1992 — Now We're Cooking

OFMC Trip 1991 We headed out toward Laramie, figuring a short ride on a Friday after work would get us on the road. Little did we suspect that with Frontier Days going on in Cheyenne there would be no accommodations even in Laramie. Fortunately the local KOA had unoccupied grass and we did some unplanned camping. We crossed Wyoming diagonally from southeast to northwest, stopping for the night in Lander. Next day we cruised on to Jackson Hole, and not really sure of what we'd find, we crossed the Teton Pass down to Victor, ID. It turned out that Victor is a very nice place to spend some time. Plus, the pass was great!

Cabin in Cooke City We worked our way north along the back side of the Tetons and then entered Yellowstone from the west. Wishing to avoid the heavy tourist traffic we stayed on the north side of the park, crossing a lot of the area that had been burned in a big forest fire up there a couple years earlier. We exited to the northeast, entering Montana close to Silver Gate and soon reaching Cooke City. Here we had to make a decision. The Beartooth Pass was ahead of us. We thought we might ride on to Red Lodge but decided that no, this was a nice place to stop.

Good choice!! The next day, bundled up in all our warm clothes and feeling like Michelin men, we headed up the pass. Of course we were appropriately awestruck by the road, and we stopped at the summit.

Store at the top of the Beartooth Talking with some shopkeepers up there we heard from them about some bikers going the other way last night who reached the summit after dark. The roads were icing up and going was very slow so the shopkeepers agreed to follow them down very slowly with the headlights on their truck helping them see. They told of some tense moments watching these Gold Wings slipping and skidding on the ice, but they got down safely. We would have been doing the same if we had pressed on.

We got to Red Lodge in a huge rainstorm, dried out and got warm, and pressed on to Lovell, WY, where we waited for the storm to go over the Big Horn Mountains. Then we pressed on to Sheridan, where we spent the night.

Leaving Sheridan we didn't get far when it became necessary to stop to lay in the grass and bask in the sun on a hillside by the road. We then rode on to Devil's Tower for a look, and on to check out Sturgis for the first time.

Then up to Deadwood for the night. The next day we cruised past Mount Rushmore and on down through the Black Hills and found a great little bunch of cabins in Hot Springs, SD, and spent the night. We headed out of the Black Hills for Nebraska and were surprised to hear, stopped at a rest area, that Nebraska was "a bucket state." We'd been riding without our helmets. But then the big surprise.

Cabin in Hot Springs Just outside of Alliance, NE, we discovered Carhenge. We all know Stone Henge, right? That place in England where the Druids set up great slabs of stone that serve as a solar calendar?

Well, take some Nebraska farmers with time on their hands and a sense of humor, substitute cars for slabs of rock, and paint it all grey and you've got it. And not just slap-dash. They measured and staked everything out exactly like the real thing. This thing is well worth going out of your way for.

We spent that night back in Colorado, in Sterling, and the next day headed home.

Car Henge

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