Tonight I’m in West Yellowstone. Today started out quite cold, even in Pocatello where I started from. By the time I got to West Yellowstone, I was reconsidering whether or not this was a good idea…

Something funny happened about 15 miles from West Yellowstone. A herd of cows wound up on the wrong (road) side of a ranch fence, and cowboys on horseback were rounding them up to get them back on the right side of the fence. The herd was off the road by the time I drove by, but it was still pretty amusing. Apparently, when one cow decides to do something, the others will follow. So there’s no such thing as a “small” escape.

My clothes are relatively warm (though I didn’t have my heavy coat on), but the big problem is my ears. Despite having a closed-face helmet, there’s enough airflow in there that my ears were getting very cold. There was originally foam around the visor, but that has flaked away over time, and now there is apparently a big enough gap for lots of cold air to get in. There’s a motorcycle shop in town, and I’ll see if there’s anything they can do tomorrow (Monday).

Speaking of Monday, there’s a 20% chance of rain and the high is only going to be 63 degrees. Tuesday will be even colder at 61. Then the temperatures are supposed to rise a bit, with 68 on Wednesday and 70 on Thursday (when I’m leaving).

I’ll decide whether I’ll risk the cold in Bighorn later on…

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 18th, 2011 at 7:18 pm and is filed under The Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.