Continental Divide

The group splintered on June 10 – I went to Jenny Lake, south of Yellowstone, and camped; Frank Floyd went to Driggs, Idaho and camped on property he recently purchased; and the rest of the group (Joe, Steve, Peter and Gerry) camped in Lima, west of Yellowstone.

The night of June 10th I camped at Jenny Lake.  In ’66 after business school, Marge and I took a belated honeymoon for two months before I started work at Sohio.  As I mentioned in the last blog, a twister tore down a fir tree and dropped it down on our tent with Marge in…

We stayed in a motel in Pinedale WY listening to the rain.  The motel was a Best Western – neat, clean and filled with an unusual combination of foreign tourists, truckers and construction workers.  The construction workers seemed to be working on the huge oil and gas projects in the area.  The tourists, like us,…

We had breakfast together and planned the day.  Joe would ride on hard surface because of his injured knee. Steve, who recently bought a new BMW 800GS would travel with him because the front fork on this new bike was leaking oil.  Roger, who is delight to ride with and with whom I will be…

We left Steamboat Springs after enjoying Roger Hansen’s exceptional hospitality – warm showers, a fabulous massage, an opportunity to meet some of Roger’s old high school friends.  We got a late start not moving out until 9:30 a.m., but we were fully rested.

We woke up the morning of June 7th at the Como Depot B&B that was being managed by a young Welshman named Dennis and his wife.  I am always fascinated by people who would want to operate a B&B such as this – an 1800’s depot that was run by the company that operated the…

Now that we are safely into Colorado, we can retrospectively look at our 800 mile trek through New Mexico.   New Mexico has 1/5 of the population of Ohio (2 million vs. 10 million) but is three times the area.  The federal government owns a tremendous amount of the state for military installations, federal labs, national…

We broke camp and drove into Abiquiu to have breakfast and meet up with Susan who had been tied up with a radio broadcast and missed the feast.

We left the hotel in Grants and proceeded up through a variety of ecosystems.  We were mostly in high altitudes where there were desert plants and lush trees.  At two points during the day we could not locate the Continental Divide trail. We had been using small Garmin units to which we had downloaded “breadcrumbs” –…

After breakfast in Pie Town, Frank Floyd and I went out searching for a wireless signal and found one about ½ mile away at the top of a hill.  We completed some correspondence while the rest of the group went ahead to Grants – the plan being to eat in a restaurant, have a few…