On Saturday we woke up in a frozen tent. It has been a long time ago we had freezing temperatures during the night, but when we left, the sun was already there and the temperature went quickly up to 12°C. We drove along the scenic byway through Idaho, passed via the beautiful Caribou National Forest and entered our 17th state Wyoming. Entering Wyoming is as we knew it from pictures; magnificent meadows surrounded by snowy mountains. We followed the snake river to enter the Teton National Park. It’s an astonishing beautiful park with meadows full of flowers, lakes and mountain peaks covered by snow, we became almost romantic of it 😊. We stayed at the campsite in the park where we met with our Norwegian friend Thor Hammer. It was nice to see eachother again after the Flagstaff Overland Expo. Our neighbors were also motorbike drivers, Adam and Rebecca, both from New Mexico on a motor trip for 9 days. Really nice guys with whom we shared our campfire. On Sunday we’ve visited the Yellowstone National Park, which was very very busy. The first attraction we visited was the ‘old faithfull’, a geysir that erupts ones a day, but unfortunately we just missed it… Next on the road was the grand prismatic spring, as the name says, lots of colors created by the hot spring. We continued our visit and were lucky with the wildlife; bisons and their calfs, coyote, ospreys, deer. Yellowstone is a very beautiful park, it’s the most visited park in the US and we’ve experienced it! People just stop in the middle of the road to take pictures, blocking the road. It’s amazing to see they are too lazy to park their car in a decent way and walk a few meters. On Monday we’ve left Yellowstone via the east side and drove via the scenic Shoshone National Forest (rusty brown rock formations) to Codi, the city of Buffalo Bill. Codi is as well the capital city of the rodeo, so we didn’t want to miss this and took the time to go to the rodeo in the evening. It was a great experience, we learned a lot about the different disciplines and the strict rules they have in a rodeo. Although this rodeo was in a low division, it was just a joy to see the skills of the cowboys and cowgirls. This kind of rodeo is used to gain points to get at a higher ranking and to participate at bigger rodeo events. This was the cowboy version of our ‘kermiskoersen’. One of the fun things to see were the rituals; it started with the presentation of the cowgirls, the greet to the flag and the national hymn followed by a prayer and at last but not least all sponsors were mentioned by name and flag. The show was complete!
On Tuesday, we had a lazy morning with free pancakes at the campsite. We drove via the HW 120 and followed the Chief Joseph scenic byway to end up at the Beartooth pass. On our way to the top we met some crazy skiers and snowboarders jumping over the street into the snow. They even took a picture while the skiers were jumping over our head 😊. Via Cooke City we entered Montana and again Yellowstone searching for a campspot, but we ended up outside the park in Gardiner in the Gallatin National Forest at the Eagle Creek campground. The campsite was also full, but we’ve met some nice guys, Carlos from Venezuela & Andreas from Colombia, who shared their campspot with us. It was a real international spot. We were warned by several people on the bear presence, so we slept with our bear spray and escape knife, but we survived and the only bear we saw was our teddy bear.
On Wednesday we drove via the HW89 towards Townsend, continued our way via Helena National Forest to Helena to end in Missoula via HW 141 & the scenic 200 which crossed the green prairie covered with colorful flowers. We decided to end this very long day at the KOA, but first we went to the local BMW dealer, Big Sky Motorsport. They were very busy and advised us to come the day after very early to have a service done. Today we woke up a bit later than expected and in a rush we went to the BMW dealer. Although they were very busy, they were able to do almost a full service. The team was super friendly and the service was perfect. Jaak and Mieke are ready to continue their journey. The rest of the day we spent all 3 together and closed with a real American burger.
