Bow Tie Tour

What a Day!
We woke up early to have breakfast with “the men” of the True Family… Two brothers, fathers of 6 and 8 respectively, and accomplished business owners. We listened as they shared their new vision for business and family, it was great…
Walking to Breakfast:

“Eggintons” – Great Breakfast!

After breakfast we hurried back to the homestead to meet with each of their families so that Ethan and I could share our homeschooling stories and explain where we struggled, where we strived and the problems/ successes of our lives thus far.

We fielded questions from the children and adults for around 2 hours before we retreated to one of the homes for lunch.

“Lunch Break”

It was time to leave, so after rinsing the dust off of the bikes we said our goodbyes, collected some signatures and took off to the North and West.

And signed:

From Casper we hopped on the Interstate, nearly ran out of gas and ran at high speed until we got off on a scenic highway through the Bighorn Mountains towards Yellowstone.
The road was smooth and the scenery was incredible… I touched both of my knees down going up and down the mountain passes and we were amazed by the sudden influx of Harley’s riding over from the massive Sturgis Rally.
A scenic overlook:

After passing literally hundreds of Harleys going both East and West, we entered Shoshone Canyon… It looked like something out of a John Wayne movie. I half expected hundreds of Indians to start hurling rocks and firing arrows at us from above. That fear aside, the ride was gorgeous… The river running beside us was incredible and the rock structure is like nothing else.

I stopped beside a sign and while waiting for Ethan to catch up, I snapped this picture.

And when he pulled up:

From Shoshone Canyon, we rode into Cody… Buffalo Bill’s favorite place (and thus, named after him!). After fueling up we rolled into the downtown area and discover row upon row of parked Harleys… Probably 1,000 of them just on the main street.

The next Canyon was incredible, we passed through a couple of long tunnels and saw beautiful waterfalls and rapids from alongside steep walls that towered hundreds of feet above us. The last tunnel we passed through took us past the dam and visitors center and on to a sunset lit reservoir that was absolutely breathtaking.

Here are a couple of shots from there, MANY more images to come.

Ethan’s beautiful Silver Yamaha FZ1…

My “Manly Blue” Yamaha FZ1:

Ethan fully enjoying God’s beauty

More Beauty… This time in Black and White:

Ethan got this one of me

And the lake itself:

From the lake, we rode another 40 miles or so to the lodge that is just before the entrance of Yellowstone…

We arrived there just after 8:00PM and were informed that there was no way to get into the park until the next day, AND that they had absolutely no vacancies… See, the road that we had to ride to get into (and through) the park is under major construction. At night, they are blasting the mountainside beside the road to make improvements, and as you can probably imagine; riding beside live dynamite without them knowing you’re coming probably isn’t the brightest idea.

We weren’t too dissapointed though, the 30 miles that we needed to ride back to the lodge we’d decided to stay the night at, were INCREDIBLY beautiful and the road was a blast… We made it back in no time and after haggling with the owner of the lodge, we settled ourselves into a neat little cabin beside a rushing river.

Our plan for the night was to sit back, maybe work a bit and definitely get some writing done for this blog… Those plans were ruined when Ethan decided that it’d be fun to try his hand at Karaoke in the lodge.

It was hilarious!
We found time to talk to a lot of the employees and guests there… Some TRULY unique characters and some that you’re never quite sure if you WANTED to meet We made plans to ride out at 7:30AM with a couple on a Harley and headed off to catch a few hours of sleep.

At around 9:45AM we woke up, and after doing some rolling over we headed in to breakfast… I guess we aren’t as young as we used to be!