We finished checking out Mount Rushmore in mid-morning and started the long dash to Yellowstone National Park, almost 500 miles to the west. As soon as we started the descent to Highway 244 then Highway 16 eastward through Black Hills National Forest, I called to reserve a camp site at Bridge Bay, about 20 plus miles inside Yellowstone from the East entrance, near Yellowstone Lake. It was going to be our first night camping, and we were all thrilled. Tai was probably fixating on the bears that would come out at night and devour us alive. We should go to bed tonight with our running shoes on. As the joke goes, no, you can’t outrun a bear, but you just need to outrun your friends.
The road through Black Hills National Forest was smooth and beautiful, and it was easy doing 85 mph without knowing it.
To do justice to the beautiful scenery, I’m going to post large-size photos whenever possible from now on.
A curvy road, blue sky, mild temperature, a good deal of sunshine, and a car that shifts as smoothly as butter. What could possibly be better? Well, only one thing is better: doing all this in a BMW F800GS motorcycle.
Around noon, we entered Wyoming and stopped for gas around Newcastle. Not wanting to be stranded gasless in the middle of nowhere, we usually filled up the tank whenever it was half full.
Lunch was a buffet at a Pizza Hut. Decent food for only $6 per person. I made another phone call to my parents to check up on my daughter. After lunch, following another convertible with an Ohio license plate, we continued eastward on Highway 16 through Thunder Basin National Grassland before rejoining Interstate 90 to aim for Bighorn National Forest.
The scenery was again simply spectacular.
We got a glimpse of snow-covered mountains in the distant, having no idea that in a few hours we would be crossing them.
The BMW winked at the sights of mountains ahead. Tai was in the driver’s seat.
As I-90 started to head north, we maintained our eastward heading by turning left onto Highway 14 with Bighorn National Forest looming straight ahead.
The road started to climb quickly.
Bighorn National Forest consists of over 1.1 million acres along the spine of the Big Horn Mountains, an outlying mountain range separated from the rest of the Rocky Mountains by Bighorn Basin. Elevations range from 5,000 feet along the sagebrush and grass-covered lowlands at the foot of the mountains, to 13,189 feet on top of Cloud Peak. The forest is named after the Bighorn River.
Tai and Qui enjoyed a vista point.
The forest is primarily lodgepole pine, along with several species of spruce, fir, and aspen.
As we continued to climb, snow started to appear on the ground.
We stopped at 9430 feet to take some photos.
It was a meditation exercise driving through a small road cutting through massive snow on a mountain top, above the tree line, with just white clouds ahead.
On the other side of the mountain, the road dropped down… fast!
The photos didn’t do justice to how steep the road was.
Again, I wished I had been straddling a motorcycle instead.
Our hurried drive to Yellowstone was halted by a few careless pedestrians.
The road was cleared shortly.
The scenery was so peaceful, so beautiful. The stunning mountains and lakes and deserts were still ahead of us, but at this moment, driving through the middle of Wyoming, with the slanting afternoon sunsine highlighting the dark mountains in the distant and the grassland along the highway, I kept repeating “This is America, this is America” in my head, feeling awed by the rugged beauty of this vast country was.
As the sun settled near the horizon, we went through Cody, the last main town before Shoshone National Forest and Yellowstone. More to come, but here is a teaser… well, not the guy, but the scenery.
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