Salt Lake City, UT through Park City, UT and Lander, WY to Riverton, WY

322.3 Miles | 4:49 Riding Time

It’s Saturday, July 20, 2024, and it’s Day 101 of my cross country motorcycle trip.

Today was a travel day. I picked up my bike from the shop—a huge thank you to BMW Motorcycles of Salt Lake City for getting it fixed, and having it ready exactly when they said they would.. I said goodbye to Scott, and headed out. There were no parks, and barely any stops.

The start of the ride was pretty, but on highways—Interstate 80 from Salt Lake to Park City. I wanted to get back on track for Devil’s Tower, and that meant riding diagonally through the flat part of Wyoming. At Green River, WY, I got on to more local roads and made my way north and east.

Everything was going fine and smoothly until I got to Lander, WY. At that point, I started getting weather alerts on my GPS. A severe storm was coming through, and there wasn’t anywhere else to go. If it held off for a bit, I’d make it to my hotel before it got bad. Of course, it didn’t hold off, and I started getting rained on.

Now, the rain wasn’t so bad, and the lightning was far away, but the winds were insane! I don’t know, but I’m guessing 40-50 MPH winds hitting me directly from the side. At one point, the road curved left, but my bike kept going straight. I had to force it hard to get it to lean and turn and stay on the road. When I got to a straight part, I pulled over and pointed my bike as directly into the wind as I could and decided to wait it out. My riding gear kept me dry, but it was blowing so hard, I had trouble keeping the bike upright—quite the leg workout.

When it died down, I made it the last 5 miles to the hotel, and breathed a sigh of relief. That was the roughest 30 minutes of weather of my trip so far. A nice meal at the hotel, and I was feeling normal again. Needless to say, I had no trouble falling asleep that night.

PS: I wish I had some video of that storm, but I was a little pre-occupied.

The Route