I was in no big hurry when I got up for this day’s riding. I had two alternate routes and either would get me into Rapid City South Dakota before nightfall. I was going to let the weather pick my route today, starting on the north end of the range and, if weather allowed, working my way down to the south.
With my room being right next to the lobby I smelled the first toast to be dropped in the toaster and, with the knowledge that breakfast was served I decided to eat here before taking off so that I would not have to stop for breakfast, or, worse, risk getting into another no-meal-day situation.
At breakfast on an extremely comfortable couch I saw the biker I talked to the prior afternoon on my return from dinner and we chatted a little more about roads, rides and bikes. With my two bowls of cereal and five mini-muffins quaffed I opened up a space on the couch for another traveler. Loaded and ready I pointed the bike northeast on Alternate Route 14. It was flat riding with mountains on each horizon and it saddened me that I was reeling in the miles in the direction of the last mountain range before the plains called a flat and featureless end to what had been a great visit to the mountains.
This is the view of the mountains to the west when you are standing in the motel parking lot. 
This one is looking north.
As I left Cody I caught a glimpse of the lower end of the Absaroka Range in my rear view mirror so I stopped to get a shot.
I also got a shot of this mountain.
And then decided to use my bike as a frame for another shot. Along the way I rode through the south end of the Big Horn Canyon National Recreational Area. The little bit I saw from the road made me decide that it didn’t warrant a visit. I think that further down and closer to the dam it is probably a lot more interesting but this end of it was just a shallow lake in the otherwise barren landscape.
Looking at what lay ahead there was no way to go but up. The first part of the climb into the Big Horn range was slower than I would have preferred because the road was pretty badly damaged – my guess is that the avalanches in the winter drag rocks down with them and those pound the road. I posit this theory because each place where the damage occurred was directly below un-treed sharp slopes covered with rocks the size of small Volkswagens. Once past that lower part, though the pavement cleaned up quite a bit and the foot pegs had their first encounter with the road and that would be the situation for the rest of the ride up.
The top of the range is in around 9-10,000 feet in elevation and I rode along for a few miles on highland plains before getting to the Route 14 intersection. It was here that I decided to take the shorter route out of the mountains because the longer route looked to be under precipitation and judging from the snow around me and temperatures up here in the low 40’s and wind chills probably in the mid to low 30’s I figured that if I were to take that route I would encounter falling snow at the higher elevations in the couple of passes I hoped to ride.
Having seen more than my fair share of precipitation so far on this trip and having lucked out with the light snow in Yellowstone I didn’t feel like doing any wet weather riding on this day. Besides, on my last trip through the Big Horn mountains I had ridden through that southern pass in pouring rain in the dark and I had no desire to do it again in the damp. As I have said before, mountain riding in precipitation is precipitous and puts you in greater danger of an unplanned visit into the precipice that lies to one side of the entire trip up and down.
My preference was to take to the dry pavement with vigor and the ride down the eastern slope of the Big Horn Range did not disappoint!! Long sweeping turns on clean pavement let me lean way the heck over. I will certainly be back to ride up this side of the mountain on a future trip!
Early snow on the plains at the top of the north end of the Big Horn Mountain Range
This is Bald Mountain with a summit at 10,042 feet, only a few hundred feet higher than the spot where I stopped.
This is near Bald Mountain but looking north. I liked the way the colors came out exactly the way they looked to the eye.
One last look at the mountains before hitting the plains!At the bottom it was a short jog to the freeway and then under two hours to Gillette were I stopped for lunch. It is funny, when I got off the freeway I immediately recognized the town and remembered I had stopped here before and had lunch at a place called Grandma’s or something like that. I filled up at the same busy Shell station and then found the restaurant. Now, when you are out in the middle of the plains in eastern Wyoming and you go BACK to a restaurant you are practically a native! I had a hot burger which turned out to be two hamburger patties each on its own slice of bread, covered with hot brown gravy, a healthy dollop of mashed potatoes and some woefully overcooked peas.
There were lots of big fellas in there with their western hats on and I thought I should have just left my helmet on so that I would blend in!
From there it was a short couple of hours to Rapid City. Not far from the Wyoming and South Dakota border I started to take a back road but saw that it was storming up ahead and, having ridden through those Black Hills of South Dakota before, I knew that they were populated with buffalo and deer so I didn’t want any surprise meetings with those guys today in the reduced traction conditions the rain created. I had done enough testing of the ABS system and my gear had received a through wash in the ride form Wyoming to Idaho a couple of days before.
When I got into town I gassed up, checked in and walked to the restaurant next door for an unremarkable meal. After that I checked the weather for the next day and, with it being clear and with me having arrived and eaten so early it would be possible to leave from here at o’ridiculously-dark thirty and do a straight through ride to Cleveland the next day. I decided not to book a hotel for the next night and see how the day went. If I had it in me to ride the 1,300 or so miles then I would go for it. If not, I would just ride until I got tired and then find a motel and finish the ride home on Saturday.
1 comment:
Hey droF - Just wanted to mention that you should always carry some granola bars or fruit bars or energy bars or whatever with you so that if you do happen to have one of those unplanned no meal days, you at least have something in your backpack to munch on. Might as well throw in a few apples too! :o)
Yam
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