2024-Aug-18: Wells to Thayne

I woke up a bit earlier than my alarm to find the sky just starting to light up and the power still out at the Sharon Motel in Wells, Nevada. I got to thinking about how to charge all the devices I’d plugged into the wall overnight, hoping the power would come back. I figured I was stuck, not having brought a battery, before I thought, my laptop is a perfectly good battery, and got all my gear hooked up to charge as I waited for the alarm to go off. While I waited, I scouted a couple of routes to get to Thayne: one took us north through Twin Falls, Idaho and Pontecello; the other went a bit further down I-80 then north from Oasis, Nevada to Logan, Utah to take US-89. Thinking either Chris needed a Cycle Gear or I might need a Best Buy, and thinking that everything is closed in Utah on a Sunday, I plotted a course north toward Twin Falls, Idaho that had us stopping for breakfast about 50 miles up the road in Jackpot, Nevada. 5:45am rolled around, and the phone chimed at the typical SMBC start time to kick off another early day.

Chris and I were up, dressed and om the road just after 6:20am. Needing gas, we headed back out toward I-80, only to find the gas stations closed with the power still out and the pumps not running. We looked at our fuel ranges on the bikes, and saw Chris had 75 miles and I had about 40 plus my 1 quart reserve bottle, and figured we’d make it. About 50 miles north on US-93 and 10 miles from Jackpot, my bike was crying out for fuel and we pulled over and emptied the reserve into the tank.

When we arrived in Jackpot we found the local Love’s super-station with no lights on, all the pumps offline and the store closed. Uh-oh. No power in Jackpot either, and Chris and I were both running on fumes. It turns out, the power had been shut off to all of northeast Nevada from the Idaho border! Luckily for us, all three casinos, and their restaurants had full power from their backup generators, so we walked across the street for pancakes and coffee while we thought of what we’d do next
The restaurant was full of motorcycles, so I thought we might be able to lean on some camaraderie from our fellow riders, but when I approached a couple of them after breakfast, they turned out to be part of a biker gang, and would only look after “their brothers in the club” first, and wouldn’t spare even a drop of gas for non-club members. Yikes… these are the folks giving motorcylists a bad name.
Anyway, Chris and I went back to the bikes, and then as a last-ditch effort decided to use what little gas we had left to make it to the only other gas station in Jackpot, a Chevron. As we pulled up, we were shoked to see power and prices reading on the pumps, but they all had cones in front and error messages on their screens. Power to the pumps, but their payment systems weren’t registering to turn them on…
By this point another fellow in a Toyota 4Runner had pulled up; another Bay Area fellow from Walnut Creek, as it turned out. We were all running on fumes, and despite the next station only being about 18 miles further up the road, none of us had the fuel to make it. It was just then that the purveyor of the station came out to chat with us. Seeing us all in trouble, he mentioned had had a jerry can at home with a couple gallons of gas in it, and went home and got it for us. The three of us split that gas amongst ourselves and took the jerry can with us. Back out on the road we went, heading north on US-93 hoping to make it the 16 miles across the Idaho state line to the wide spot in the road of Rogerson, Idaho.
As we approached the town of Rogerson, the glistening solar panels of a massive solar farm spread out for miles on either side of the highway. This town was not going to be without power. Sure enough, the Sinclair station had their sign all lit up and a couple of working pumps! The day was saved! I filled up the bike, my reserve bottle and the jerry can from our friendly Jackpot Chevron franchisee. Chris took a rest break in the trailer park behind the Rogerson Sinclair while I ran the jerry can back to Jackpot, hopefully to save another few stranded travellers.

I once again turned and burned for Rogerson to meet up with Chris again, and within 40 minutes we were ready and continued onward.

Past that it was a short 20 mile ride up to Twin Falls. We took a bit of a tour around the downtown, before heading out to I-84 to head east to Pocatello, Idaho. traffic was kind of heavy until we hit the split in the highway with I-84 heading south toward Salt Lake City and I-86 heading east. Past this point, we joined the Snake River as the temperature continued to climb. A couple of breaks later and we were stopping in for our first visit to a Pocaccino McDonald’s (or the country club, as Alberto has coined it) for some cold drinks and apple slices.

A quick, 20-mile jaunt south on I-15 and we were eastbound on US-30, finally off the Interstate! That road actually had some curves, and brought us up the Idahoan mountans into Soda Springs, Idaho. From there, we turned onto Idaho state highway 34 (why they sign their state highways in Idaho as SH- (state highway???) instead of ID-, I have no idea — I’ll call them ID-). ID-34 was a gorgeous, twistly bit of road that went up over a mountain pass and down following a beautiful little river for the western half.

We finally made it down into the Star Valley where we entered Wyoming and finally made it to Thayne!
The Swiss Mountain Motel is a little independently owner-operated motel and we had the chance to have dinner and drinks at the bar across the street with the owner. Chris tried everything he could to pickup the guy’s girlfriend, and the two of them had at each other over where all the best motorcycle roads were in every far-flung corner of the country from Wyoming to California. Lamenting taxes, the government and advocating for freedom of movement. Look it up!

All in all, considering the challenges we ran into at the start of the day, it was a wonder we were able to make it to our planned destination and have a pretty fun time doing it!
Tomorrow it’s off to see Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks and another new state for me, Montana! The ride continues tomorrow!