The Garzquists: Motorcycle trip 2013: Yellowstone National Park

For our motorcycle trip this year, we decided to go to Yellowstone National Park. Dustin, Jake, and Taylor had all their bikes ready to go and Gudrun and I were happy to bring up the rear with the Forester. Athena wasn't able to go with us this time around, but Taylor's friends Alex and Brittany joined us on their Harley. We left Sophie (and the feline devil-children) in the care of my cousin Mishael (I've discovered that bribing with Annie's bunny graham snacks works quite well...)

The weather forecast for the trip wasn't very promising, but the boys were ready to tough it out. We all met up Saturday morning, loaded everything up in the Forester (and Thule box borrowed again from Jake and Gudrun), and headed out. We drove over to Soda Springs and then up through Jackson. We stopped in Jackson at the Snake River Brewing Co. for lunch before driving up into Yellowstone via the south entrance. We camped Saturday night in Grant Village campground.

If you'll remember from last year, Taylor and Athena somehow forgot the poles to their tent. This year, the big oops happened while we were setting up camp Saturday and Jake realized that they had forgotten their whole tent! Luckily, Dustin and I had extra room in our tent, so Taylor crammed in with us and Jake and Gudrun used Taylor's tent. And no, we did not let Jake forget it the entire weekend! He did, however, bring some delicious fish for us to eat that night with a yummy broccoli salad that Gudrun made.

Sunday we drove out to the southeast entrance toward Cody, WY because not many of us had been out that way. The guys had fun driving the winding roads, but on the way back in, the sky opened up and we got poured on. Okay, the guys and Brittany got poured on; Gudrun and I stayed nicely dry in the car.

We found a campsite in Tower campground and set up camp. Dustin and Jake decided to ride through Lamar Valley toward the east entrance by Cooke City while Gudrun and I took a walk along the river. We found old bones scattered around, some bear poop, and some tracks, but no bears. After our walk, we decided to head out into Lamar Valley to look for bear and wolves since it was close to sundown. We went to the store really quick to stock up on beverages and as we were about to leave, we thought we heard Jake's bike backfiring and headed back up to the camp. Sure enough, Dustin and Jake were back and Dustin told me that there was supposed to be a black bear in sighting distance. Dustin went with us back out into Lamar Valley and we found the black bear. We kept driving around and found some antelope (with a baby, even), but didn't spot any wolves.

Monday morning, Gudrun and I got up early and drove back out into Lamar Valley to look for wolves and more bear. We didn't spot either, but we did find a lot of buffalo, some more antelope, and two sandhill cranes. We headed back into camp, had breakfast, and broke down camp before heading toward Madison, our last campsite for the trip. We decided to go back south to Canyon Village and across to Norris since there was some pretty hefty construction north of Tower that Gudrun and I had had to sit in during our early morning trek. We set up camp and had lunch before heading up toward Mammoth to a short hike to Bunsen Peak. We only made it about 1/2 mile before a thunderstorm rolled in, so we headed back to the vehicles and into Mammoth to let it pass. Storms kept rolling through, so our hike was cancelled, but we had some ice cream in Mammoth, walked some of the boardwalks, found a few cow elk and calves, and went to the Boiling River hot springs.

When we got back into camp, Dustin and I took a short walk and found some cow elk and a couple babies. That night we grilled steaks, veggie kabobs, and bratwursts to empty out the last of our cooler (no hot dogs or MRE rations for us on our camping adventures!).

Tuesday morning Alex and Brittany headed out since they had to get all the way back to Boise. Dustin, Jake, Taylor, Gudrun and I drove south to check out Old Faithful and the miscellaneous springs, geysers and pools along the way. We drove out through the west entrance and then took a loop around Hebgen and Quake Lake before heading down toward Ashton. We made it part way down the Ashton Hill before Jake's fender started coming loose. Luckily, my brother-in-law Andrew was working and saved the day with some sturdy wire and Jerry-rigging advice. We ate lunch at the 5-11 Main pizza place (and I had my huckleberry milkshake!) and stopped to see my parents, sister Kelli and the kiddos for a few minutes before we headed out on the road yet again. We stopped again in Pocatello, which was the end of the journey for Taylor, Gudrun and Jake. Dustin ran down to our old house to mess with some plumbing in the yard (we had a pool forming that my in-laws luckily had noticed). We loaded the motorcycle in the back of Randy & Teresa's pickup since they were coming down the next day to fly out of the SLC airport and finally drove home.

Our fur-kids were very happy to see us, but I know that Mishael took good care of them while we were gone. Sophie was especially happy to go back to the dog park yesterday for the first time in 10 days. She had a little bit of a cough two weekends ago and, although we didn't need to treat it, the vet said to keep her away from other dogs. She's now over the cough and happy to go back to butt-sniffing on the daily.

Commence the many photos in chronological order. Quite a few of these photos were taken by Gudrun on Dustin's camera, so I can't take full credit for all the great photos.