Day 8: Yellowstone Inn to Pocatello, ID
I wanted today to be an easy one, maybe an hour or two, because I knew I was still reeling from the effects of being on the bike for 10 hours, the poor visibility, the mild hypothermia… but by the time I started looking for hotels, the nearest one was all the way in Pocatello, about three hours by google’s reckoning (and about 5 the way I travel).
First thing I did was get fancy breakfast though. The buffet in the Old Faithful Inn was actually pretty decent, and came with a really good OJ. The inn is a giant log cabin (wikipedia says ‘possibly the biggest in the world’ and who am I to argue) and has a real 19th century charm (despite being built in 1904). It’s a pretty swanky place; most of the other guests were old and rich, guessing by the overheard conversations. Anyway.
Came back to the room, edited the photos for yesterday (Day 7) and sent out that email. By the time I’d showered and packed everything up, it was time to check out, so I got a bell hop to carry my cases down front (they don’t just loan out luggage dollies to guests, so it was that or make a bunch of trips) and loaded the bike. I’ve gotten rid of enough stuff and also had enough practice that it only takes me about 5 minutes now. The dry bag doesn’t need to be down tight even, just secured through the webbing and it’ll be fine.
Then, I immediately parked the bike and went to see Old Faithful erupt. I absorbed almost no information about it, but dang, that’s a big geyser. I do wish it hadn’t been cloudy, the steam wasn’t super visible— gray steam against gray clouds, oh well. Still, it was impressive to see in person, and I’m glad I was there. I probably wouldn’t have hung around if I’d just been driving through the park.
By then it was lunch time, so I went into one of the little places there, only it was the last day of the season for this spot, so my burger came with chips instead of fries and their soda machine was out of order. It was food, at least. While I was waiting, I was also trying to find a hotel for this evening; I didn’t want to leave it to chance. Something about the weekend in the region, but all the places I was looking at were booked up. No rooms in West Yellowstone just outside the park, or in Idaho Falls further south. Pocatello was the closest spot, so Pocatello was my destination. It’s a little farther south than I wanted to go, but a room’s a room.
The drive out was fine; I started out with a couple layers still in reserve, but quickly put them on. Once I got out of the park, it started to warm up, and it was really great riding down 20 all the way to the interstate. I hopped on and then hopped off, just way too much traffic and there was a two lane alternative that was parallel on the other side of the Snake River. Took that most of the way from Idaho falls, added about 10 minutes to the trip. Got here, unloaded my stuff, just completely wrung out and didn’t even have energy for dinner, just collapsed into bed.
To tell the truth, there’s not much in Idaho for me. Gorgeous mountains, but also a lot of potato farms. I’m going to try for Boise tomorrow, which will be a pretty long day, but if I do that I’m in good shape to get out to the coast and home reasonably on schedule, maybe as early as wednesday or thursday? A couple days at home to decompress would be nice.