Bears and pic-a-nic baskets.

I was looking at a map at this place called Yellowstone National Park and I see this campground called "Mammoth Hot Springs". I decided to break my cardinal rule of not paying for lodging to camp out here. Who doesn't love a good soak in hot springs? Turns out you're not allowed to enter the hot springs here. They're just for looking at. It was a little disappointing, but even still, not even Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson himself could buy a better view.





Let's head up the nearby hill, shall we?



That isn't snow in the background, it's mineral deposits caused by the hot springs.

Now I might not have needed to pay for lodging that night, but I'm glad I did. My neighbor was one Chris Mainard. A biker from Seattle that has ridden his Harley Street Glide to Alaska and back; something I couldn't have done on the Valkyrie. We shared stories, he shared his fine scotch, I shared my cliff bars. A good time was had. And I got this tip: The Beartooth Highway out of Yellowstone might have been recently voted the best motorcycle road in the country, but only because so few people know about the Chief Joseph Highway, which splits off the Beartooth just before it starts to climb into the mountains.

Oh man...Ride the Beartooth, or give it up for the Chief Joseph Highway...Decisions, decisions. Gotta love when it's a choice between awesome and awesome. When the time came, I decided I would ride the Beartooth Highway and I'd save the Chief Joseph Highway for a return trip.

I will say this much about the Beartooth: If there is one day when I wished I had a helmet camera, this was it. The Beartooth Highway (US-212) climbs up to 11,000 feet and is gorgeous the whole way through.







It just keeps getting better as you go. It is pretty cold at 11,000 feet, but not too chilly, and not nearly as windy as Mt. Washington in New Hampshire was. It's kind of like biting into a York Peppermint Patty:



After the highest point and you start descending the mountain, the views remain amazing, but they take on a different flavor:



Since I was going to Dayton, Wyoming, I then got to head up US-14 through the Bighorn National Forest. This road was also a great, beautiful ride and climbed to about 9,000 feet. My poor carburetor spent a lot of the day gasping for breath.



Man, what a day.