Spring Tour 2007 - Yellowstone

The following morning we got up and spent a few minutes cleaning the dirt off our bikes. While we were cleaning up, a guy wearing leathers walked up and asked which way we were going. We told him we were headed for Yellowstone and he asked if he could join us. Turns out his name is Marcello. He's from Wichita, driving a Yamaha. Very nice guy. He rode with us all day. We left from the motel and had about a two or three hour ride to get to the park. Almost immediately we started up yet another pass. We had pretty heavy fog in places, and at the summit the temperature dropped to the high 30's. Both going up and down the road was in beautiful shape with great twisties. I was riding by far the best I have ever ridden. Marcello commented later that he'd never ridden twisties before, and was having a really hard time keeping up. Ooops...

Yellowstone was amazing. Lots of wildlife, and of course Old Faithful put on a great show for us. We also had our infamous raven attack! Unfortunately I didn't get photos since the mess was cleaned up before I got there.

When we were at the main lodge a man working at the desk told us they'd been having a raven problem, and that we should cover our bikes. He didn't go into detail. When we walked out toward our bikes there were at least 15 ravens sitting on the three bikes. WTF?

We ran toward the bikes and were able to scare off the birds. My bike was totally undamaged. Bobby's tank bag had holes pecked in the clear plastic map holder on top, and the ravens had opened his bag far enough to tear up our map of Montana. The real damage, though, was to Marcello's bike and belongings. The ravens pecked a hole in his leather seat. They also both opened a zipper on his luggage bag, and ripped a hole in the side. A guy had left him a note saying he'd found all his clothing spread over the ground. On further investigation he had one missing sock, and one pair of jeans was shredded up pretty badly.