At this point we're pretty much done with the Colorado Rockies. My Butler maps have roads ranked and broken out by sections. Of the 22 breakouts listed, we hit 9 of them. Given our trajectory through the state, I feel pretty good about hitting that many.
But the time of twisties was pretty much over for at least a day as we entered the plains of Wyoming. Leaving Walden we headed north on SR125 and turned on to Wyoming's SR230 on our way through Riverside, hopping onto I-80 at Walcott, then through Sinclair, Rawlins, heading north then on US287.
We stopped for a bit at Three Corners (junction of US287 & SR220) while getting gas, and waiting for Dan to help a guy change a car tire. Getting back on the road we passed through Jeffrey City which seemed to me to be virtually deserted. Kind of sad. We eventually got to Lander and decided that was where we'd stay for the night. Doing like we usually do, we headed for a grocery store and got food and asked the locals about places to stay. We had a suggestion of a campground outside of town, but then a guy told us that we could stay at the city park for free. Say what?!? Not only that, the city pool had showers and a hot tub. He then told us we should have breakfast at the restaurant where he works named "Middle Fork" which we promptly started calling "Middle Finger".
Yeah, we're pretty sophisticated. Well, we checked out the park and it was super clean and had water and bathrooms nearby. We ran out of time to ride over to the pool, but we had a nice dinner and there was a little league championship baseball game happening that Dan and Bill wandered over to watch.
Mileage for the day: 387. Not too bad.
Friday, June 27, 2014
The next morning after a quiet night's sleep, we got up, broke camp, and rode over to the Middle Finger (Fork) for breakfast. Turns out it's a very nice restaurant and we were treated to a great breakfast, though I passed up the cooked spinach. Too slimy and reminds me of collared greens which I was forced to eat occasionally as a kid. Dangers of being raised in a southern family. But I digress. We talked about where we should aim for today. We all agreed we wanted to hit Dead Indian Summit and Beartooth Pass heading into Montana. Bozeman isn't too far and there's a KOA where we could get showers which we needed. So I called ahead and made a reservation, since on a Friday night it might be tough to get in somewhere. So we had a plan.
Leaving Lander, we stayed on US287 heading toward Riverton and continued through town getting on to US26. We crossed the Boysen Reservoir then turning north at Shoshoni (keeping on US26), we rode on to Thermopolis through the hills which wasn't any Colorado twisty road, but not that bad. It was marked as a good road on the Butler map. From Thermopolis, we took SR120 which would take us through Meeteetse and on into Cody where we stopped for lunch and filled up with gas again.
Tom Clark
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Intellitect, living in Spokane, Washington. I also do a little development work on the side. And I love riding motorcycles all over the country with my friends.
