Day 7 – Glacier to Missoula to Greenough.

(You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them...)


It was a crisp 47.3 degrees when I got up on day 7.




Don and I dressed, and he wandered off to brush his teeth. While he was gone, a ranger came looking for him.



Just kidding, he was looking for a mama bear and cubs that had been spotted in camp early that morning. He said his shotgun was loaded with rubber slugs, ostensibly to “discourage” the bears’ presence in camp.

We broke camp and loaded the bikes, then walked the half-mile to a nearby diner. After a tasty breakfast, we got on Going to the Sun Highway, only to discover that Don’s bike was only running on one cylinder. We pulled over at an extremely windy overlook—so windy that I feared it would blow our bikes right over. As Don troubleshot the problem, some folks walked by and told us of a bear eating in the bushes down by the lake.



I left Don to fend for himself and wandered over to take pictures.





When I got back, Don had discovered one spark plug wire was cracked in two places.
We taped it and got going again. The repair didn’t seem to help much, so we made a beeline for Big Sky BMW in Missoula.

Those Montanans have funny ideas for street names…


Although we arrived just about closing, they took a look at it, and asked us to return the next day after they had a chance to raid the spare parts bin.

So, off we headed to Jerry & Deb’s awesome place. After navigating miles of dirt roads, and two gates that didn’t like motorcycles, we arrived. It’s a beautiful log cabin in a secluded valley, with a river running through the back yard.



Shortly after we arrived, we partook of the old biker tradition of a refreshing beverage after a long day’s ride.


Jerry asked about the temperatures while we’d been riding, and laughed at our recounting of how chilly the 43 degrees in Glacier felt. He said there was a prediction of “24 degree lows day after tomorrow.” We responded, “Well then we’d better head South before then!”

Here is the awesome cabin we stayed in.



Great folks!

Day 6 – Amy to airport, Billings to Glacier, Rising Sun campsite. Bears, hail.

We started the day off on a very sad note; taking Amy to the Billings airport and bidding her adieu.

Shortly afterwards, Don and I headed towards Glacier National Park. After a couple of hours, we stopped for breakfast at a wonderful little diner.



We also passed by Montana’s first wind farm.



Since we were only twenty miles away, we ran up to the border, looked across, and said, “Naaahhh.”



On the way back to Glacier, Don visited some fierce plains Indians. Those horses had some awful big eyes…



We ate at a delightful place called Two Sisters. They served an excellent veggie burger. (and they had a “My Governor is a Jewish Cowboy” bumpersticker over the kitchen.)



We set up camp at the site recommended by the lovely young booth attendant, and almost immediately our camp host (a civilian volunteer) came by to chat with us about bear precautions, as they had been seen in the campsite frequently. We stopped setting up our tents to listen to her. Bad move. She finished, drove off, and it promptly started both raining AND hailing.

Carnivorous bugs

Montana seems to be a favorite spot for these carnivorous wasps. The minute our bikes stopped moving, these things were all over the bikes and our suits, munching on the corpses of the bugs we had collected in our ride.

The way this one was munching down, I suspect Dragonfly is a rare delicacy.

Day 5 – Don’s off-road practice, Red Lodge.

Dang Garmin and that “avoid unpaved roads” setting! We debated about doing a long day and doing a 300-400 mile day through Bighorn Canyon and Lovell, but decided against it since we needed to take Amy to the airport by 630 the next day. Instead, we took some scenic back roads to Red Lodge. Just how scenic, we were soon to find out.

We turned off 212 towards the Cooney Reservoir and Fishtail. The roads were twisty, scenic, and paved … for a bit. The road turned into dirt without warning, and the GPS made no mention of that fact. Hmmmm. Don said, “Well, let’s push on—how far can this continue to be dirt?” Good question, and the answer was, “Quite a while.” Don and his RT were not too comfortable, especially when the dirt got loose and rocky. As he worked on his dirt skills, we saw an eagle next to the reservoir.



By the end of the off-road training section, (about 17 miles and one hour), Don was an old hand and buzzing right along.


Very out of the way church…



Leaning tower of … Fishtail?


House up on jacks, getting the oil changed, and transmission checked.


THE satellite TV hub of Red Lodge, MT.


Is this better than child labor?



Look! Another Eagle!


Later that day I checked the GPS defaults, and "Avoid unpaved roads" is NOT a default setting. Silly me. Anyway, those offroad skills were to come in handy for Don later...

Day 4 – Red Lodge, Beartooth, Chief Joseph, and France.

Amy, Don, and I got up early, met at the bikes at 7, and headed off to Red Lodge and the infamous Beartooth highway. The reason for going to Red Lodge, besides its obvious proximity to the Beartooth, is that a nice old couple we met in the Grand Tetons a few years ago were from Red Lodge and just raved about what a nice place it is. We have to agree.

Funny newspaper headlines though:

We got there and had breakfast at the “World Famous Red Lodge Café.” The food was tasty, and the waitress sassy.



Afterwards, we wandered the town to buy trinkets. The proprietor of one store told to be careful not to “hook a peg” on any turns, as it would cause us to go off a cliff, and three people had recently died doing just such a thing. Now I’m not the most knowledgeable motorcyclist in the world, but I do know that scraping a footpeg on a bike won’t “hook” or cause any sort of a crash, but will cause some riders to loose composure, straighten up early, and go wide in a turn. I suspect that it was that, and not “hooking a peg,” that caused the crashes.

Anyway, the Beartooth was pretty spectacular. The road itself wasn’t much to write home about, just eleven switchback (hairpin) turns climbing to almost eleven thousand feet. But the views! It’s a loooong way down.











The “Beartooth”



Funny how you can find Texas, no matter where you go:




The animules were very cool too:


We kept hearing some fierce scolding coming from up in a tree, and I couldn’t find the bird doing it … until:



After the Beartooth, we continued to Cooke City for lunch. We met a nice ex-pat Brit named Gareth on a BMW sportbike, and chatted with him while waiting for lunch…



After lunch, we returned to Billings via the Chief Joseph highway; a beautiful piece of road with some excellent scenery as well.




While stopped at a bridge/overlook, I heard a familiar voice nearby. It turned out to be the nice couple from Montreal that we camped next to back at the Bear Butte campground in Sturgis! Small world! Anyway, France and Stan were happy to see that we’d found Amy in Billings, and were enjoying the ride.


On the way home, we passed through “Belfry,” home of the Bats…

School Mascot: