When we arrived in Red Lodge, we met up with four other riders: MountainGT or Big John on his GS1300, John or JJ on his GS1250, along with Pat and Ferron on their K1600s.
The weather was still amazing as we all rode up over the awesome Beartooth Pass to cross into Wyoming. Damian and Brendan were very happy to ride some twisty roads again after the past few days of “sightseeing” roads! We spent the day riding through Yellowstone National Park, checking out attractions of Artist Point and Yellowstone Falls and, of course, Old Faithful. We learned that Damian cannot be trusted to find his bike in large parking lots and also does not like to play with big Bison bulls in the Lamar Valley. We returned by riding over the Beartooth Pass again to stay another night in Red Lodge.
Finally leaving Red Lodge, we again rode over the Beartooth Pass but then turned west to ride the Chief Joseph Highway. Crossing the Big Horn basin, we climbed up HWY 14A into the Big Horn Mountains. After lunch at the Big Horn Resort at Burgess Junction we turned south on HWY 14 to ride down Shell Canyon int the basin to spend the night at the historic Greybull Hotel in Greybull.
Leaving Greybull we rode south and then west to ride up Ten Sleep Canyon into the Big Horn Mountains again. We stopped at the Powder River Pass summit but did not regroup again until we rode down into Buffalo. We met up with Andy’s friend, Mike Turley for lunch. As we rode east on I-90 there were more and more Harley’s heading to and from Sturgis. Damian, Brendan, Pat Big John and JJ all rode into Sturgis to experience one evening of the event while Andy and Ferron went to our hotel in Newcastle, Wyoming where we stayed three nights.
On our first day in Newcastle, we said goodbye to Big John and JJ, and then road north to have breakfast at Cheyenne Crossing at the head of Spearfish Canyon. The ride down Spearfish Canyon was spoiled by the number of Harley Davidson riders crawling along and often blocking us from passing. This was a theme repeated throughout our riding in the Black Hills. We rode north to Belle Fourche and then west to the Devil’s Tower. Retuning to Spearfish, we rode the canyon again before riding through Lead to take the Nemo highway south. We stopped to visit the Crazy Horse Monument before returning to Newcastle. Bernie on his K1600 joined us.
On our second day, we rode back into the Black Hills to ride the Needles Highway, Custer State Park and the Iron Mountain road west to Mt Rushmore We went north on the Nemo road before returning through Lead to Cheyenne Junction ind back to Newcastle from the north.
Leaving Newcastle, we said goodby to Pat, before we rode south across the high monotonous prairies of Wyoming until we discovered the amazing road through Guernsey State Park along the lake. After crossing I-25 the wind picked up and was really strong all the way into Laramie where we stopped for lunch. Continuing west, we rode over Snowy Ridge Pass west of Centennial. Turning south we rode into Colorado to stay the night in Grand Lake.
Andy Morley
