Day Four - Dinosaur National Monument

The captions are below the photos. Please click on the photos to enlarge and, if you particularly like any or all, please feel free to save them to your computer.

With the Steamboat hotel/condo having no free wireless I had booked my next night’s stay using the free “business center’ computer in the lobby. Being that there were others waiting for the computer I felt it would be considerate to quickly go about my business rather than take my normal contemplative time to pick a route and a place to stay. My initial idea had been to ride up to Jackson Wyoming but in checking rates there the cheapest room was going for over three hundred bucks a night. I had checked a week earlier and there had been rooms available on hotwire for less than a third of that but I guess this being a holiday weekend hotwire had sold all of its available good deals.

I then did a quick search of close by cities but a lot of them had no hotwire rooms so I widened my search and Pocatello Idaho had a reasonable rate for a three star hotel and the quick glance at the map on the screen, without doing a mapquest distance check LOOKED pretty similar in distance to Jackson so I booked the hotel and gave up the computer to the next person waiting.

Back in the room I flipped from the Colorado map to the Utah map to the Wyoming map to the Idaho map, concentrating only on Pocatello and it looked doable so I settled in for the night and didn’t give it another thought.

I was up and at ‘em good and early; first light found me packing up the bike and I was on the road by seven. Now, for me that is not particularly early but these are back roads through forests and along streams in areas of sparse human population and plenty of large wild game which happens to roam with more confidence in the time from dusk till dawn so it is my preference to limit my encounters with them by letting the sun do its part to keep them off the roads.

It is a good thing I was keeping a keen eye on the sides of the road because not fifteen minutes into my trip I saw the first set of big ears poking up above the vegetation and I hit the brakes, surprising the deer which, thankfully turned and ran back into the brush. “That was one” I told myself, “Wake your ass up!” It was just an admonishment to keep me alert. I had hundreds of miles to travel, several passes and dozens of forests and if this was a harbinger of what the day would bring, it was a good thing I got a good night’s sleep!

This part of Colorado, going west from Steamboat Springs towards Vernal Utah is in the high plains and the landscape is rather devoid of trees and broken up, not by mountains but hillocks that look like mini-mountains. That is the foreground but the background is bordered by majestic peaks and grand vistas in every direction. With the cruise set at 70 mph I was moving at a good clip and thought this day would be a short one. About an hour into the trip the skies ahead revealed dark clouds reaching all the way to the ground and this meant only one thing – rain! I decided to keep going until the first drops fell before putting on the rain gear. There were a few towns shown on the map between Steamboat Springs and Dinosaur so I thought I would stop for breakfast in a diner at one of them. Craig was the first good sized town but I was not hungry so I passed through. It was only after passing the next two “towns” that I remembered that just because they are shown to be towns on the map does not mean they are really towns. Out here a settlement with a US post office qualifies for a dot and a name on the Rand McNally. Though the US postal service employs a post master, most of these settlements cannot support a restaurant. It was at that point I realized my first meal of the day would be lunch. Not long after Craig the first drops fell and I pulled over to don the gear. It was so desolate out there that in the time it took me to put on the gear not one car passed in either direction; as I rode I would only see a car about every ten or fifteen minutes or so.

Rain on a motorcycle means reduced visibility and, obviously, wet roads mean less traction so my self admonition to wake my ass up was now doubly important. Good thing I was staying alert because about five miles up the road I saw my second set of ears for the day and this one had one foot, well, okay, hoof on the road. As with the earlier one I was full on the brakes and thankful for ABS. This one too though (to the extent that deer think) better of crossing the road and went back into the brush. “That was two.” I told myself. I have this funny thing about threes so now I was super wary and wondering what kind of luck the third one would bring.

As I mentioned before, though the land is not flat, it can fairly be described as high plains. It is un-forested with low grass and occasional large clumps of pale green shrubs standing five to six feet tall with the two adding up to give the landscape a dusty tan hue – about the same color as the deer.

The lack of trees and significant vegetation suggest that the area doesn’t receive much precipitation and this supposition bore itself out with what looked like threatening rain turning out to be just a light misty escalating, occasionally, to a drizzle.

The skies had lifted by the time I made it to the junction to Dinosaur National Monument just west of Dinosaur. I stopped in at the visitor center to pick up a map and pay the fee. on entering the building I was stunned to find that the attendant looked like a dark haired cross between Penelope Cruz, Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz (I have become accustomed to seeing retired folks or bearded young men manning ranger posts and information buildings). I asked for a map, the time (somehow didn’t notice the clock on the wall in front of me) and the distance to the overlook (thirty miles).

A look at the gas gage told me I had plenty of fuel for the 60 mile round trip plus the 30 miles to Vernal so I headed on up the road. I figured it would take about an hour and a half, one hour of drive time and thirty minutes for stopping to enjoy the view and taking pictures. From the ranger post the road immediately began to climb up and the elevation provided wonderful views of the surrounding countryside. A few miles up I was through the climbing winding part and on to flat treeless terrain where I could see the road for a good mile or so and, knowing that the rangers drove large white 4x4 pickups I rolled heavily on the gas when I felt I could see far enough in the distance to know I could slow down to the posted 45 before I was within radar range.

It is funny how powerful the mind is and how capable it is of compartmentalizing. This is the reason why any good motorcycle instructor will tell you to keep your head in the ride. I was focused on the distant horizon, looking out for smoky and ready to bring my speed down to a rate of travel that would not earn me a roadside conversation. Rounding one such corner I soaked deeply in the throttle and this time I didn’t see the ears in the brush. There was no brush but the deer was pretty much the same muted tan color as the grass so I didn’t even see it until it was on the road. It froze. It had deer eyes and I had bug eyes. I grabbed a handful of brakes and was once again thankful for ABS and excellent engineering! Disaster avoided, brakes red hot, heart at maximum beats per minute, adrenaline at full release into the bloodstream I told myself “That was three, and you almost bought your bacon, dumb ass!” Needless to say, I added the deer section back into the attention department.

The eastern hills of Dinosaur National Monument

The Yampa River west of Dinosaur National Monument

Plug Hat Butte north of the ranger post at the entrance of Dinosaur National Monument

An escarpment at Plug Hat Butte

Road porn pure and simple. Clean pavement, nice curves, beautiful scenery and no traffic!

Everyone has funny things they do, some are practical and others just quirky. I have many of both. One of the practical things I do is put the bike in first gear when I stop to take pictures on sloping ground. Normally the kickstand is enough to prevent it from going anywhere but I like the extra bit of assurance that it will not roll away – of course, having only two wheels it would not go far.

One of the quirky things I occasionally do is fire up the bike as I swing my leg over it. I don’t know when I started doing it but it is something I occasionally do when I have stopped to dismount for a photo op.

As was evident in the deer event just up the road, my mind occasionally strays off topic. This was one such occasion. I forgot a couple of key things. One was that the ignition cutoff for the kickstand was acting up and another was that the bike was in gear. I put the camera in the tank bag, turned the ignition on and thumbed the start button. The stars lined up .... cutoff switch had punched out and let the power pass through to the starter. The bike, being in gear lurched forward about a foot which was enough to retract the kickstand and I had about five hundred and fifty pounds of bike and luggage falling towards me.

Now picture this; I am standing to the left of the bike on one leg with my right leg on its way over the seat, the thumb of my right hand across the bike on the right grip thumbing the starter button (until it moved a foot forward), and my left hand out behind me as a counterbalance. Yup, that bike was headed for my left leg. I must have had my whit about me because I managed to bring my right leg down, hop back clear of the bike and hop back, bringing my left hand to the left grip and my right hand back to the rear passenger hand hold. Though I was in position to catch the bike, it was past the point of saving without injury and I settle gently, well, not quite, on the pavement.

A confluence of quirks, inattentiveness and pure unadulterated dumbassedness resulted in me looking down at my bike lying on its side in the middle of nowhere. Thank goodness there was nobody there to see that!! Thank goodness also for the couple of Benjamin’s I spent on new valve cover guards because the first contact with the ground was the guard rather than the valve cover! The left saddle bag also ate some gravel. After giving myself a swift kick in the keyster I picked the bike up and inspected it for damage. Just a couple of nicks on the valve cover guard and the left side case. These lessons of the road just keep on coming, don’t they? I guess this is what is called gaining experience! Good thing this bike was developed by people with such experience!

This is the Green River valley seen looking north.

I liked this dry upland meadow.

When you have a chance to see the beauty of this park you say many thanks to fighters like David Brower!

That ain't deer poop folks. This being a National Park I don't believe they have cattle here so this has got too be something an elk left behind. Anyone who has seen my riding boots knows that size fifteen is a pretty big boot but it is dwarfed by this elk pie!

This is a view of the valley cut into the landscape by the Yampa River. I snapped this photo shortly after dropping the bike.

I was soon on my way to the Harper’s Point overlook and, surprisingly, I didn’t beat myself up for having done such a silly thing. I took the lesson and moved on. I guess I am mellowing out in my old age, or, just learning to let go.

On arrival at Harper’s corner I learned that there was an overlook a little over a mile hike into the woods. At first I was going to push on but then I decided that since I was here I should go ahead and hike the trail. I am glad I did and the photos show why!

As I hiked along I got a good view of the road to Echo point below. It is an unpaved road and one I so badly wanted to take but it was about 1:00 and I still had a good ways to go. I stopped every now and then to listen to the wind whispering through the trees and noticed that there were only two sounds, the gentle wind and when those settled to stillness, I could hear the faint sound of close-by bees going about their business collecting pollen for the day. Strangely enough, I didn’t hear any birds! Back home I am accustomed to the constant chatter of birds against the backdrop of dueling cicada’s but here there was a comforting stillness, a settling peace. I only passed a couple of people going in the opposite direction on my way out and when I got to the look out point, the family that had pulled up in a minivan when I was taking off my gear had assembled themselves into a tree for a photo which another tourist was kind enough to take. A fellow came up to me and asked where I was traveling from and I told him and asked the same of him and it turned out he was from England and just out and about enjoying the sites. The dozen or so people who were there before me soon left and I crawled through the fence and climbed all the way to the top of the point where I could see in for miles in all directions. The photos below show some beauty but they don’t in any way capture the scale. There had been plans to dam this river and had the environmentalist of the time not won out all this splendor would be under water like Hoover canyon (now lake) near Las Vegas and Powell canyon (now lake) in Page, Arizona. I, for one, am glad that it was not flooded!

The Yampa River flows into the Green just beyond that near ridge where it looks like it flows into the rock. Below is a pan to the right after the two rivers meet.

This is a view of the bend just after the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers
In this photo you can see evidence of the rocks having been moved around over millions of years before the river did its job through its own millions of years cutting through the landscape.

Let it not be said that he didn't stop to smell the flowers! I had to lie on the rock to get a photo of this four inch tall plant with the gorge behind it. I have another of the canyon behind me with a different flower but this one came out better so it won a place online.

It was about 1:00 when I got back to the bike and a fellow on a sparkling clean Suzuki Boulevard had pulled in and was in the process of getting himself together to take pictures. He asked how far it was to the look out and I told him and I also told him that it was well worth the hike. He was from Colorado and was riding up to Craig to meet up with some buddies for a couple of days of riding on the holiday weekend.

As I was getting my gear ready to put back on it started to drizzle a little so I took shelter under the eve of the bathroom ..... actually, as is the norm in places this desolate, it was a latrine. A friendly couple I had passed on the way back struck up conversation and it turns out the lady had lived in the Cleveland suburb of South Euclid and she was very pleased to meet someone from a place she had lived.

I really wanted to take that unpaved road to Echo Park but it was a sixteen mile round trip and it was a little after one. I figured that with stopping for photos and enjoying the silence it would add another hour to the time I would spend in this park. There were a couple more I wanted to see plus, making that trip would put me on the hairy edge of the bike’s fuel endurance and that was something I didn’t want to test way out here in the middle of nowhere – I had made my rookie mistake of the day and didn’t need any more. I took out the map and, flipping between the pages from map to map, it looked like I had at LEAST five hours of riding ahead of me.

I was STARVING!! I fired up the bike and made quick work of the 30 miles back to the ranger station, thought of stopping to chat but pushed on the remaining 30 miles to Vernal, Utah. After I gassed up I took a closer look at the maps and realized that, though I had already traveled an hour into what I thought was five remaining hours of road time. The route would take me through forests and that meant deer! It also meant that what looked to be a straight line on the map was probably winding through a good part of the distance and I would probably have to add two or three hours to my initial estimate. That meant six or seven hours from here!!! Having already had close encounters with deer I really wanted to be off the back roads by sundown. So, I skipped lunch and bought a bag of Planter’s Trail mix and a cup of stale coffee to keep me alert. The ride up from Vernal to they Utah/Wyoming border was a fun and winding climb up from the treeless plains through coniferous forest up through Aspen and above the tree line and then back down on the other side. I took route 191 and branched off on route 44 towards Manila, Utah. About five miles along route 44 two young deer that must have been spooked by something in the woods came running onto the road. All three of us stopped, one continued across the road and the other ran back where it came from. As I approached Manila I rounded a bend and there was a big black cow standing on the road!!! It was an entirely appropriate time to yell an exasperated HOLY COW enough with the animals, already!!!

This is the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, an intended stopping point of the day but with the distance to my destination having been misjudged all I could do was stop and take in this wonderful veiw for a few minutes. It was here that I ran into a Canadian from Alberta with the same bike as me and we chatted for a couple of minutes about the bikes and the roads. He was headed south and I was headed north so we wished each other well and went on our respective ways.


The rest of the ride from Manila to Kemmerer Wyoming was uneventful except for the strong winds blowing in from the west. They were probably gusting to about 20 knots. As I approached Kemmerer I couldn’t help but notice the skies up ahead were thick with dark menacing clouds. It was approaching 7:00 and I knew I had a good two hours left to ride. I don’t mind riding in the rain but once I am underway I prefer not to stop in the rain unless it is at my destination so I gassed up in Kemmerer and buttoned down for what looked to be a serious rain storm; good thing too, because it proved to be pretty bad.

The winds picked up and changed direction and were gusting in from the north at about 30 to 35 knots and pretty much blowing around the windshield. I had lowered it because the wind was strong enough to make it flap about a bit and I didn’t want to have to contend with having that break. About five miles up the road there was a one lane construction zone and I was stuck behind a truck. We had to wait for a pilot car but were soon past that point but still in a do not pass zone. One of the straps on the last skid blew loose so, I drew up beside the truck and in my best impression of an officer, motioned for him to pull over. I have a bike that is popular with many police departments and that together with the florescent yellow vest topped off with a white helmet makes for a get-up that looks much like an officer. So, the driver promptly obeyed my order and I parked the bike behind his truck at an angle with the flashers on. When I got to the window he had his license and registration ready but I told him to put them away and come back and attend to the load. He was relieved not to be getting a ticket an when he walked back and heard Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong belting out a wonderful duet on my radio he realized I was not a cop but a concerned citizen. I was glad to have helped but also highly amused to have pulled someone over.

Though it was raining, that bit of entertainment helped a lot. After the construction zone the posted speed limit went back up to 65 and I set the cruise on 70 With daylight receding and darkness encroaching I saw a sign I really didn’t want to see – a large road sign with yellow flashing lights on each corner and in double the normal face font “WARNING Deer Migratory Path Next 12 Miles Animals on Road”. With the way things had gone today I went on full alert and counted the miles down and a couple of miles outside Sage where the road turned north I was finally through the migration path. A few miles north of Sage the same sign popped up again and it covered 12 more miles! Thankfully I made it through without a single sighting! Also, in heading north I was now riding into the wind rather than having it blow in from the side so I could raise the windshield back up for a little more protection. Across the Idaho border I passed through another migratory path but the Idaho DOT does not see it fit to pay for flashing lights.

After passing through Montpelier Idaho I got an upgrade .... from deer to elk!! I still had a good 65 miles to the freeway and it was dark by now. The rain was letting up a bit but not much and my nerves were getting frazzled for having been on red alert for hours and the lack of a meal for almost 24 hours was starting to catch up with me; recipe for disaster. Luckily, non occurred and the rain stopped about 30 miles out of Montpelier. It was a little after 9:00 when I got to the freeway and I saw a Subway sandwich shop that was still open so I stopped in to by a foot-long to go, figuring that everything would be closed on a Sunday evening after 9:00 on a holiday weekend in Pocatello.

On arrival I stopped at a gas station to fill up the bike and buy a couple of beers. I then checked in, took off and hung up my wet gear and wolfed down the sandwich with a few gulps of beer.

What a day!!! I was thankful to be off the road and also to be back on the grid. They had free wireless here, just as God intended! I poked about the towns near Yellowstone and figured a good place to spend the next night was in Bozeman, Montana. After having ridden in the rain for over two hours that experience thing told me to check the weather in Yellowstone for the following day and they were calling for 80% chance of rain. Since I was just off a wet ride I had no intention of spending the next day in the rain so I looked for alternate destinations to wait out the weather.

Let me say here that my rain gear worked pretty well. I was damp around the neck because of the wind blowing the rain around the windshield, I was damp around the front of the elbow probably because there are vents there that may not be quite water tight and I was damp around the seat but these were just damp spots and only the exterior of the gear was soaked, and everything else from my feet to my head was bone dry.

On looking at the weather I learned that all the passes north into Montana were experiencing an early snow storm and were forecasted to receive over five inches of snow in elevations above 6,000 feet Saturday night through Sunday afternoon. I didn’t want to ride in rain and I can’t ride in snow so it looked like I was staying put in Pocatello for an unscheduled rest day. With that, I booked another night at the same hotel, powered down and went to sleep.