Yellowstone National Park

Ran into some cows (not literally!) on the back roads of Montana.

All the while, Mim is yelling back at me, "You know they're just cows, right?" Well, we may have cows at home but these cows...these are Montana cows. These are cows we found chillin' in the road just beyond a 15mph curve on a windy country road during the first motorcycling trip we ever took together! So I had to take a picture.I think it's fun when wildlife crosses the road (at least when you get to see it in time) and you have to stop and yell at them to move. During this trip, we also encountered on the road (without photo's unfortunately) a flock of turkeys, a few deer, buffalo, and elk. No one got hurt and we got to say hello pretty close up. The turkeys were especially funny.

SO, here we are still making our way south to Yellowstone. After riding for hours, we needed a short break so we hung out with statue guy for a few.

Pioneer man of the Louis and Clark days. Good job mr. pioneer! Once we entered Yellowstone National Park, we were told there were only a select few campgrounds that still had openings, so off we went to bare the cold as we rode another hour into dusk. We stopped to see some of the awesome boiling pools.

And here is a buffalo chillin' near the highway and giving people dirty looks.

We finally made it to the campground! It was about 15 till 9pm and there was a line at the registration booth. After we received our campsite and turned around to get the bikes, the line had grown into a large mob of people. (they looked upset to me..) Anyway, it wasn't our fault the lady who helped us was so thorough and that the booth was closing at 9! So we made it over to our campsite and started setting up camp. We made Mim's amazing Dal that night so it took us a few hours. Sometime around 11pm we were still playing cards and waiting for the food to finally be done. Suddenly, two large buffalo strolled past our campsite into the darkness beyond the bathrooms (which were next door to us)

This was our view from the picnic table. We thought it was pretty cool that we just had a few buffalo roam right past us in the middle of the night! We went back to our cards, but just then I hear a loud grunt (or whatever you would call the mean noise a buffalo makes). We turned toward the spot near the bathrooms were we saw the buffalo a minute before. There was one lone buffalo staring right at us and grunting and puffing and scraping the ground with his foot. He looked like he was going to charge us! I asked Mim, "what should we do? Should we flash a light or something?!" No, that might MAKE him charge. Ok, so here we were wondering what on earth we could've done to piss this buffalo off when out from beyond the bathroom, something like 10 or 15 buffalo come galloping towards us! As they get closer, they begin to stampede at full speed, and 15 or 20 more buffalo show up running behind them. I had stood half way up off the picnic table bench and was frozen solid until Mim walked around and grabbed my hand and pulled me to the backside of the table, so that the table was between us and the buffalo coming at us. The buffalo ran at what must've been 30mph straight at us, only merging to the right or left to dodge the tent and picnic table in front of us. The wild animals just flowed around us like a river might flow around a large rock. We could have reached out our arms and touched them as they ran past! After the last buffalo had disappeared, we stood, still holding each others hand and looking wide eyed into the darkness where the buffalo had gone. Then we laughed. And felt a little bit crazy. And realized what a RUSH of adrenaline that experience had produced! What a night! We never would have guessed something such as a buffalo stampede would happen to us! We are so glad it did, because that was the most wonderful experience of them all. A short while later (we stayed up pretty late after that) we heard and saw the same buffalo stampede on the other side of the campground and we hoped that they would come back around so that we could have another chance to experience that close-up adventure without the frozen shock we had the first time. But alas! They didn't. The next morning we tried to take some shots to portray the event.

Picnic table where I was sitting/ and buffalo print

Buffalo prints / view from bathrooms

When we saw Old Faithful the next day, it just wasn't as exciting as we wanted it to be...

But it was pretty cool. And one things for sure: we will never forget this trip to Yellowstone!

Swan Lake, MT

When we left Glacier National Park, we were quite sad. We finally were starting to fell like our adventure was coming to a close...and very soon. Our next destination was Yellowstone national park. However, we didn't make it there in one days ride from Glacier. No, it rained on us as we headed that way and we were eager to be off the bikes and not suffer through the tiny stabbing pains all over our bodies that were the dropplets falling from the sky. Rain is great and all, but riding a motorcycle in it...well it's not the best. We also had encountered three different strangers along the way that day who warned us of the deer. Yep, the highway we were taking to Yellowstone was also named "the deer highway". I was extra nervous at this point. But we hadn't come terribly far and wanted to make it to our campsite. We stopped on the way, at a small trading post in a deserted looking town called Swan Lake. The folks inside we very friendly and we chatted as we purchased a few groceries for dinner that night. Once outside, we started preparing our bikes for take off. Then the wind came.
That wind must've been 60 mph because I could barely walk and across the road a loud snap jerked our heads toward a falling tree. And then it wasn't just raining anymore, it was pouring. We had a grade A Montana storm meet us there at that trading post and no sooner than we could think what to do, little lady in the store poked her head out: "You know, we have cabins in the back for $30 a night! Free hot showers and you can get out o' this storm!" I was sold. And happily, Mim was too! So thirty dollars later we were sitting on our front porch drinkin' wine and playin' cards and thanking the lord we stopped when we did.

That cabin was the best deal we ever got on this trip! $30 for a warm, clean bead AND a front porch covered from the rain?! We were in heaven. And it only got better as the night went on. The showers WERE clean and hot! And the trading post offered us specially cooked frozen pizza on the grill, with a full service blow horn to let us know when it was ready. It was cute how excited they were to finally use their pizza boxes.

Next morning before we headed out, we thanked the trading post friends and promised to come back one day for a fishing trip at Swan Lake.