[CART09] Photos from the Road

Now that I have access to a WiFi network (thanks to D-Cubed's superior infrastructure at 'A Way Back'), here are some photos from our trek through Wyoming to Oregon:

First, The Mother of All Road Construction Projects. US-287 in west-central Wyoming has several five-mile-long stretches with flag men on either side, and "guide trucks" leading drivers across the expanse that once held a road. Complete and total replacement -- meaning drivers and motorcyclists alike had to navigate dirt stretches alongside graders, track excavators and giant dump trucks:


The delays set us back nearly an hour, so we didn't actually reach Grand Teton National Park until close to sunset. But the peak is striking regardless of the time of day:

Once on the grounds of Yellowstone (with our campsite near Madison Junction, nearly 100 miles from the entrance to Grand Teton), we were a short walk from the pastures of Yellowstone's Madison Elk Herd:

Closer to the west entrance to the park (and the Montana border) is a "rehabitation project" where a bald eagle eaglet is being reintroduced to the wild. His nest is easily visible from the road:

At the park's Midway Basin, a few miles north of Old Faithful, the unpredictable Crater Geyser gushes out more than 4,000 gallons of scalding hot water each hour into the Firehole River. Jarrett decided to test the water in the creek (far enough from the hot springs that it's cooled to somewhere between 130° F. and 140° F.).... The red and green colors are from different forms of algae that thrive in the hot water.

West Yellowstone, in addition to being home to the Madison Elk Herd, also has several families of bison. Despite repeated warnings about these giant creatures, there was a story in the West Yellowstone newspaper about a 55-year-old park visitor who was recently gored by a charging bull while taking its picture from less than 10-feet away.

After blazing across Idaho, then taking a more leisurely trek across eastern Oregon, we arrived at 'A Way Back' early yesterday afternoon:

Next stop: Lake Siskiyou in the shadow of Mount Shasta in northern California -- where we will join my parents for the remainder of CART-09 and caravan through the Sierra Nevada, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Bryce Canyon, Four Corners, Durango Colorado, then the San Juan Skyway to home.