and they had to put it on 2 days special order. But at least we found a coffee shop that made real coffee and was strangely (or maybe not) devoid of cowboys.
We used that shop as a base to search for Janelle’s new boots as she’s blown a hole under the gear lever. Unfortunately, she didn’t really want to ride around USA in fancy cowgirl numbers so the options for proper motorcycle boots were non existent. In desperation we finally tried the Harley shop, whose cowgirl boots even had Harley Davidson stamped across them and were 3 times the price. Alas, they were also pretty much useless for anything except line dancing, so the search remained unfulfilled.
And then we heard they had closed the East Entrance of Yellowstone because the snow had blocked the pass. We decided to wait and see as I wasn’t really going anywhere without a new tyre anyway.
Lisa elected on a motel in town that night and we bunkered down in the tent hoping the rain would stop. Which it did shortly after dark and we woke to glorious sun and the news they had reopened the East Entrance. Yellowstone Park here we come!
We arranged by text with Lisa on a meeting place, but because Cody is a kind of special place, texts were a bit hit and miss. This one was a miss so we never received each others instructions. This turned out to be quite serendipitous as I’ll explain shortly.
Janelle and I rode the 40 miles to the park, climbing all the way with these amazing snow covered mountains getting closer and closer. We knew we had to go over them, but didn’t really get what that meant, until it happened. The video below is a montage of that ride. Yes it was cold. So very cold. But how totally awesome at the same time.
After the snow we hit the roadworks made of mud and slush and huge cars that insisted on driving at 5mph meaning we were continually paddling the bikes through said mud and slush. It wasn’t fun. It was less fun to arrive at the visitors centre (ie coffee) to discover power had been cut and nothing worked (ie no coffee). We had arranged to wait there for Lisa, and so we did, for an hour, before figuring she must have missed us. Meanwhile, she was waiting somewhere completely different for us. And no one has any signal in Yellowstone. Lesson learned.
So we decided to head for Old Faithful and see if we could catch up there. Even with the slow speed limit and all the tourists it was an incredible ride. Such stunning landscape and so many photo opportunities. And then, a surprise that made everything we’d gone through to get here worthwhile. The magnificent creature in the photos below was just wandering along the road with his herd of about three cows and a dozen calves. It truly made our day. Even later when we found out they were elk, not moose it didn’t matter. Still so magnificent to see them in the wild.
So we carried on towards another of Americas overblown tourist attractions, Old Faithful. Which was actually pretty impressive, but does it deserve the entire tourist town that supports it? I doubt it really. However over the last 10 kms we had been slowly catching another adventure bike and we followed them into the parking lot and introduced ourselves. Greg and Cathy belonged to the same Adventure Riders group we had adopted us (those white stickers on the front of our bikes) and they invited us to a meet with a whole group of them, about 50 miles in exactly the direction we were going, on the exact day we were going there. We gladly accepted, promising to talk more by email and left them to go check out this geyser thingy.
Did that, got the pics and then, reluctantly decided that we’d best head back incase the mud and slush got worse, incase the weather turned bad again, and to be back at camp before everything shut down and we were left with nowhere for dinner. The ride back was lovely but uneventful but it didn’t matter. That day had been everything we had wanted. Stunning scenery, amazing creatures and a ride through snow as an added bonus!
Next morning was perfect and we were itching to get moving again. We packed up quickly, grabbed a last coffee from the only decent barrister for 400+ miles, my tyre arrived and was fitted by 12.30 and we headed up the road towards a tiny 1 pub town called Shell to party with the ADV Riders…
