Haven't been here much in the last week or so. Wife and I just returned from a 11 day, 4700 mile 10 states ,4 National Parks, and several signicant roads out west tour. We hit Wind Cave Natl Park in SD, Yellowstone Natl Park in Montana/Wyo , Grand Teton Natl Park in Wyoming, and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. We drove Needles Highway, Iron Mountain Road, Beartooth Pass, and Chief Joseph Highway. We drove more states Scenic Byways than you can shake a stick at lol. These are all wonderful places to ride a motorcycle. We saw more Harley's than you could count. American Iron is alive and well in the American west. Saw a fair amount of BMW GS's as well. Even a few KTMs. Seems it was either a cruiser or an ADV bike, but the vast majority were cruisers. The Big 4 Japanese brands were poorly represented from what we could see. A smattering of Gold Wings, a lot of those triked.
It seems hotel internet connectivity is sketchy in a lot of places, especially at Quality Inns it seemed.
I made sure to take a motorcycle ride the morning before we took off and tonight an hour after we got back, so I only missed 9 days of riding, but I can tell you tonights ride although short, was euphoric.
It's good to be home.
Welcome back, Ferret. Congratulations on surviving all those ride-free days.
That's a great list of places...I'm returning home tomorrow from a week long trip to Illinois and Kansas...will be good to get back on the bikes, although I was able to ride a Yamaha xsr900 and a honda something, but I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember what it was. Fleeting fun of 1/2 hour rides.
Hi Ferret, since you have been visiting all these places that I only know from my childhood,
how do they look now after so much drought, fire and floodings ? Any unknowable unknowns in particular ?
Yes, it's always good to be home !
The main street in Red Lodge was torn up, but you could get through to Beartooth and Chief Joseph. Houses on one side of the street were badly damaged and still had debris in them.
You could not get into Yellowstone from the north or northeast side so we did not get close to there, I am assuming lots of damage. We drove around and entered from the West. The scenic loop around Jenny Lake in Teton Park, was closed for unknown reasons ( to me). Other than that we saw no damage anywhere.
Lots and lots (way too many for me) of people were visiting EVERYWHERE. The Parks in Colorado are on a timed entry permit only from 9 am to 3 pm. You cant just ride/drive up and enter, like Longranger, Offroad and I did on our CB 1100s just 5 years ago.
12 years ago when my wife and I rode through the area on our Honda ST 1300 in September we had the roads and parks basically to ourselves.
The number of visitors was staggering. There were even little kids there (aren't they supposed to be in school in September?). I swear it was like nobody is working anymore lol. My wife and I always took our motorcycle vacas in September because the kids and their parents were back in school and you could ride and easily get into places (like motels and restaurants) since the crowds were gone. Not like that now.
Disturbing. Not sure if something ominous a come'th, ... again.
people are working, people are going to school, it's just a whole lot more "fluid" now.
Many more people are working in environments where being anchored to an office isn't necessarily a requirement. I was even offered the opportunity to work entirely from home, which would have been entirely possible given the nature of my work, but I refused. I can't focus outside of the right environment. School is more and more fluid too. Kids are starting at different times, adhering to different schedules, and in some cases able to just fly away for family vacations in the middle of the school year due to the availability of all the remote learning resources that were developed over the last couple of years.