"It's great to be back on the road again!"

We received a fun phone call from one of our friends back home in Kidron, Ohio (Sporty Gerber) wondering why our separate posts appeared to be somewhat contradictory, not recognizing that there were three of us blogging on the same site! We all got a good chuckle out of that. Thus I shall clarify that this is Peter blogging in the backseat of our Dodge pick ‘em up truck as we barrel down I-90, 350 miles west of Spokane where we will be having a Chinese dinner this evening compliments of my sister Rosemary.

(This same Sporty Gerber said our blog site was “okay” – but he hadn’t seen any John Deere tractors on it yet. Said he was a little disappointed in us. We’ll have to see what we can do about that!)

Back to our road trip, as per usual, Thomas is the sane temperament providing for some sense of equilibrium while the artistic, left-brained, and sometimes contentious, temperaments of the other two tend to veer the conversation (and the truck) into unknown and frequently treacherous territory.

The software on this blog site does not let us know who is following us but it is apparent that there are a few of you out there that appear to be interested in our tales, trails, and travails. So far we have had 3,800 hits although Anna is assuming (in vain) that 400 of those hits are from her husband Joe.

Yesterday’s highlight was watching Thomas hit speeds of up to 43 MPH as he plunged down the Beartooth Pass heading into Yellowstone, banking the bike at ridiculous angles as he took the switchbacks at full speed. Anna and I followed in the truck. For the first mile or two we could not keep up with him for fear of rolling the camper! I was driving, while Anna had her hand out the window with the camcorder capturing footage that will not allow Paul Dunn (a competitive biking brother) to sleep for a week. Thomas was worried that the brake pads on the bike might over-heat. He had never ridden under such conditions plummeted down a mountain at full speed.

For an encore we are hoping to scope out a similar descent somewhere between here and Anchorage. Thomas knows he could get a lot more speed out of his bike if he is drafting behind the truck (as in a peloton) as opposed to the truck following him. Anna will position herself at the back door of the camper, camcorder in hand, while instructing me to either speed up or slow down so as to stay just ahead of Thomas. Stay tuned.

We did the Yellowstone “thing”. Not sure that we fit the profile of tourists. Saw the requisite buffalo herds, elk, antelope, and deer – but no wolf or bear. We understand a number of buffalo had recently given up the ghost, much to the satisfaction of the wolf packs. Tourists where huddled around their spotting scopes and telephoto lens cameras, but all in vain, while we were there at least.

We had no idea as to the immensity of Yellowstone. It must be the largest of the national parks. We drove at least 150 miles getting into and out of the park and were in awe of the parks grandeur.

Obdurate bison that refused to cross the road caused a traffic jam eight miles before our final destination. At that point we were all worn out from a hard days drive from Williston, North Dakota. The last thing we wanted to deal with was being queued up in a long line of RV vehicles.

It dropped down to 26 degrees overnight but we all survived.

On the way out of the park we stopped at Old Faithful, hoping for a camera shot, but we missed the timing by about 70 minutes. It goes off every 93 minutes, or at least it used to before An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore was published.

Tomorrow we head off to Portland to visit Rachel Gerber, my wife’s sister. Rather than battle Labour Day traffic crossing the border into Vancouver, BC on Monday we have chosen to stay an extra day in Portland. We will have put in six “hard” driving days by then, and a day to kick back and browse Powell’s bookstore would be well deserved!!