The first '98 Montana trip (page 2 of 2)

  Having been back and forth through Jackson a few times this year, I talked Dan into a different route home. We took off south from Lost Trail Pass through Salmon, Idaho, following Hwy 93 all the way to Arco, and then 26 to I-15. Then jotting over on US 30 through Soda Springs, Montpelier and back into Wyoming near Kemmerer (pronounce that), where we stopped to pay the driving tax.

It's already starting to get late in the day by now, and our goal is further south yet. We hit I-80 and run to SR 530, where we head south along the west side of Flaming Gorge State Park.

Below is the view out the front of the car as we start thinking about finding a place to camp after a long long day.


  We pass a number of pay campsites as darkness rolls in. By now, I'm running interference for Dan, hoping to see the deer and elk before they run into the road. I spot one on the left side of the road, hit the brakes hard (which Dan can't fail to notice). The deer bounds away from the road to the left, so I let off the brake and take a breath.... just in time for its buddy, who was on the right side of the road, to take off in pursuit, leaping across the road in front of the car.

Now it *IS* dark, and we decide to press on into Utah, because there is National Forest land south of the border. Just past Manila, Utah it starts raining. It's dark, and we find ourselves on a twisty road climbing straight up out of some sort of canyon in the rain. Motorcycling in these conditions is not exactly the most fun. We finally enter forest land, and a few miles down the road I spot a sign beside the road, (seen here the next day). It reads "Death Valley". Coooll.. We had managed to ride up out of the rain two minutes before, so now we decide to explore this road, which goes even more "straight up" the side of the mountain. It's one lane wide, with 6 inch diameter rocks and ruts, and so on. A jeep trail, basically.
 

About a half mile up the road we find a flat spot under some trees, and stop to pitch the tent. It's about 9:45 pm now. The wind is gusting up to about 50 mph and the skies look really nasty. We hunted up rocks to put on the tent stakes so they wouldn't pull out, and as you see here, we pulled the car and bike around to within a foot or two of the tent on the upwind side to try to block some of the wind. No sooner do we have it all sorted out, then the wind completely STOPS. We climb into the tent and then we found out why they call it Death Valley. It was absolutely completely dead silent. No birds, no bugs, no coyotes.. nada.. It was quite weird. Dan and I had spent the previous week sleeping in a tent with earplugs to avoid being woken up too early, and now it's so damned quiet we can't get to sleep.

The next morning I climbed up the hill a bit and took pictures that went into the panorama shot below. You'll note that we found the only strand of trees in any direction. We basically camped under the best lightning rods we could find, on a potentially storming night.



  Here's the road out in the morning. You can't tell from the picture but it's probably a 6-10% grade downhill.



At the bottom of the hill we turned back the way we'd come to see what we'd missed the night before. A half mile back down the road we pulled off to catch this. This is Flaming Gorge.
 
And this.


There are boats down there on the lake which are so small in the photograph that they simply disappear into the pixels.

 

  Well.. That's almost it. That day we cruised down to Vernal Utah, then headed due east blasting by Dinosaur National Monument without slowing down, eventually finding ourselves back at Craig. From there it's on to Steamboat Springs and up Rabbit Ears pass. We stopped at the top of the pass for lunch. This picture shows how I stopped. It sure took Dan by surprise.
Note: He was following behind me at the time, not parked in front as someone inferred from the picture.

From here it's back the way we came, over Berthoud and down into stop and go traffic on a Sunday afternoon on I-70. It was raining when we rolled into town.

That just about wraps up my fun for 1998. The fall has had a few interesting things going on.. Dan and Kitty had their baby girl Samantha. I attended Samantha's baptism just last Sunday. I spent a nice Thanksgiving with Mary and Fred. I picked up a season pass to Winter Park ski area for cheap, so I've been up there skiing twice so far. I'd have been up more if there were actually any snow in the mountains. The weather has been so sickeningly nice here in the Metro area that I've been praying for snow. I put some snow tires on the car last week, and haven't gotten to test them out yet.

But guess what!?

I'm driving back to Montana for Christmas and New Years this year. I'll let you know what happens
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or for another road trip.. check out The '97 Montana Motorcycle Trip