Motocaching the Cowboy State - Part 5

Day 6

The Alamo was the only motel so far that didn’t serve some kind of breakfast so we headed to McDonald’s shortly after 6:00.  I had a fruit smoothie that was pretty good.  It was much warmer this morning and we soon shed our jacket liners.  As we approached Yellowstone we got into some beautiful country as you would imagine.  We got two caches before entering Yellowstone which took care of Park County.  One, “Grandma’s Cache”, had some fantastic rock formations across the creek from it.  I had given up on this one when Yancey found it under a bush right where I had already looked.  I knew there was a good reason to bring him along.  Can you see Grandma in the picture to the right?

My Golden Age pass worked to get me into Yellowstone without charge.  There are some advantages to being old.  We had a blast the first part of the Yellowstone travel – beautiful scenery, twisty road and not too much traffic.  Unfortunately the traffic situation changed after a while and we were mostly in a line.  It had gotten much colder in the park and I wished I had kept my jacket liner on.  However, as usual it is just my hands that suffer too much from the cold and we stopped a time or two and I warmed them on the engine.

As we approached Jackson Hole we stopped for our first Teton County cache.  Our second cache was just at the entrance into town.   As we were approaching it we heard this big crash on the street and looked to see a wheel rolling down the road followed by a Subaru station wagon coming to a stop with the front driver’s side wheel gone.  It’s a wonder it didn’t hit anyone because there was lots of traffic.  I retrieved the wheel from our side of the street and rolled it over to the two girls in the Subaru.  They said they had felt something kind of strange going on and were heading to a garage but obviously didn’t make it.

We went to a sub sandwich in Jackson known to Yancey that was really busy.  As this was our parting I didn’t mind the considerable wait we had.  After lunch we gassed up the bikes and said our goodbyes.  Yancey headed south toward Rock Springs and I headed east back into Idaho.

I went over the Teton pass and after entering Idaho I stopped for a cache in Idaho’s Teton County.  It was a cache that required a bit of a hike and had a beautiful view of the Teton Valley.  I noticed in signing the log that a couple who are friends from Lewiston had signed the log about a month before.  That was the same case as the next one I logged a little ways down the road.

 

I proceeded through Rexburg west on Highway 33 toward Interstate 15.  Before reaching the Interstate I found a really secure cache.  It was an ammo box chained to a hold in a rock.  It wasn’t hidden at all as I guess it didn’t need to be.  I had a great headwind on the Interstate toward Dubois just as I had had three years ago when I was Motocaching Idaho.

My next cache was at a Rest Stop just outside of Dubois and that’s where my GPSr troubles began.  This is too long a story to tell but my GPSr was a refurbished replacement for one that Garmin had replaced due to the paint wearing off the buttons of the original.  It’s not the first trouble I’ve had as you know if you read my Nevada journal.  At any rate, after I had logged the cache at the Rest Stop and tried to navigate to either the next cache or my motel in Dillon the unit would just shut itself off.  It didn’t matter whether I was using its batteries or the bike’s battery.  At that point Dillon was about 90 miles away.  The unit would work in other respects but not to navigate.  When I approached Dillon I tried to navigate again and it worked fine as it did the rest of my journey.

I arrived in Dillon, MT, at the Motel 6 about 6:15.  Dillon is a real railroad town with tracks running right down the middle of the town.  After getting cleaned up and settled I went down town and attempted two caches, one at an antique truck on the museum grounds and another at a downtown bookstore.  I was unsuccessful on both.  Maybe I just need some nourishment.  After dinner at the Subway I took a dusk ride out to the edge of town and found a neat cache along side a creek so at least I finished the day on a high note.

I finished this long day with 9 caches in three states having traveled 410 miles.

Pictures: 1&2 at "Grandma's Cache".  Can you see "Grandma" in the picture on the right?, 3 Lewis Lake in Yellowstone, 4 Don't recall the name of this lake in Yellowstone, 5 retrieving the wheel in Jackson, 6 the very secure cache in Jefferson County, ID.

To be continued.  M/W