If you find yourself in Wyoming with a day or two to spare here is a great motorcycle destination. The Bighorn Mountains are located in the northern part of central Wyoming and southern Montana halfway between the Black Hills and Yellowstone Park. My wife and I began our ride in the town of Buffalo, which bills itself as the Frontier Capital of the Old West. Interstates 25 and 90 intersect here with route 16 heading west through town and over the Bighorns.
This is the scenic route to Yellowstone and there is plenty of scenery and very little traffic. The well-maintained road quickly rises into the Bighorn National Forest on the Cloud Peak Skyway. Gentle sweepers pass through Lodgepole pine forest with the snow covered Cloud Peak to the north.
This is the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area. There are plenty of pull-offs, if you come up on slower traffic or find yourself getting tailgated. Also at some point you may need to stop and put on more clothes. The highest spot on this road is at Powder River Pass with an elevation of 9666 ft. We stopped at the pass along with several other vacationing bikers for pictures. From there you glide down past Meadowlark Lake and more gorgeous scenery. Soon the road comes out of the clouds and you find yourself dropping into Ten Sleep Canyon.
Towering multicolored escarpments and several switchbacks later you find yourself riding along a clear running stream banked by cottonwoods, prior to rolling into the town of Ten Sleep. We made a pass through town, gassed up and stopped for lunch at The Ten Sleep Saloon and Restaurant. They have daily food and drink specials and live music on the weekends. Back on the road Ten Sleep Canyon was more beautiful going east. The road rises across the desert and you are back in the mountains.
Day two found us cheating by taking the interstate north past Lake de Smet to Sheridan for some shopping in the western stores. Back on the road, we turned off at Ranchester on route 14. We gassed up at Dayton and headed west on the Bighorn Scenic Byway. This is a knee scrapers dream road. The highway quickly rises through a series of switchbacks. A quick glance over your shoulder and you look east over the grasslands that are now far below you. The mountains on this stretch of road are more rugged and the road winds through several stunning formations. There are informational signs along these byways presenting historical facts and what rock formation you are looking at.
Try to read and understand Goose Egg Fm. Triassic-Permian 205-290 million years, without losing concentration on the road. One biker heading east was not so lucky. An ambulance passed us and we saw the bike in the ditch with a group of people administering aid. That helped pull my mind back to the task at hand and we continued on to the visitor’s center at Burgess Junction. Here we got a drink of water and put on more clothes. It was in the 80s on the flats but up here the air was crisp and chilly.
Back on the road we chose route 14A for Medicine Wheel Passage. There are high alpine meadows with peaks on each side and soon you are above the tree line at the turnoff to Medicine Wheel. It’s a steep gravel road for about a mile-and-a-half and then a hike of the same distance to see this ancient and mysterious sight. Coming back down the road from the Medicine Wheel turnoff, on to the paved road leads to more astounding scenery finds you looking out into the Bighorn Basin country on the west side of the mountains.
Just like the road into the Bighorns this is a series of rapid switchbacks through a steep canyon. The road had been washed out and repaired, with some of the repaired sections causing the suspension to bottom out on the Road King. The Sporty also hit bottom, so take care through here. Soon you are in desert country riding along a big lake. I expected it to disappear like a mirage but closer inspection found it to be the Yellowtail Reservoir of the Bighorn River. Pushing along in the 90 degree heat we made it to Lovell for more fuel and eats at Taco Johns.
We rested and headed off south on route 310 and picked up route 16 east to Greybull, Basin, Manderson and Worland. The scenery here is mixed: desert, mountains, sagebrush, irrigated agriculture and vast mining operations. We gassed up in Worland after some ice cream at DQ. We top off a lot with the Sporty having a 3.2 gallon tank. I hate to run out of gas.From Worland it was back east on route 16 driving through badlands that were unlike anything I have ever seen. I imagined we were on some foreign planet with the road being the only man made thing in sight. It was almost a relief to see some oil wells and power lines closer to town. We passed back through Ten Sleep and proceeded back through the canyon over the pass Back to Buffalo. Being late in the day we saw lots of mule deer does and their fawns browsing along the road. On the east side of the pass we saw a big buck jump both fences, cross the road and disappear into the forest.
This isn’t an all inclusive on the Bighorns but just a sample of what is out there. For example we didn’t turn on route 14 to Shell and Greybull. Nor did we roll over some of the other roads we might have. This area has camping and trails galore with lots of atv’s riding along the roads and on their own designated trails. The folks are old west friendly, and there are parks, stores and restaurants and bars aplenty. Go on the web and Google these locations for lots more information about this area.
–Kevin Thomas
