Part Seven - Yellowstone National Park

Joyfully unencumbered by luggage which we'd left at the hotel( the bikes really handle so much better without), we entered the park. One of the first things we saw were these experimental wildlife crossing warning posts. Solar powered, they had warning lights and an infrared beam running along both ditches, to purportedly warn motorists of animals in the road.

Through burned-out valleys, traffic starting to become an issue.

I saw steam off in the distance, turned to investigate. This little bubbler was just hanging out beside a river, pouring hot water and it's dissolved minerals into the flow. Too hot to leave your fingers in the spring itself for more than 5 seconds, it was comfortably warm just a little downstream.

The bikes, again. Note the dark clouds overhead...

We were getting rained on a bit at this point, but we decided to carry on. The raingear was safe and dry at the hotel, but we could see lighter patches in the sky, the forecast called for clearing, and we wanted to see Old Faithful, so we continued on. Got to this field of colored mud, with multiple geysers, bubblers, smokers, and hotsprings ringed with a nice boardwalk. Look at the mineral uptake at the bottoms of the tree carcasses...

Big hotspring. Thats a truck on the highway behind, for some scale...

Paint Pot. Bubbling, colorful mud pit.

Smokers. These ones are relatively new, opened up in the 70's after an earthquake rearranged the underground fissures a bit. Stinky, sulphurous smoke and continuous hissing.

The Spasm Geyser randomly steams, spurts and fizzles, reaching probably 20 feet or so.

Finally here. Old Faithful. We decided to get here and reassess the rain situation. Apparently, ol' Faithful doesn't deserve the name anymore, it blows anywhere from 50-90 inutes, with a ten minute fudge factor on each side. We decided to wait, hanging out in the large lodge nearby. Still raining.

The view from inside the lodge...

Ohhh! Ahhh! Was that it? Yep. O.K....

Still raining. We all bought raincoats at the cheesy giftshop to try stay slightly dry. We talked and decided that doing the rest of the park in the steady rain would be futile, we wouldn't enjoy it or see much of anything. We decided to return to the hotel. Wet bikes....

The run home was terrible. Not only did the rain intensify, but we were stuck in a neverending string of cars doing 30-40 miles per hour. We were 40 miles from the hotel. Couldn't even pass as the spray from all the wheels made it impossible to see far enough ahead. So we rode. Bumper to bumper traffic, crawling along, feeing the water drip into my boots, drumming hard on the helmet, thoroughly soaking everywhere. By the way, the jackets turned out to be windbreakers, not rain jackets, they were saturated too. Just as we finally left the park, four blocks from the hotel, the Honda's electrical problem returned. Dead bike. Great. We finally got to the hotel, jumped in the hot tub to warm up. Much better. Back to the room realized it was actually a little sketchy part of town, and decided to take the bikes inside for the evening, both to dry out and for protection.

We were wet, our bikes were wet, but our luggage was DRY! New, warm dry clothes. We walked for BBQ and a few beers, and more pool at the local pub. Still raining.

We talked about staying another night and doing the park in the am, but the forecast still called for rain, and after the stream of traffic I didn't know if I could handle being wet and miserable for another whole day. We decided to wait until the morning weather to make our final decision. That's the beauty of having no itinerary. Goodnight.