Summer of 1991

Google map of this trip

Trip Itinerary 

STARTING OUT

Airplane -

Less than one day, but what if you want to see more of America than the "in flight movie?" 

Car -

Several days, but you're whizzing past everything so fast it is all a big blurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. 

Bicycle -

It took me 9 1/2 weeks and it was the trip of a lifetime. 

I started at my house in Bellingham and rode to Seattle the first day. 

Traffic, traffic everywhere, especially here in Western Washington.  For bicycling, I try to find roads with good shoulders. 

Ethnic Joke 

How many Americans does it take to replace a light bulb? 

It takes two.  One to dash into the building and do the job real fast while the other drives around and around and around the block looking for a parking spot. 

Do hills bother me?  No. I just put it in low gear and take along plenty water.  Maybe I only average 3 MPH. on grades, but with all this beauty who would want to go faster? 

Friends of mine in Yakima, Washington, were planning a float trip down the Yakima River.  By coincidence, their trip was planned the same day I arrived so I went along with them. 

Long expanses of sagebrush near Hanford Nuclear Reservation.  An essential ingredient in bike touring is sunscreen, the more powerful the better. I tried to get number 35 or stronger.

Leaking storage tanks of nuclear waste make news, sunshine is really the big radiation threat for a bicyclist near Hanford. 

A store clerk near Othello said, "Isn't it awfully hot to be riding a bike? It is 100 degrees."  I said I was surprised to hear it was that hot.  The wind cools me.  An occasional watering hole is good to drench my shirt.  Then the breeze works like air conditioning. 

It is important to have lots of water.  A pair of those two litter  7 UP bottles  made good water bottles.  I strapped them to the front low rider racks with bungy cords.  Foam padding kept my racks from puncturing the plastic bottles.

A self guided tour through the powerhouse of a big dam can be an educational experience.  This is the generator room at Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake River.
 
 

You've probably seen those HARD ROCK CAFE T-shirts from cultural centers of the world.  Dusty does not qualify for a HARD ROCK CAFE, but it does have THE DUSTY CAFE.  I got a T-shirt from this spot about 17 miles west of Colfax, Washington.

Rolling fields of wheat that look like sand dunes.  This is the rich Pales wheat ranching country, an area along the Washington Idaho border. 

I visited my childhood home in Pullman, Washington; a college town.

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Dworshak Dam is an impressive sight.  Tallest dam in the Northwest at over 700 feet.

Unfortunately, my camera was misfunctioning so the pictures of the dam looked like UFO landings. 

Lochsa River winds its way through mountains and forests of Northern Idaho. I cycled for miles along this beautiful river. 

Bicycling into the next hour.   I crossed 4 time zones on this trip. 

Lots of open space in Western Montana, but plenty of stores and campgrounds, at least along I-90, for comfort. 

Controlled access highway, in Montana, must mean, "no cows on the freeway."  Freeway ramps have cattle guards. 

The wide freeway shoulder is legal for bikes in many sparsely populated areas of western states.  One can follow the signs to know where it is legal and where it is illegal. 

Fires have blackened most of Yellowstone's forest. 

As one might have guessed, there are lots of geysers at Yellowstone.  By chance there was even a personalized license plate spelling out the word "GEYSER" in one of the parking lots.  It was from my home state of Washington. 

Yellowstone is a crowded park.  Most of the roads are narrow with lots of traffic and potholes.  While the roads are lousy, campgrounds go out of their way to accommodate bikes. 

Yellowstone's campgrounds fill up fast so one must get a spot early, but an exception is made for bicyclists.  Bikes are always welcomed and will not be turned away from a full campground.  If one is a cyclist, the campground fee is reduced. 

Slower speed limits improve safety on park roads, but limits are often broken.  I saw many cars zoom by.  At first I would feel angry, but then I realized they were missing the scenery by zipping past it.  Missing the view is punishment for hurrying. 

A small pond sits on the Continental Divide.  A creek flowing out the east end turns into the Missouri River which eventually flows into the Mississippi and the Atlantic Ocean.  Another creek, out the west side, becomes the Snake which flows to the Columbia and the Pacific Ocean. 

Yellowstone is an interesting place, but due to its popularity, it can be a bit hectic, even at the leisurely pace of a bicycle. 

Pump, pump, pump with my legs on the peddles gets me up this hill and across the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming.  It's an exercise program with a view!

I crossed the continental divide in Yellowstone, but still had more segments of the Rockies to cross.  Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains was the highest range I crossed.

Riding a stationary bike for exercise is kind of dull if one has been spoiled by all this beautiful mountain scenery.  Pumping away in the gym looking at a blank wall can not compare to the panoramic views, which change around every corner, as one travels by bike.  The Big Horns offered twisted layers of sandstone, fault lines, hills of black stuff that looked like tar, and weird granite formations. This gym was a geologist's paradise. 

In the strange world at the top of the Big Horns I came around a bend and faced an ocean of cattle standing on the road.  "What's a person to do now?"   I didn't even think to get out my camera.  I just wondered, "how am I going to get through." Then a Forest Service truck came along.  The driver was used to this type of situation and he just slowly drove into the herd.  Cattle jumped off onto both sides of the road out of the way.  I just went, timidly, right behind him. 

It's down, down down the east side grade.  My fingers got tired holding the brakes as I didn't want to go too fast. 

Boulders the size of buildings lie all around.  One jumble of boulders is known as Fallen City.

Eastern Wyoming is so sparsely populated I found myself waving at the few cars that went by.  Try waving at the cars around Bellingham and your hand falls off, you would be waving all the time. 

The store in Spotted Horse, Wyoming was open, but no one was in it.  I walked around looking for a clerk, but only heard someone snoring in the back room.  Rather than disturb them, I decided to go on to Gillette.  It was 30 miles farther, but I still had water and A few crackers. 

Fences mean nothing to the thousands of antelope running around Wyoming.  Early one morning I saw hundreds of them all around me leaping over fences and going where ever they wished. 

Along the road, I kept meeting other cross country cyclists. Sometimes we would just wave as we passed.  Other times we would stop and visit. 

It seems that bicyclists are the most handsome people I meet. They sort of radiate physical beauty.  Maybe it's the effects of all that exercise and fresh air. 

One cyclist, named Polar, stopped for a chat as a bear appeared.  It climbed across a fence and stood on the road in front of us.  This was the first bear I had ever seen outside the zoo.  I didn't even see one in Yellowstone and I didn't consider that a loss.  "What was a bear doing out here in the sagebrush?"  "Aren't bears supposed to live in the woods?" 

Polar wasn't afraid of bears.  He thought it would make a good picture.  As soon as he got out his camera, the bear ran; right through a barb wire fence.

People along the road kept talking about this convention of  200,000 motor cyclists up ahead.  Did I really want to be there at the same time?  It was the Harley convention in Sturgis, South Dakota.  I had visions of crowded roads and full campgrounds.  "Wouldn't it be nice if this could have just been a convention of bicyclists rather than the motorized variety" Quiet bicyclists, in lycra, would be better than loud motor cyclists in leather and tattoos. 

When I got to the Black Hills, near Sturgis, the convention was winding down.  It wasn't crowded and the motorcyclists I met were nice. 

DEVIL'S TOWER NATIONAL MONUMENT is Core of a volcano that still stands after the rest of the mountain eroded away. 

A Neutrino telescope in the Lead Gold Mine.

Next I would tune in a talk show from Minneapolis and learn what living in that city would be like for gay and lesbian people.  Studio guests from local gay rights organizations chatted with callers from all over Minnesota.  Next there would be a discussion of city planning, parks and transit systems. 

Banging drums and rattles filled the air from a station specializing in Native American programming.  It was on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. 

Symphonies of Mozart and Brahms came to me over South Dakota Public Radio.  Cycling through sunny fields seems to mix well with classical music. 

A campground attendant, near Rapid City, was probing the ground with a long pole.  I thought someone had lost a contact. Then I heard a rattling sound of another kind; not the native American radio station.  This was coming up from under wooden steps I was standing on.  It was a rattle snake.  The campground attendant was trying to catch it with that pole. Needless to say, I didn't continue up those steps. 

The driveway to an abandoned farmhouse makes an intriguing stop.  Wind whistling through poplar trees, a strange odor in the air and a metallic squeak coming from somewhere.  Then I saw a rusty fan hood on the house.  It was turning in the wind with a metallic squeak.  At my feet lay the source of the smell, a dead cat crawling with maggots.  I was thinking of stopping for lunch, but decided to move on.

To Part 2

My house in Bellingham.  Mile 0.

Photo Menu

Friend in Seattle. Mile 105

My anti sports fitness advice, also photo of Seattle's King Dome 
Before it was torn down. 

Mt. Rainier, behind all those parked cars

Dallas C.G. east of Enumclaw. Mile 196.

Raft ride on the Yakima River

Friend in Yakima. Mile 272.

Parched landscape near Hanford, WA.
Much of Washington state, east of the Cascade Mountains, is dry; the rain shadow.

Road through the desert

Lower Monumental Dam

Snake River by Kalotus. Mile 386.

Glowing clock tower

Sister in Pullman. Mile 479.

Rolling Palouse wheat fields

Near Kamiah, ID.  Mile 571.

Wilderness Gateway C.G. Mile 632.

Crossing my first time zone

Lolo Hot Springs. Mile 696.

Dortmund, MT. Mile 789.

Limited access, no cows on Freeway

Butte, MT. Mile 879.

Berkeley Lake in copper mine pit near Butte

Enis, MT. Mile 966.

Earthquake Lake, MT. Mile 1024.

Madison Junction C.G. in Yellowstone. Mile 1054.

Burned forest of Yellowstone

Yellowstone Lake Bridge Bay C.G. Mile 1112.

Sandstone formations near Cody

Wappitie C.G. west of Cody, WY. Mile 1172.

Oil Well at work

Lovell, WY. Mile 1254. 

Desert canal
Storms brewing in sky over 
Canal built by mormon pioneers.

Climbing over a 9,500 foot pass in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. I started at over 5,000 feet.

Fallen City of boulders

Dayton, WY. Mile 1336.

Cabin motel near Lieter, WY. Mile 1412.

Near Devil's Tower. Mile 1522.

Devil's Tower

Little towns.  Limited choices

Belle Forthe, SD. Mile 1590.

Lead Gold Mine

Rapid City, SD. Mile 1670.

Abandoned garage out in the prairies of South Dakota.

Wall, SD. Mile 1736.

Hays, SD. Mile 1823.

Pierre, SD. Mile 1857.

2 night rest stop at person's home. Bike tune up.

Oahe earth dam

Huron, SD. Mile 1974.

Band shell in oasis of a city park in Huron, South Dakota.

Brookings, SD. Mile 2061.

Picnic in the park in Brookings, SD.

To Part 2