Oregan Trail

Road from the other day, you can see it twisting down and in the far distance there is a faint line running a few degrees off horizontal, that is also the road.(may need to save, and blow the photo up if you can in order to see the road in all its glory.)

Is this any way to transport your dog, look in the top box! This bike was in full sun at 10am on Sunday morning in Cody and the temperature was already in the 80's.

On of the carvings on the wall at Guernsey.Reads "The Oregan Wagon Train

Tex 1889
Serpa

Wagonmaster"

First,I know I have been a bad lad and not given you your State facts for Montana, well here goes,

Montana is the Treasure state, its bird is the Western Meadowlark (think we have had him before), tree is the Ponderosa Pine and the flower is the Bitterroot.As I am now in South Dakota you can have theirs as well,

South Dakota is the Mt Rushmore State (going there tomorrow), bird is the Ring Necked Pheasant, tree is the Black Hills Spruce and the flower is the Pasquflower, whatever that is!

Nebraska is next folks, bet you can't wait can you.

Anyway up, the past few days the bike has being playing up a little, just the occasional hiccup when sitting at a constant speed, a little miss fire, nothing wrong with acceleration I can tell you, still pulls like a train. I don't know what is wrong with her but my thoughts were along the lines of blocked air filter (all those flies that hit my visor must also be getting sucked into the filter, or, the altitude I have been riding at. I have after all been riding at 8000 ft and the plains, according to my GPS are at 5000 ft plus. With this in mind I found a Honda dealer in Caspar this morning, however they did not have a filter in stock,suprise suprise, however between us we took the air filter out and lo, it was filthy. Took the airline too it and reverse blew it and put it all back(had too take it all apart again before I could ride away as we had trapped the throttle cable - idiot). Anyhow, the upshot is she seems to be running clean again and better still there was no charge - so I tipped the lad $20, even though I did half the work - good 'aint I?

Rode down to Guernsey today - what no beach!, this is part of the Oregan trail where the covered wagons were taken across west in the 1800's, it is just by the real Fort Laramie. At Guernsey there is a cutting in the soft rock where the wagons have worn the rock over there many years of travel, this cutting is shoulder deep in parts, very impressive.

Nearby is also a wall of the same soft rock where the trailers used to carve their names, there are thousands of names carved and dated, spoilt a bit by all the idiots that have carved there names since, people will spoil anything.

Had an easy ride today, covered 275 miles but it felt a lot shorter, it was one of those days where everything flowed. I am now at Hot Springs and tomorrow I will do the short ride to Mount Rushmore, there is supposed to be a fantastic road up there that twists and turns everywhere, I have seen a postcard of it and it looks great. I will spend tomorrow night at Rushmore as there is a light show each evening and I do not want to miss it.

For all of you with an interest in my bum and the powder - I'm not sure if it works or not, bum still sore (it is actually my inner thigh where it meets the point where the seat edge is - thats disappointed a few of you hasn't it),well the upshot is I am back on the Vaseline - there!!!

Thats all for the moment folks.