Ken Cook Ramblings

You know, sometimes it really pays to listen to others. I ask a bunch of folks what to see in Utah and most all said Bryce Canyon was #1...  It was so cool and I had a great day seeing it.  First was a quick hour and half drive through the beautiful countryside... I forgot to get gas before I left and had a little bit of a time finding this haven below which saved my butt... It was an old manual gas pump that had to be turned on and then you go inside and tell them how much you pumped... I am not complaining... It could have been a long walk... Lesson learned! Next I encountered several signs along the way that said " OPEN RANGE FOR THE NEXT 20 MILES!! ", well your mind might jump to the movie by that name that starred Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall, but you would be wrong... It means that you have to be really careful and look out for what is in the picture below. (the brown blobs are cows). I stopped and talked to them about hanging around the road but it did no...

The last two days were all about getting from Spearfish SD to Fish Lake Utah... I divided it into to two drives, first getting to Rawlins Wyoming and then the next day heading to Fish Lake... Both were long days of driving but presented different challenges. The one thing they had in common was beautiful scenery and Pronghorn deer... (those things scare the crap out of me) On Friday I watched my weather app and waited till I thought it had passed, but then I spent the next couple of hours driving in the rain. When I told a couple of old biker dudes what I was doing on this adventure they both told me that I would run into weather and I needed to be prepared...  I thought I could tech my out of it but I was wrong and got my baptism (pun) into the world of driving wet.  The bike handled great and only a couple of places got wet, my hands and hip pockets... I guess the old dudes were right. But the day finished dry and Rawlings turned out to be a nice town of about 10K... The ...

I took this pic!!! I think I did a good job on content... Devil's Tower was great and perhaps my favorite place so far... I have seen pictures of it before, but it is way bigger than I thought... I starting seeing it while still on Highway 24 about 12 miles away... It is just huge... After getting there and finding a partial space to park (one of the perks of riding a motorcycle) my plan was to walk the paved trail that goes around the base (about a mile and a half. That worked out well after I had a talk with a very nice Park Ranger about what the top of the dome looked like. (remember the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind , and the Aliens were entering the Tower through a hole in the top?)  Turned out they had a picture of it in the Visitor's Center: The trail was so relaxing and everyone on it was very nice... There were pieces of cloth and other artifacts tied to trees all along the path... Those were from native americans and represented their prayers. The p...

Tuesday was truly a day of real cruising across Wyoming. Right in the middle was a really nice ride through the mountains of Bighorn National Forest . But before I got there I was on the westside coming out of Wapati/Cody. The drive was almost all wide open countryside with plenty of sweet views... The only thing that made me nervous was these little herds of wild deer in fields on either side of the highway. There were from 5-30 deer in a herd and one wouldn't think from looking at them, that they would run across the highway. But there was ample evidence on the side of the road that it was very common. These deer are different than the ones we have in Tennessee... They are smaller and have stubby horns with strips on their necks. I believe they are called Pronghorns . I didn't take this picture but this is what I saw every 10-20 miles. It kept me on my toes.  One thing that was also different is that they graze in amongst the cows. Nobody seemed to care.  After th...

The Cabin I rented in Wapati turned out to be just right... It was a Homestead Cabin built in 1910. A homestead cabin was a small cabin built first, as a place to live while the "big house" was finished. I am short so the low ceilings were no problem, and every piece of the cabin inside and out was original wood.. The furniture was mostly antiques and they had a ton of cool decor like a wooden indian standing by the fireplace... (which was made from rocks scattered around the land and homemade mortar). The pics  are of the front porch and the views from it.. The bathroom had a free standing iron soaking tub which could cure whatever ails ya...  It had this neat faucet contraption with a hand shower.... Notice how unambiguous the operations of it are... All you need to know is four english words and you can fully operate it. No need for user manuals in 17 languages or help from a subject matter expert... I realized while staring at it, that ambiguity is a big source of ...

I started the Sunday morning in Idaho Falls... With the time zone difference from Tennessee I seem to wake up early and caught a good pic of the sun rise from my hotel window... The hotel was right next to the Snake River which makes me want to go fishing... I wanted to get to Yellowstone. Prior to this day I had only 7 states left that I hadn't been to. After my ride that will be down to 4... I started in Idaho, then went to Montana, where the West Yellowstone Visitor Center is, and then into Wyoming for Yellowstone. On the ride to the West Entrance Visitor Center I passed this place called Bear World , which had just added a billboard saying they have 45 black and grizzly bears... The funny part was right next to that billboard was another temporary billboard sign saying "We Are Hiring!!!"  I thought "I don't think so... The guy you are replacing probably got ATE!!!"   It made me laugh... I got to the Visitor Center and wanted to buy an entrance...