Wyoming Trip

Well, our Wyoming trip was interesting to say the least. We did not make it to Yellowstone or even the Grand Tetons. The reason was the elevation. Our bike has a carburetor instead of being electronic fuel injected (EFI) and as such, needs to be re-jetted for higher elevations. So, we rolled into Cheyenne and the bike was getting too much fuel and not enough air. Here is a day by day play...

Day 1 (Sunday) 
We left St. Louis around noon, (after church). We geared up with CE armored pants and leather jackets. We had full-face helmet and leather gloves and boots. We rode out I70 to Kansas City and encountered the ever-present traffic problems. (I hate KC!!!). We then turned north through St. Joseph and into Iowa and Nebraska. We finally stopped for the night in York, NE. We met some fellow-travelers at Super 8 who gave us a coupon for a $50 room. Asked if we were headed to Sturgis. We said that we were headed for Yellowstone. All in all, a good day. Rode 494.6 miles today. Dinner was McDonalds.

Day 2 (Monday)
We rode across the Great Plains today. How do I know this? By the signs that I saw that told me so. Saw the
Great Platte River Road Archway Monument. Would have liked to stop...but we had a destination. We battled fierce cross-wind all day. I thought I was going to wear the left side of my tires out leaning into the wind all day. We rode about 10-11 hours. All in the wind. All westward. Finally, we crossed into Wyoming. We filled with gas and rode on to Cheyenne. There, once again was a Super 8 night. We paid $139 plus tax for that room. It was time of the great Frontier Days in Cheyenne, so they were taking the tourists for all they could. Talk about highway robbery. Oh well, I guess it is capitalism at its best (or worst). We un-bungied all of our stuff and checked into the room.

Somewhere in Nebraska

Same Place

Same Place

The bike was not running too good. So, after Wilma ordered pizza and we stuffed ourselves, I went to the lobby to check our elevation. Cheyenne is at 6067 feet. WOW!  Our bike did not like that. It belched black smoke, ran slow, and smelled like gas. Hmmm....it was flooding. So, too much gas and not enough air. What do to? Yellowstone is higher. So, it was time to rethink our plan. Definitely could not go any higher. Rats!!! No national parks. But we kept hearing about bear attacks, so maybe this was not so bad. Today was a short day mileage wise: only 415.10 miles. We stopped for fuel 5 times. Mostly for our bottoms to rest. However, we noticed after we gained some elevation that the mileage on the bike dropped from around 38mpg to around 30-31mpg. Not good. Luckily, we had an anti-gremlin device given to us by our buddy Rick Statler.

Even caught a gremlin!!