{"id":30107,"date":"2025-06-29T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T07:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=30107"},"modified":"2025-07-02T20:41:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T03:41:12","slug":"the-wayback-machine-yellowstone-national-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/06\/29\/the-wayback-machine-yellowstone-national-park\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wayback Machine: Yellowstone National Park"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

I’ve been to a lot of great places.\u00a0 None were as grand as Yellowstone National Park.\u00a0 I was reminded of that when watching the Kevin Costner special, Yellowstone One-Fifty.<\/p>\n

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I’ve been to Yellowstone twice.\u00a0 The first time was with a bunch of guys from China, two guys from Colombia, Baja John, and Joe Gresh.\u00a0 The second time was with Susie.\u00a0 Both trips were great.\u00a0 Seeing the Costner special reminded me of a blog I wrote about those trips a few years ago, and I thought you might enjoy reading it again.<\/p>\n

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Man, it was cold.\u00a0 It was the coldest we would be on our 18-day, 5000-mile ride around the western United States.\u00a0 Yellowstone National Park was our destination and we wanted to arrive early.\u00a0 Baja John was doing the navigating and the trip planning, and we were leaving early that morning out of Cody, Wyoming, at 5:00 a.m. to beat the tourist traffic in Yellowstone.\u00a0 I had an electric vest; our Chinese and Colombian guests did not.\u00a0 I knew they had to be hurting.\u00a0 I had my vest dialed all the way up and I was.\u00a0 Did I mention it was cold?<\/p>\n

So, about that big photo above:\u00a0 That’s Yellowstone Falls on the Yellowstone\u00a0River.\u00a0 There are something like 10 waterfalls in Yellowstone National Park.\u00a0 I’ve only seen the one above.\u00a0 That means I have at least nine reasons to return.<\/p>\n

Back to the story.\u00a0 I did mention it was cold riding into Yellowstone that morning, didn’t I?<\/p>\n

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Following Baja John into Yellowstone. That trip was 6 years ago, and I still get cold looking at this photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another shot entering Yellowstone National Park from the east.\u00a0 That\u2019s Baja John in front of me\u2026we were dressed for the cold, but I think our guests found it to be a little colder than the weather they are used to in southern China.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The trip was a wild one…18 days on the road with a dozen guys from China, two from Colombia, and all on free motorcycles provided by Zongshen via CSC Motorcycles<\/a>.\u00a0 CSC was the importer, I was the go-between spanning the CSC\/Zongshen interface (and two continents), and while we were arranging the initial shipment Zongshen asked if I had any ideas to promote the bikes in the US.\u00a0 Wow, did I ever!<\/p>\n

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In Zongshen’s main offices, with key Zongshen execs viewing photos from my rides in the US and Baja. Sue grabbed this photo and it’s one of my favorites. Without realizing it, I was selling those guys on giving us 15 motorcycles to ride around the US.\u00a0 This looks like a staged photo.\u00a0 It’s not.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That ride became the Western America Adventure Tour, and it was a hoot.\u00a0 \u00a0I mean, think about it:\u00a0 Every angry and ignorant asshole on the Internet was condemning Chinese bikes and here we were, with 15 of the things that had just arrived in America, setting off on a 5,000 mile ride from So Cal to Sturgis, west across the US to the Pacific Ocean, and then riding the Pacific coast back to So Cal.\u00a0 On that epic ride we didn’t have a single breakdown and that was giving the Internet trolls meltdowns.\u00a0 It was a grand adventure.<\/p>\n

But I digress.\u00a0 Back to Yellowstone.\u00a0 On our ride, we hit every National Park along the way, and Yellowstone was one of the best.\u00a0 \u00a0Prior to that ride, I’d never been to Yellowstone and I had always wanted to see it.\u00a0 And for good reason…it is (in my opinion) the quintessential National Park.\u00a0 Yellowstone is surreal, with sulfur-laden steams and ponds spewing forth, majestic views, waterfalls, bison, bears, deer, elk, wolves, geysers, and more.\u00a0\u00a0 It was a first for me.\u00a0 I was a Yellowstone green bean.<\/p>\n

When we entered Yellowstone, we arrived so early the gates were unmanned and we entered for free.\u00a0 But it had been a long, cold ride in from Cody and we were nearly out of gas.\u00a0 My fuel light was blinking as we entered the park and I didn\u2019t know for sure if there would be gas in Yellowstone.\u00a0 John felt confident there would be, and he was right.\u00a0 \u00a0I saw the Sinclair sign up ahead, but before we got there, we had a close encounter of the bison kind.\u00a0\u00a0We were cruising along at about 30 mph, and all of a sudden I noticed this locomotive next to me.\u00a0 I was too slow to realize what it was until I was alongside, but our chase vehicle driver John (we had two Johns and one Juan on this ride) grabbed this photo\u2026I had passed within 10 feet of this monster!<\/p>\n

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Just as I went past my big buff buddy above, he exhaled.\u00a0\u00a0 In the frigid Yellowstone air, fog came out of his nostrils.\u00a0\u00a0 It was like riding alongside a steam locomotive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here\u2019s another cool shot in Yellowstone:\u00a0 The Continental Divide.\u00a0 We had crossed it several times on the ride to Yellowstone already, but I think this is the first time I stopped for a photo.<\/p>\n

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Sometimes the photos almost take themselves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the many attractions in Yellowstone is Old Faithful.\u00a0\u00a0 Here\u2019s a shot of the geyser in its full glory.<\/p>\n

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It was one of those motorcycle rides that was so much fun it made me feel a little guilty.\u00a0 (That’s a Jewish thing; maybe some of our Catholic readers will understand it, too.)\u00a0 I felt bad because Sue wasn’t enjoying the trip with me.\u00a0 So I fixed that.\u00a0 A few years later Sue and I hopped in the Subie, pointed the car north, and a few days later I rolled into Yellowstone National Park again (this time with my wife).\u00a0 Naturally, I grabbed a few more photos.<\/p>\n

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Peering into the valley carved by the Yellowstone River.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Ah, the bison. This was really cool stuff.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Click. Click. Click.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A photo of Sue in the Subie photographing a bison.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Wow.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m not a geologist, but geology seems to me to be a pretty interesting subject and there sure are a bunch of geological things in Yellowstone.\u00a0 Like the bubbling and burbling pits and pools you most definitely do not want to fall into.<\/p>\n