The real stuff

I have been 3 weeks on the road now, 4,300 miles away from New Jersey. "Time flies when you're having fun" is actually very accurate in this case. It's also hard to keep up with the blog because national parks obviously don't have internet access capabilities. So I will summarize two weeks of exciting visits in this posting.

Once I left Mackinac Island, I covered about 1,700 miles passing through the northern states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana to arrive in Glacier National Park . The last three states were actually not that exciting. Lots of straight roads (even though I tried to avoid the Interstates) through fields of corn, wheat and grass or just nothing but dust and stones. The picture below summarizes most of that 5 day trip.

But then finally, I reached the mountain range of Glacier National Park on Saturday August 4. Unfortunately most of the mountains were barely visible because heavy winds were blowing the smoke of wildfires up north. That evening I met two fellow Belgians, Weking and Liesbeth, on the campground, travelling with a 1993 BMW from Alaska to Argentina! This is their 6 month honeymoon travel. That's the way to do it! As true Belgians, we ended the day with lots of beer until our neighbors asked us to lower our voices so they could get some sleep ;-) For the Dutch speaking readers: if you want to follow their adventures, here's their blog: http://viaje-america.blogspot.com/


Luckily the next morning the winds had disappeared, the sun was rising and the sky was clear again. Excellent conditions to ride through the park, although the ride went very slowly. Every 5 to 10 minutes I had to stop so I could admire the breathtaking views on the glacier and the mountains.










The next destination was Yellowstone, the world's first national park established in 1872, about 5oo miles south of Glacier NP. I had read that more than half of the 3 million annual visitors come in July and August and that became painfully obvious when I entered the park. This was like a theme park... I decided to visit the less crowded sites during the day and then in the evening some hotspots (in the true sense of the word) like Mammoth Springs.













That seemed to be the right approach and as an extra, the sunset light gave some spectacular reflections on the dozens of colorful steaming terraces.

The second day I went to see the Old Faithful geyser. The visitor center publishes the predicted eruption times and those estimates seemed to be pretty accurate. Amazing how nature can be predicted.

In the afternoon I had enough of all the crowds. On my way out of the park, I was stopped by a grizzly bear and her two cubs, travelling to the other side of the forest.









Just south of Yellowstone, the next national park presented itself: Grand Teton. The amount of traffic significantly decreased and just a couple of miles into the park, the peaks of the Teton Range rised through steep forest. A string of jewel-like lakes were set tightly against the steep foot of the mountains. Wow, this looked very promising.

This park was so phenomenal and relaxing that I decided to stay an extra day.

On Friday I left the park and entered the state of Idaho. This was a tough part. Heavy winds were blowing from the northwest and I almost had to hang on the side of my motorcycle to balance it against the wind. The wind got even stronger when I crawled up one of the lava hills in the National Monument, Craters of the Moon. You could push yourself forward, leaning against the wind.









And then yesterday, I arrived at Boise, the capital of Idaho, where I was welcomed by my former colleague, Kristen, her husband Justin, their adorable baby Grace, and her sister Adrienne who was visiting. Their offer to stay over was greatly appreciated after 5 days of camping in the national parks.