Quad trip photos

Added pictures of the quad trip on the photo page link on the right.

Wild West Virginia Quad Ride

It was another Green Lizard Adventure on the quad this past weekend.

I got the chance to go with the “Windber 9” to the Hatfield – McCoy Trail system in Southern West Virginia. The trail system was developed several years ago and consists of 6 or so different trailheads with a total of over 500 miles of trails.

The plan was to meet up with the “gang” on Thursday morning and head to the first trail named the Little Coal River. The trail was our warm up day and was planned to be an easy day of riding. The trails themselves were rather fun, some recent grooming left loose topsoil surface which was perfect for spirited riding in the woods. Outside of Tim having a “little spill” it was a fun 4 hours of riding.

After the riding we headed to Delbarton (actually Taylorsville) to Cold Creek Lodge. It unique..above a feed store and in the middle of town. The room was actually rather clean and well done..having all 10 of us in a single unit was tight but thing ended up working out. Luckily, the chain saw gang ended up in the room formerly called a living room..and the walls were thick enough to muffle the high speed 2 stokes doing the noise making.

Friday was to be spent at the system know as Dingness Rum, in the Logan area. I got no idea how people find these place, most are hidden away pretty well but Doug lead us down the right road to the trail head.

Below you can see the mud twins taking on the major mud holes of the trail, Chopper John on the new quad and Jeremy in the far. Just a note..Jeremy did not need hlep out. CJ did not fair so well..can you say winch?
One of our lunch breaks along the trail.
Another great day of riding, no major issue, maybe a few tires. Can-am seem to have a heating issue which caused for headaches with a few guys but they knew their machines well enough to keep steaming ahead (get it?). Rodger did decide to prove the worse place to ride on this trail was the packing lot. Damn highsides! Lots of good trails on this system and I’d highly suggest going there if your riding in the area.

That night we headed to Kentucky for dinner and to let Rob raise his type of hell…

Saturday was the last riding day and we went to Browning Fork, which we were able to ride to from the lodge. Up the hill on to the trail and we were riding. A quick pit stop for breakfast in Kentucky and back to the trails. This day ended up being the highest mileage day with about 80 miles but it was because of rather tame trails and lots of dust. Tim again stole the show with a missing valve stem in a rear tire..go figure. So we left them to go to town for a new gut..long story made short we found a place to do it as Jim “MacGyver” aka silver tongue talked us in. Action Figure Joe and I got a few extra miles in as the pack could not keep up with us on our way back to the lodge..we decided to turn back and get them..I think Joe go the most miles for the day. Good Job Joe.

While away the abandoned crew decided to build shelter in case they had to spend the night. Chopper John, Tim and Jeremy are shown in the lean to build for Broke Back II.

At the end of the day we stumbled upon a cleared mountain which was being opened up for a highway. It was quite the scene standing on one of the highest peaks looking at the progress coming through.

Overall it was a great trip.

New ride

New ride in the stable as of the past Monday.

2004 BMW K1200LT in black.

Pictures to come. HID already ordered.

Hotel and food review

Instead of taking out the pain of crappy accommodations during the trip, I’ll do a review so maybe they will lose some future revenues.

Saturday – Grand Gateway in Rapid City – Nice first class hotel, the restaurant in the hotel is a Perkins. We ate there just to keep from having to leave. It was Perkins.

Sunday – Yodelers in Red Lodge MT, clean mom and pop, NO water pressure, easy walk to town for food and drink. Don’t recommend the motel unless water is better. Food was Red Lodge Pizza very good…go there!

Monday – Alpine Inn in West Yellowstone. Clean, newer remodel, bed sucked, the toilet was so close to the wall I could not sit without pulling my elbow in front of me! NO AC and it was 93 degrees that day, but I’m finding most don’t have AC. The shower was about 24”x24” and no way to get away from too much water. Oh and a helicopter tried to land on the roof I think. Don’t stay here, even if the owners were super nice. Food was Beartooth BBQ. They had sausage and every pulled meat possible. Good but 2.50 for a glass of tea was high…but I’d go again.

Tuesday – Seeley Motor Inn in Seeley Lake MT, clean, good bed, cheap, walk to ice cream, laundry mat and other stuff. No AC, go figure. Good place. Food was the Chicken Coop as recommended by the guy who owned the Polaris shop in town. They serve chicken three ways. 1. Deep fried 2. Deep fried breast strips 3. Deep fried gizzards. I got #1, Jenn got #2. Mine was great, weird but it was really good. It took forever to get and Jenn swore there was a chicken coop in the back, cause it was fresh never frozen meat.

Wednesday – Jacobson’s Cabins – clean, big, cheap, beds feel good. They are super friendly. Can’t walk to food or much anything. Lunch – yes we ate lunch today in Glacier. It was our first lunch of the trip besides the crackers and Gatorade we were eating. Lunch was at Two Dogs which is at the Rising Sun area in Glacier. They are sort of a lunchy place. Tacos were the specialty and they were good. Dinner was in East Glacier Park which I thought was going to be a big tourist trap place, turns out to be just a stop on the Amtrak line with not a single modern looking building. The owners of the cabins said the Whistle Stop was good. Well, it looked like a dump but the beef ribs were I’m not kidding the best beef rib I ever had. They looked like they were hacked from the cow as it walked around town and roasted for hours. Jenn had a club sandwich which looks a bit like the same, big slab bacon. Two thumbs up.

Thursday – back to Red Lodge. This time we stayed in Château Rouge. It was a huge two story ski type condo/townhouse. Not a bad place and still cheaper than the SOB who ripped us off in red Lodge the first time at Yodelers. They had a pool and hot tub. Not bad place to stay in Red Lodge. Pizza was so good at red Lodge Pizza we went back. They did not disappoint again.

Friday – Buffalo Wyoming. Stayed is a Comfort Inn, it had outside room door which was nice, also had a pool and hot tub which was clean and empty other than us. Nothing special or unique but comfortable. We ate a The Winchester Steak House, which was situated next to a slaughter yard…pens and all. Great steaks, good portions, fair price. Highly recommend this local establishment.

Saturday – Our room was not as plush as the other, the back seat of a Silverado is nice but still not the greatest. We ended up calling it the sleeper portion of the rig. I don’t recommend. I don’t recall eating anything but McNuggets for the next two days.

I wanted to leave a note for Miss Jacklyn. Sorry I can't be there for your 13th birthday party, have a great time! and I'll see you soon - love aunt Jenn

Friday September something

Well after another night in Red Lodge we headed back to Beartooth Mountian. We got ahead of schedule all week so we decided to do the best motorcycling part again. We got on the road early and had the road to ourselves other than a few other riders. This time we looked and stopped a bit more. We even too some of the nicer dirt roads looking for the rumored bears in the park. Still seen none. We did spend an extended amount of time at Top of The World..the store near the top of the pass, got to talking to many other riders and visitors. One couple from Mississippi said they had seen wolves, a griz and moose..lucky sob's...wish we seen a moose or bear.

I think we will be back here..maybe bring a GS and a quad and see the back country...it could be a vacatiojn in its own.

After the "tooth" we turned east for home on Chief Joesph somebody's highway. It was another area ajacent to the beartooth range. It too was great to see and was a fast riding road with big sweepers.

After the Chief we cut back through Cody, and Lovell to the fames 14a which crosses the northern portion of Big Horn. It was another great ride with some real mountian climbing on the pavement. Great views and super sweepers. This is where we crossed granite pass which is pictured below.

After all that we hit the slab for Sheridan WY but when we got there we still had more miles in us so we headed to Buffalo where we are now in a Comfort Inn. Had a great dinner at Winchesters just off exit 58 of I90...its a steak house next to a slaughter house...I had steak. No surprise.

Maybe no update tommorrow. Our plan is to get out early to Rapid City hitting Devils Tower along the way. Then load up in Rapid City and head for the barn skipping or hotel in Rapid city and hopefully get a few hundred miles on the road tomorrow afternoon.

sucks to come home...can someone ship the cats to us?

The real thursday 411

Ok now for the real thursday info. We ran from East Glacier Park to Bozeman..much further than planned and got ahead of schedule. They we thought about going to Beertooth again, then we decided againt (picture that argument) then on the way HOME we decided to drop down off I90 to go back the Red Lodge to re rider Beartooth then out Chief Joe something then head for the barn in Rapid city. No pictures today it was all about big miles and doing slab. I think we out ran thruder storms all day. Ya know you can see so far everything looks so close.

Well off the pool and do some repacking.

Tomorrow Beartooth pass again, lunch at the Top of the World and back across to 14a and Granite pass. Looks like everything and one is holding up well...Jenn is looking at real estate in Red Lodge MT..and I a job for me??

Hey Cdog..just stop and smell the roses. Talk to ya when I get home.

The late version of Wednesday Sept 5?

Well, the last place we stayed did not have a wireless connection or even a phone jack so I got the night off from posting but I did write a review of rooms/food up to thet point. Its sometimes tough to find things to do in towns with 6 buildings.

On about Wednesday..GLacier Park. Onother of the must do's in my motorcycling book was Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier. It cut the park in half and is about 60 miles long. If you don't hike..the GSH is about the nly thing in the park to do.

We left Seeley Lake early to keep in the cool of the morning. Well in the cold of morning but made great time to the park..can you say 70mph speed limit?

On the way up we got a few pictures and seen alot of fire damamge and one huge fire fighter camp. Oncd to the park we stopped for fuel for the bike and us. The bike some plus grade at 3.24 per gal and for us choc covered donuts with milk.

Once in the park the first bit was all deep pine forest, deep enough to block my GSP reception on a few instances. The road menadered along a rocky creek and past a few steep mountian faces. The we started up hill and quick. The road is limited to 21 feet in lenght so it keeps the rv off, but traffic is 3- to 45 mph. The speed was not a big deal, the GSH is not about riding its about being..being about to see, feel and smell because you on a bike. The park did not disappoint, if faxt is was once on the coolest places I've seen when it comes to mountians..nothing in the east compares. I could go on and on but check a few pictues>

At the end of the GSH we were going to saty in the park but we got ahead of scheduel so we hit my back up place in East Glacier Park..which I thought was a tourist trap but ends up being about the size of Reels Conrers? It happens to be where the amtrak drops passengers..for the park then there is a park lodge and a car rental, couple of motels and a restaurant and junk shop oh and a bakery owned by some europein with good scones.

We stayed at Jacobson's cabins, cheap clean and had a good rep amount the motorcycling crowd. The owner did not seem to care for the loud HD crowd but said he never had problems with them just the noise.

Dinner was at the Whistle Stop...another shocker with outstanding beef ribs and jenn's BLT had slab bacon..hit looked like a dump but food was done by someone who knows how to cook. I reccomend!

Did you know East Glacier Park is home to the largest wooden purple spoon?

Tuesday - what ever day..

Its Tuesday, we did a big miles day sort of to get from there to here in Seeley Lake MT. Mostly highway with some mountian road sprinkled in to get up here. Seeley Lake is the HQ for the Montana forest fire team working on 5 different fires. The main fire was until yesterday the Jocko Lake fire which burned over 40K acres. Its mostly contained and cost $24 mill to fight. They have over 800 smoke jumpers in the area.

We did manage laundry today, ate at the Chicken Coop and checked out the latest UTV the Polaris Razor..the local dealer had one preped for pickup...no rides darn! These UTV are in such demand that I am number 21 at the local Polaris dealer in Claysville and the local dealer here is over 30 on the list. He figures it would be March until he fills the entire list.

No pictures today. There was frost on the ground in Yellowstone when we left at 7:45am.

I did have my second run in with the National Park Police...we creasted a hill at around xxx mph when I saw the white car going at a snails pace..I knew who it was but the radar never hit. About a second later the lights switched on and I seen a very unhappy rent a ranger waving vigorisly for me to slow my pace...but no pull over. Must have know the donut shopped opened in 10 minutes.

Tomorrow is Glacier National Park and Going to the Sun Highway.

Got to go find a room...

Over and out Geo

Red Lodge MT to West Yellowstone MT Day 2

Beartooth Pass...

Thats it. Beartooth Pass. I need not to say more.

Ok, I've been many places on and off a motorcycle but Beartooth Pass wins it all. We got rolling early due to time differences and our sleep patterns. Up early and beating all the other in the rolling homes on wheels. We started up the pass at 8:00 am, it was cool and the sun was just coming up..no traffic.

Just a few pictures to show what it was all about.

Then there was Yellowstone. Everyone said it was not going to be the best part of the trip. I got to agree. We came in the NE entrance from Silver Creek, sort of a secondary entrance. That worked to our advatage as traffic was light and animals were all around. WE quickly seen bison and elk...no bears :-(

Once we got to the mainstream areas traffic picked up and we were slowing down...and it got hotter. We checked out some falls, the lake, some animals but overall we kept talking of beartooth pass. We even skipped the gysers due to the walk in the heat. Overall it was good to go but ya know a pine tree is a pine tree. Glad we went but glad we hit the hotel early at about 4pm to get off the bike and be a tourist. Tommorow Seeley Lake! But its going to get cold in the mountians. High of 60. Few more picture..the rest will be on the photo link in the next few days.

Rapid City to Greybull (no) Lovell (no) Red Lodge Mt (yes)

Sunday's post was delayed due to a "said" wireless system in our hotel but I could not find it.

So Sunday we got up in Rapid City SD, and was headed to Greybull WY. Our route was mostly I90 then over WY14 through Ten Sleep to Grey Bull. It was supposed to be a day of getting from here to there...nothing special. I planned the route through Powder Pass and the botom of Big Horn. Well, the route was actual great. The lower Big Horn area was all mountian pass and sharp clifs etc. See some of the picutres here and check out the links page for more. I edited for some of the better.

Once in Greybull and sweating to the tune of 98 degrees..we decided we were their too early to stop..so on to Lovell or secondary destination. It too was a dusty western town. Bunches of mom and pop hotels but it was still early. While stopong for gatorade we got to thinking about going for Red Lodge Mt. Then the girl at the counter said it was just up the road..and it was 69 miles but we were doing great. I asked about motels she said "this time of the year, no problem" ON to RED LOdge Mt it was a great ride through the badlands?? lost of dust, tumble weeds and fast roads.

As soon as we hit Red Lodge it was wow..its a resort town and it was hopping...too hopping. I had planned to pick up hotel as we progressed. The first night I got burned..NO hotels had rooms. NONE out of a few dozen? Just as we were to give up one last ride down mainstreet and wow one switched off the "NO" in vacancies! We rushed in...a 4 beadroom room for a bunch of money. We took it since the next town was another hour away. It turnout good and we did some people watching in town..then Pizza. Hi marks for Red Lodge Pizza!

Check the pics..

Update number duex for day uno

We took a test run tonight to Mt Rushmore to break the ice. It was about an hour out and back but helped ease the schedule for tomorrow. Rushmore was "neat" but wow what a tourist trap! The little town at the bottom on the mountian was packed with cagers, people and bikers. It looked hellish..we zipper through. Headed for Grey Bull Wy tomorrow. Through I think Whiteside Pass..

Jenn got some pics.

We're in Rapid City SD

Made it to Rapid City at 3pm their time. We got about 2 hours of sleep at a rest stop in iowa. Otherwise the stats set up like this> 1438 miles, 25 hours 52 min overall time, 21hour 1 minute driving. Avg speed 68mph moving, 55.6 overall avg. Max speed 197 mph but I think the gps may have glitched there...no sliverado I know can go there.

Its hot, but the hotel is nice. Headed for Mt Rushmore on the bike tonight.

Here are a few pics from the trip out.

Only a few pictures today...jenn slept most of the way.

This is going to the Missouri River..in the middle of nowhere it popped up.

Itinerary for week

9/1 driving to Rapid City SD
9/2 Rapid City to Grey Bull WY
9/3 Grey Bull over Beartooth Pass to West Yellowstone MT
9/4 West Yellowstone to Seeley Lake MT
9/5 Seeley Lake to Glaicier Park (Staying in Rising Sun Motor Lodge)
9/6 Glacier to Lincoln MT
9/7 Lincoln to Hardin MT
9/8 Hardin to Rapid City SD
9/9 driving home
9/10 recovering @ home

Email during the week..george.fetsko@fedex.comm I'll have my blackberry
Cell 412-715-8728

Allegeny National Forest Quad Ride

Jenn and I got the chance to hit the ANF with the quad over the weekend of August 11th.

We have been riding around the chatau and home as much as we could but the ANF has been said to be great riding.

Heading up we have begun being a creature of comfort..eating at Phil's about every time. You can see here Iggy was with us but had to stay outside..BTW the tea was TERRIBLE!

Saturday we were up early headed to the trail head in marinville. There are several trail head but we picked the main one since we have no idea what the heck we were doing. We did get a pass at Russell Store..in Russell City and a Birch Beer (Cheers Mom!)

More on the trails can be found here or google it. http://www.visitmarienville.com/atv.htm

Our first trail was the ATV trail, it was fairly easy and only about 2 hours around the loop. Its nice becuse its one way but its a long way between access point..so don't take your crappy quad! it takes forever to get out with broken machines.

Our second trail was the Bike loop. The .gov site states it takes 4-6 hours on a atv to do the trail. Nonsense! I'll be much faster. Well its a great trail but you can see on the next picture it has a good amount of rocks.

( to the left) That is the trial...miles of it

Well its 28 miles long and it took almost 4 hours. It was muddy, it had hill climbs and pubble and rocks. Sure there was rest areas and places to relax going from here to there but it was tough.

The next picture is one of the runways up to a road crossing. We took a break and sipped on gatorade..

I've been trail riding since I was 10 years old on my hodaka dirt squirt, but by far the ANF was the best time I've had on the trails. Its tough and legal.

We did not see much wild life..few deer and such but there are bear signs around so campers stash their food in a tree..so the bear eat the people?

Well we're headed for Montana in a few weeks. Maybe we can get some bears there.

2005 FJR 1300 ABS

I figure I can test the picture posting by putting a few snapshots of the motorcycle we will be riding during the trip.

The Yamaha FJR has proved to be a prefect fit for our type of riding. Longer day trips are effortless on the bike. The cross between sport bike and touring bike is about prefect. We can turn it up in the fun country roads and still have the storage needed to bring a couple of nights clothes along.

Opening Day @ The Blog

Greeting Everyone.

This is the initial setup of the Green Lizard Adventures. I set it up to allow everyone to ride along with Jenn and Myself during our Montana trip.

If all goes well, Jenn or I will post nightly for the entire 10 days we are on the road. I will be posting some pages ahead of the trip to be sure I know all the features.