Red Lodge, MT through Cody, WY into Yellowstone National Park for 3 days

It’s Friday, July 12 - Sunday, July 14, 2024 and it’s Days 93 - 95 of my cross country motorcycle trip.

Yellowstone National Park has been on my bucket list for years, and I’m finally getting there. I’m meeting Scott, Donette’s brother, at the Old Faithful Inn around noon, so I decided to ride down to Cody and enter the park from the east entrance. The ride to Yellowstone started out on the same route as yesterday, but I kept going all the way to Cody, WY. I stopped for gas, and took a right onto RT-14 West, and headed toward the park.

On the way, I realized I hadn’t checked my oil level in a few days. I stopped to check it and it was reading “low.” I didn’t have an option, so I kept going to the Old Faithful Inn, and since we were there for three nights, I had some time to figure it out. Crap!

Scott arrived about 20 minutes after me. We got checked in, and settled, and decided to head back out to West Yellowstone, which was the most likely place to find the specific kind of oil I needed for the bike. After trying a couple of places, no one had exactly what I needed. I called the BMW dealer, and they told me what, of the oils that were available, would work for me. Crisis averted, we headed back to the Inn, had dinner, and went over to the deck at the Inn to wait for Old Faithful to erupt.

I got up early on Saturday morning and went over to Old Faithful to watch the sunrise, and hopfully catch an eruption during the wee morning hours. I was lucky when, just as the sun started peeking over the mountain, the geyser did it’s thing. It was breathtaking.

We headed up the Grand Loop Road toward Canyon Village, and stopped at the Mud Volcano area. We started the walk around the boardwalk, expecting it to take about 30 minutes. Fortunately, it took 90 minutes, because we ran into several bison that were just hanging out on the boardwalk. At one point we had a few in front and a few behind, so we just hung out there for a while and watched—it’s their place.

Moving on, we went up to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and took some photos of the Yellowstone River Falls. Then, up to Tower Junction and into Lamar Valley. The valley is where you want to go if you want to see bison. Happily, we got stuck in a 500 head “bison jam.” They decided that walking down the road was what they wanted to do, and we were not about to tell them otherwise. There were so many just walking towards us, and hundreds of “red dogs,” which we learned is what the babies are called. The little ones are absolutely adorable.

It took about an hour to let them all pass, and we continued out of the park and up to the Beartooth Highway. I had ridden it on the bike two days before, and it was so different from the passenger seat of the Jeep, and still beautiful. We headed back down through the valley—no bison jam this time—and over to the Mammoth Hot Springs area. Down the west side of the Grand Loop road back to Old Faithful, and dinner at the Old Faithful Inn dining room.

On Sunday, we spent most of the day exploring the geysers—Old Faithful, Castle, and Grand are the famous ones. But, Anemone, Beehive and others are cool as well. They are all within a short walk from the Old Faithful Inn, on Geyser Hill. We also went over to the Grand Prismatic spring, Biscuit Basin and Black Sand Basin. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to visit the park—it’s a magical, diverse and wild place. Go. If you can, you owe it to yourself to see it.