Topic: A Cowboy's Folly **UPDATED 3/18 With PICS!**

[Cowboy]

OK Gang, grab the popcorn and enjoy the show! 

I have a Sunday "Tour" planned on my 78 CB550K.  If you follow the new member intros here, you may recall that I drive a LOT of well-seasoned vehicles. I love turning wrenches, especially on old, simple vehicles: bikes, cars, trucks, and tractors alike. But, as old cars are known to do, mine sometimes break down. That's ok, as it's all part of the adventure of using old machines. Good maintenance counts for a lot, but there are still a lot of very old parts on these things.

My wife has a 1987 Ford Bronco II. She's had it for a long time, and although we could afford a newer vehicle, she has a sentimental attachment to this old Bronco. I turned wrenches a few times to keep it on the road for her while she was in school, and it has lots of newish parts she replaced over the years, including the diff, tranny and heads. But the bottom end finally went south, and it has been sitting for a while now, looking forlorn. We both agree that it is worth fixing, since I can do the work, and she actually likes the old thing. So I've been looking for a wrecked truck with a donor engine.  Well, I found a donor, but it is not wrecked! (well, not BADLY wrecked, anyway)

Craigslist pointed me to a Ford Ranger pickup for sale cheap in Sheridan, Wyoming. (Yes, the hicks in Wyoming use Craigslist too!)  The truck is running, starts easily, but hasn't been driven for a year. Apparently it has a bad power steering leak, that led the current owner to stop driving it.  After a few emails, I'm encouraged that I can drive the truck the four hundred miles to get it home. But how to get to Sheridan to fetch it?  That's where my Great Sunday Adventure starts! 

I'm planning to climb aboard my CB550, ride the 400 miles from Laramie to Sheridan, load the bike in the back of the truck, and drive the truck home. The bike has a full Vetter fairing, with cubbies that will hold lots of tools (don't know whether I'll need the tools for the bike or for the truck.) My theory is that I will not need the tools until the one time I don't take them along.

Thankfully, Wyoming is a close-knit state, often jokingly referred to as one little town with really LOOOOONG streets. I have friends or relatives in nearly every town along the way, so I can get a rescue if I need it. Cell phone coverage is good along the entire route. Also, if the truck breaks down on the way, I can unload the bike and still get home.  As a double bonus, I get to spend the day on a bike, and I plan to stick to the back roads as much as possible. I'll be reporting back here with photos of the Wyoming backroad scenery, and the adventures of a silly cowboy and his mechanical ponies.

The show starts Sunday, and I will report here, with photos, on Monday.

If YOU were going to ride a 28 year old bike 400 miles across Wyoming, to fetch a 20 year old truck, what tools and gear would YOU take along?

[keiths]

Can't wait for the pics. Have fun!

[clarkjh]

Tow-Bar? and a trailer hitch for the bike.

James

PS.  Have a good ride, waiting on the pics.

[Rob_Shaw]

Best of luck, Cowboy!

I think you're already bring the most important gear, the cellphone.  I hope you have AAA membership, in case you need a tow.

I hope you have a solid back-up plan should the truck die and be unfixable.  I recently saw a picture of a Japanese motorcycle cop with a car towing set-up for his bike.  Maybe you could bring the wife and a tow-line!

Again, best of luck.

Rob

[Cowboy]

I hope you have a solid back-up plan should the truck die and be unfixable.  I recently saw a picture of a Japanese motorcycle cop with a car towing set-up for his bike.  Maybe you could bring the wife and a tow-line!

My solid backup plan is that CB550 in the back of the truck!   Oh Yeah, and a 2x8 back there too, to use as a ramp to get the bike out!

I may be a cowboy, and I may drive American trucks, but I'll count on a thirty-year old Honda more comfortably than a twenty-year old Ford. Experience talking, sadly. I wish Honda made trucks that could pull my horse trailer!

[Cowboy]

Hey Gang!  It's Sunday night and I'm home, safe and sound! No trauma, just some good adventure!  I'll start with a teaser installment tonight, and will post the rest of the report and pics tomorrow, when I have a faster connection available.

The day started WAY too early. I'm a late riser by nature, so being out of bed at 5:15 was foreign to me. It was foreign to our horses, too, to get their breakfast that early. (I had to feed them before I could get on the road.) The poor old mare was way out in the pasture, and there may not have been much grain left by the time she limped into the corral to eat.

I packed a tank bag the night before, so I was ready to throw it on and go. I tossed down a cup of coffee and jumped on the bike before the sun rose. On the way out of town, I stopped to take the first picture. Still black out, with Laramie all lit up in the background:
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05404.jpg[/img]
Twilight had overtaken the darkness by the time I was thirty miles away from home. I stopped to snap a pic of the bluffs just south of Rock River, Wyoming.
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05408.jpg[/img]
I had to stop again just before pulling in to Rock River, to reminisce a bit. That little red house in the background is the first house I ever lived in. When I was born, my dad was the Superintendant at the school here, and we lived in that little house. My earliest memory is of falling through the ice in the creek there, and dad rescuing me, reaching under the water, where I was trapped under the ice layer, and pulling me from the brink of drowning by the hood of my coat. Dad tells me my memory has embellished things a bit, and I didn't get wet any higher than the knees. I like my version better.
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05410.jpg[/img]
By the time I stopped to take these pictures, and got past Rock River, the sun was finally peeking over the horizon. It was welcome, as the ride started at right around 32 degrees F. Even behind the fairing, and with good insulated leather gloves, my fingers were numb after thirty miles at that temp.
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05411.jpg[/img]

Will Cowboy get across the state on a 28 year old Honda? Will his fingers ever thaw again? Tune in tomorrow, when Cowboy rides his pony across the dusty Prairie, and has a close encounter with a ________! Oh My!

[andy750]

Great post Cowboy and looking forward to the next installment!

cheers
Andy

[Cowboy]

 I found myself stopping frequently to warm my fingers. I was past Rock River now, and headed north. Finger warming means snapshots, so I stopped to warm the fingers at Como Bluff. What's that sign about: "Believe it or Not!"?  Well, this little stone cabin is a sort of low-budget tourist trap, with signs advertising the "Oldest building in the world!" It's not old based on its construction date, but rather by its materials. Those "stones" that cover the walls are broken chunks of dinosaur bone! 
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05414.jpg[/img]

If there are any Honda-riding paleontologists out there, you may be interested to know that Como Bluff is the ridge in the photo, behind this cabin. In the nineteenth century, that ridge was a battlefield in a decades-long rivalry between two eminent paleontologists, Marsh and Cope. Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope were two of America's greatest 19th-century paleontologists. Together, they were responsible for unearthing and naming the vast majority of this country's fossil dinosaurs and mammals. Over the course of their careers, they competed mercilessly, and often unethically, each pushing the other to further discoveries. Both men excavated extensively on bluff in the photo above, and there is probably no square mile on earth that has produced a larger variety of fossil vertebrate species. You can find fossils from that bluff in nearly every natural history museum in the U.S.
 Click here if you want to read more about Marsh and Cope: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1970.htm

I turned North at Medicine Bow. The fingers were starting to thaw by now, and I decided to ditch the pavement, and explore some gravel roads. I turned onto Little Medicine Road, hoping to see some of the old uranium mines in the Shirley Basin. The landscape here will help explain why I tend to stop and photograph rock formations when I pass them: they are more interesting that grass and sage brush!
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05420.jpg[/img]
In retrospect, it was probably a dumb idea to try to take a photo with one hand while riding over a steel cattle guard. I got across without drama, but would those Pronghorn antelope in the road ahead cause me drama?
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05430.jpg[/img]
Seems they were not inclined to hang around and gang up on a lonely biker.
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05431.jpg[/img]
They did decide to run alongside for a while. They can sprint at pretty significant speeds, and they tend to run alongside vehicles, as if they are racing. I paced them for a quarter mile at about 45 mph. (I let the camera dangle and kept both hands on the bars, though, in case they ran back across the road in fornt of me!)

I did see an old uranium mine, in fact the landscape those antelope are running on is part of a reclaimed mine. I'm not one to cheer reclamation work, which is often sloppy, but they did a great job here. They really did reproduce the approximate natural contours of the land. The only giveaway were some of the structures they formed to stop runoff from eroding the hillsides.

Back on the pavement now, I stop to photograph the first interesting rock formation that comes along:
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05433.jpg[/img]

[Cowboy]

Yet another rock formation, this one looks like Morrison Formation sandstones, eroded by the passing of the North Platte River, just South of Casper, Wyoming. This same formation yields numerous fossils, including dinosaur tracks, where it is exposed along the flanks of the Colorado Rockies, from Golden south to Morrison, Colorado.
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05434-1.jpg[/img]
I had to ride the super-slab for about fifty miles from Casper north, as there were no backroads that did not take me far out of my way. Here, I topped a rise. Over the rocks in the foreground, you can just make out the distant Bighorn Mountains on the horizon. Sheridan sits at the base of those mountains. They are my destination.
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05436.jpg[/img]
I was looking for an unnamed road I saw on the map, that would take me off the Interstate Highway, and head North toward Kaycee. This road turned out to be the wrong one, but the old bridge across the creek made a cool photo:
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05437.jpg[/img]
I did not get on the backroad again until Kaycee. These abandoned buildings are all that is left of an old homestead site.
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05439.jpg[/img]The windmill at that old homestead is NOT abandoned, though. Water is precious in this dry landscape, and the windmill still works. The tank at its base was full of water, explaining the presence of . . . Cows!  Can you possibly report a trip across Wyoming without a picture of cows?
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05440.jpg[/img]
Or Sheep?
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05443.jpg[/img]
Or Horses?
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05446.jpg[/img]
The horses were at an opportune spot. I had tried to take Monument Road past Lake DeSmet, a road that appeared on two different maps. As I rode along, I saw an abrupt change in the pavement ahead, so I grabbed the brakes and started to scrub off some speed. Good thing I did, as two deer jumped out in front of me just as the pavement beneath me disappeared. I had no trouble stopping, since I already had my fingers on the brakes. Those deer were BIG. Glad we didn't meet under worse circumstances! I stopped to let the adrenaline subside, and photographed those horses. And my tank bag. Can you think of a less appropriate (for this trip) name than the ICON "Urban" tank bag? So what would they call it if they meant to market it to a cowboy?

[Cowboy]

I had to do some backtracking, as it turns out that Monument road had in fact been abandoned. I used Shell Creek road to get back over to I-90. Shell Creek is a gravel road, covered in rounded river-gravel.  It makes for some interesting handling with slick steet tires on the bike. I generally have little problem on gravel roads, but most of the gravel roads in Wyoming are covered in sharp crushed gravel. These rounded river pebbles just don't provide any grip, so the back end feels like you're riding on grease.

Getting close now. I turned of I-90 at the Fort Phil Kearney historic site, and shot up the back road to Sheridan, past the idyllic communities of Story, Banner and Bighorn. Sadly, there was no shoulder on the road, and enough traffic to make it dangerous to pull over, so I have few pics of the most beautiful stretch of the entire trip. Here's a shot of the Bighorns near Banner:
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05448.jpg[/img]

I arrived in Sheridan and topped off the tank before fetching the truck. I rode 335 miles, and used 7.5 U.S. gallons, for an average of 45 miles per gallon. A bit disappointing, considering my Honda Civic sedan gets 41 mpg, and carries a great deal more weight.

I found the home of the seller, and got the bike loaded in the truck for the trip home. Here I am, truck title in hand, and ready to hit the road:
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05450.jpg[/img]

The truck lived most of its life in Illinois, where the salty winter roads ate away every panel of the body but the hood. The truck is nearly worthless by Wyoming standards. We don't salt the roads here, so cars don't rust.  Thankfully the truck runs much better than it looks. It drives like new, and I made the trip home without incident. The engine should make an easy swap into my wife's Bronco, and I may keep some of the other running gear around as spares. At $350, the entire truck cost less than a used engine block from the local junkyard. Even better, it provided me an excuse for a long ride on a beautiful weekend!

I made a stop in the Shirley Basin on the return trip, to get a few shots of the sunset. They provide a fitting end for my story:
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05459.jpg[/img]
[img width= height=]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y93/waterlaw99/DSC05460.jpg[/img]

[jevfro]

I think these tour reports are great especially when there is so many great photos and interesting info about the area.

I may be a cowboy, and I may drive American trucks, but I'll count on a thirty-year old Honda more comfortably than a twenty-year old Ford. Experience talking, sadly. I wish Honda made trucks that could pull my horse trailer!

I know what you mean!  I'm currently nursing two old fords back to health, the SOHC runs better than both and it's 4 years older!


Thanks for documenting the trip!

[andy750]

Cowboy! Great trip report and I agree with Jevfrom - good history, great pics and nice story. Keep them coming! Ill be doing the same as soon as the bikes are running. Good luck with truck!

cheers
Andy

[keiths]

Nice!

[nomadwarmachine]

Excelllent write up.  I really enjoyed reading it!

[my78k]

Thanks for sharing!! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it...and more so seeing it!

Dennis

[geezer]

I'm inspired!