Saturday August 9th thru Monday August 11, 2003
This is where the details get sketchy for a while because I lost my little note pad somewhere. First, we explored around Jackson for a while. The arch below is made of discarded antlers. I think they are from elk. Jackson is a small tourist town and it doesn't seem very crowded, but prices for food and lodging are high because there are no other towns nearby.
Then we headed to the Tetons to spend some time hiking around in the mountains. Some of the time we were partly lost, but we were never completely lost.
We hiked the mountains around Jenny Lake. and ended up about a quarter of the way around the lake when the sun dipped behind the mountains. Andy liked to leap around but I stayed firmly on the ground.
Right near sundown, I heard a snuffling noise ahead and I said that I thought I heard a bear. Nobody believed me until we went around a corner and there he was, woofing down raspberries. I guess rock music and Harleys haven't completely ruined my hearing.
As the sun was going down, I thought we should turn back but everybody else wanted to continue, so we did. Soon it was night, but the moon was bright. Walking through the woods in the dark causes your mind to turn every shadow into some kind of an animal. That feeling was enhanced by the fact that none of us knew where we were going, but we could always keep the lake on our right side as we kept on hiking.
It was a memorable night hike. We must have hiked 25 miles that day, and everybody was in good spirits. We got back to the motel early the next morning and fell asleep immediately.
Monday August 11 2003
359 miles, 58.9 miles per gallon. Yes, that's right. Speed never exceeded 45 miles per hour, usually slower.
We got up early and had a big breakfast at the hotel. Breakfast was fun. Andy and Paul ate amazing amounts of food, and later they would be glad. I was excited because we were headed to Yellowstone. I had never been there before. Julie and I loaded up on the Harley while Andy, Erin, Anita & Paco (Paul) loaded into Andy's Saturn. Riders switched around during the day, but the drivers stayed the same. Since Andy had been working in the area all summer, he knew the area the best. I was not disappointed. It is the most incredible place I have ever seen on earth. And it is big! There are animals everywhere, and the weirdest geology all around. It is primeval.
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There were some crows in a parking lot that were tearing up the cars. They would pull off the rubber seals around the windows and shred up the windshield wipers and whatever else they could rip apart. I hoped that they wouldn't shred up my Harley, and they didn't. Whew!
Once again, we stayed too long and had too much fun, misjudging both the amount of daylight and the distance we traveled. Around 9:45 at night, the Saturn and the Harley were almost out of gas. We ended up in Gardiner, Montana where we found a much-needed convenience store. Some snacks were consumed and I put 2.95 gallons in the tank with the odometer showing 164 miles traveled since we left Jackson that morning. I would not have made it back on the remaining 2.05 gallon.
That night, we had a wild ride back through Yellowstone to Jackson. (to be continued...)