I knew I had a long day ahead of me but I really had no idea just how long the day would turn out to be! The weather forecast called for 50% - 60% chance of rain in the morning and thunder storms in the afternoon in all the towns along my intended route. Also, I was starting out immediately on two-lane roads so I did not want to leave before sunrise.
I did not get out of the hotel until 8:00 am and was out of Great Falls and on the route by 8:30 am. In the low 60’s it was a cool morning but warmer than some on this trip so far. The skies were clear overhead but as I got out of town and back onto the miles and miles and miles of wheat I could see that the distant mountains to the south, east and west were shrouded in clouds and there were also several dark spots to the south and that looked like the rain that had been promised.
As the road opened up so did my right hand. You can go for many, many miles without seeing another car and I think that one of the reasons why the speed limit is really not enforced in Montana is that if a cop sat out on one of the main roads through the state waiting for speeders he might get one in a day as you can see far beyond the range of both laser and radar; a futile and pointless pursuit. Also, the police here do not see themselves as baby sitters. They are there to enforce the law and there are many more important laws to enforce than the speed limit on the open road.
The miles ticked away rapidly as I quickly reeled in the mountains. About 20 miles out of Great Falls I turned south on route 89 in Armington. The road wound down along the Belt River valley so gone were the miles of wheat fields. It is a beautiful valley with nice sweeping turns which allowed me to lean the bike way over as I pulled hard out of turns. I followed the river into the Little Belt Mountains, cresting near Big Baldy Mountain, elevation 9,191 feet and then running back down by Kings Hill at 8,008 feet in elevation. Once out of the Little Belt Mountains it was back to the plains for the rest of the sprint down to I-90. And what a sprint it was! As I approached the freeway the open plains gave me a spectacular view of the north end of the Abasroka Range of mountains. I did not take a photo as the summit was up in the clouds.
These signs are from a scenic stop along the Belt River just south of Armington.
The Belt River south of Armington.
Back on the plains after cresting the Little Belt Mountains. This is a photo of the Big Belt Mountains to the west.On the freeway I turned east and gassed up about twenty miles on as I had burned through most of the tank. At the gas station I checked the oil and I was down to one third in the little indicator window. For whatever reason the BMW twin engine is designed to consume oil when pushed hard. They have been making this motor for years and I guess in the millions of miles the design has traveled around the world on public roads and on the race track taught them to build it that way. Oh well, all I know is that it works and it works well.
I don’t carry a funnel so I finished up a bag of Planters Trail Mix and fashioned a funnel from it. As I was attending to the bike a woman in her sixties driving a full sized Ford F-150 with Alaska plates and one of those over-sized looking campers that can be carried on a pickup struck up conversation with me. She was a gruff and hard of hearing but it turned out that she calls herself a biker babe as she keeps a small Yamaha 250 in Alaska and a 650 in Arizona. When she is not traveling between the two her primary mode of transportation is either bike. She then went about her business fussing with getting ice in coolers and such. As I was gathering myself for the next leg a tall and weathered looking fellow came and asked about the bike. He was a trucker who said he envied my being able to travel on the bike. He also said that the BMW was the right machine with which to do Montana as the cops had better things to do than mind your speed. I told him that in all the miles I had traveled on Montana roads I has only seen two state troopers and all the other cops I had seen were in the little towns as I passed through. He told me about the days when they did not have a speed limit and if they thought you were over cooking it they would pull you over and give you a ticket and the violation was excessive fuel consumption. I love Montana!
This hard worker needs some oil!
A makeshift oil funnel.
I left Big Timber for the quick run to Columbus where I would get off the freeway and back to the two-lanes. Route 78 took me up to Red Lodge, nestled in the northern foot hills of the Bear Tooth Mountains. As I was gassing up (there are no gas stations for the next hundred and fifty miles so up there is not a good place to run dry) a group of Harley Davidson’s pulled in and a couple of the riders came up to check out the bike. They were from Illinois and had come out and rented their bikes to ride through the mountains. Just a couple of guys having a good time! One had a Gold Wing and the other was shopping for a new bike and he said his Gold Wing buddy was pushing him to get a BMW. They asked a bunch of questions about the bike, chatted a little about the roads they had ridden and I asked them if they had ridden my intended route to Sheridan and they had and said I would love it. I asked them if it was raining over the top of Bear Tooth Pass and they said it was cloudy but they had not seen a drop and they wished the same for me. We parted ways, they going north and me heading south up the mountain.
This colorful rock formation was the gateway to the climb up to Bear Tooth Pass.The following photos are from Bear Tooth Pass. I don't have a detailed map of the area so I cannot provide the names of peaks, rivers and lakes.
It was a pretty spectacular ride up and the photos below tell the story. Near the top I met and chatted briefly with a group made up of an older couple in their 70’s, he had both hips and one knee replaced but was determined to get out and walk to each view point. They were accompanied by their daughter, who was the one driving them around, and her son who looked to be about 12. They were from Williamsport, Pennsylvania and were traveling the parks in the Rockies. I asked them if they had been to Glacier National Park and they said that was their destination the next day. I recommended that if their schedule allowed they should spend at least a full day. It turns out they planned at least three if not more days in the park. My quizzical look was answered by “We are not going home until December so we will take whatever time we feel we need.” – good for them!!
A glacial valley
A glacial lake overlooking a large glacial valley.
This is why we ride mountain roads!
Garnder Lake on top of Bear Tooth Pass looking south into Wyoming.
I climbed up to a jagged point to see what was on the other side. Way down there is my bike and beyond that is Wyoming.
This was the "path" up and down the jagged peak.
The road winds down into Wyoming past more glacial lakes. In the winter they close the road as it is under many feet of snow. All these lakes turn to solid ice in the winter and continue their job eroding the mountain.
The northern peaks of Yellowstone National Park as seen on the descent from Bear Tooth Pass.
As if Ihad not learned earlier, I took a stone strewn two-track up to this vantage point of the mountians between Cody and Yellowstone.
Another view from the two-track road.
After stopping to take over a hundred photos on Bear Tooth and along route 296 I stopped in Cody for gas. I looked at the map and I had about 150 miles to ride. It was 5:00 and that would get me in around 7:00 – 7:30. So far I had no rain and I hoped the same would hold true for the remaining miles.
I was out of the mountains and back on the plains and I used the wide open spaces to make quick work of the 54 miles to Graybull. One thing about the mountain states is most of the roads leading up into mountains have barriers and warning lights around signs that inform you the road is closed and to turn back. The lights were flashing for my intended route but I thought they must either be testing or there had to be a malfunction. The sign told the road was closed twenty miles up but I decided to chance it because there was no snow and as dry as it was there was no way a river had washed out a bridge. If there was construction my intent was to pick my way through and continue on.
When I got to mile 20 the barrier was indeed down and the sign informed would-be passers through that the road was closed due to poor visibility caused by smoke from forest fires. I checked the map and with the 20 miles back to Graybull the route to my destination now had an additional 200 miles tacked on it. I was tired and this was the second day in which I had not stopped for breakfast as I had on the first few days and subsisted instead on the trail mix. I was hungry and tired and not really ready for an additional two hundred miles when I was just fifty from my destination. And, especially not ready for riding through heavily deep populated forest at night! Below is the story of what happened .......
The road was closed about a mile further up. What I thought was mist turned out to be smoke from forest fires that forced the closure of the road and lengthened my day.
I was on route 14 and one option was to go back to Graybull, take route 310 up to Alt route 14 which ran north of 14. The two roads meet about ten miles from where I was being forced to turn around and not knowing how far up the road the fire was I didn’t want to risk traveling up Alt 14 only to get to the foot of the mountain after traveling 150 mile only to learn that road too was closed.
So I chose the southern route which would take me through Worland and then east on route 16 over Powder River Pass at 9,666 feet in elevation way up in the Big Horn Mountains. I gassed up AGAIN as I had traveled close to 100 miles and only had about 150 left in the tank and the freeway was about 150 miles away. I did not want to chance it.
Getting out of town and heading south I saw rain in my path. I hoped it was beyond my turning point and I thought I was good until about three miles outside Worland where I ran into the wet stuff. To the east looked clear so I rode through that, passing a dude on a Road King wearing just a tee shirt, jeans and shades. The poor guy was SOAKED!! Sure enough, a couple of miles east of Worland the drops stopped and I started to dry off. After about ten miles I stopped to put on my serious rain gloves – heavy duty black rubber gloved from Home Depot – and as I was doing so I watched the lightening from the storms around light up the sky while I zipped up the vents and closed the rain seals on the jacket.
I was fortunate that though the roads were occasionally wet, I had no rain for the fifty or so miles to the foot of the climb up the Big Horn Mountains. It was now pretty much dark and I had fifty miles to ride through the heavily forested range. About five miles into the climb I noticed the tell-tale blinking reflector of a deer’s eye to the right of the road and in a second the beam of the lights revealed the head of a deer peeking over the guard rail. Brakes full on!! The critter did not jump onto the road and, if she was accompanied by others, they too stayed put. The additionally scary thing about it was this was a section of road with what looked to be a cliff on the left of the road and a drop-off into the river valley on the right where the deer was standing. If there were deer on THAT part of the road, what of the forests and upland meadows ahead?!?! While the speed limit was 65 and I had been tooling along at 5 to 10 over I brought it down to five under!
About three miles up the road the switchbacks started and with them the rain came! This was something I really did not want to do. I don’t mind riding in the rain, actually, I kind of like it but not on twisty back roads and not at night ...... on twisty back roads!!
Anyway, I was now vigilant for slick spots, gravel on the corners and more critters on the move. There was traffic coming in the opposite direction but it seemed I was the only on going east. However, as I neared the summit, I saw headlights fast approaching and I wondered who in the world was out enjoying the curves in this weather. The car slowed as it reached me on a double yellow line and patiently waited as I gingerly made my way along about a mile of curves before the hashed center line indicated a passing zone. It did not pass and I did not want a car behind me in these conditions so I let off the gas, turned my right blinker on and waved it by. It hesitated about half a minute and then whizzed on by. It turned out to be a Wyoming State Police car – I wonder if they do a sweep of the mountain roads in the night to make sure there are no incidents.
I was getting comfortable with the rain and starting to feel better as I was almost half done with the forest. All of a sudden there it was, a huge buck in my headlights. It was not more than 50 yards ahead and that is maximum braking force distance on good roads. I slammed on the brakes and the deer, startled to find a set of bright lights stopped dead in its tracks. As I braked I started to point the bike to the back of the deer but then it made as if to turn back. The yards were closing fast and I hoped it would not jump back because if that was its decision then I could clear its rump at a low speed. If it turned back I guessed impact would be between 10 – 15 MPH and I wondered if I would be able to keep the bike upright. He decided to go forward, jumping off the road in his initial intended direction. I kept up the pressure on the brakes because I figured there would be more and with the way deer run when they are startled my guess was the next one would either jump in front of me or run into the side of me so I prepared to counter steer into the force of side impact so that I could make an attempt to keep the bike on the road if it happened. I passed the crossing point as the buck leapt out of the beam and, thankfully, if there were others with it they delayed their crossing until I was past the path.
I dropped the bike into second gear and putted along for a couple of minutes at about 25 MPH as I gathered myself. This time the adrenaline floodgates were open and my heart was racing and had I been standing I am sure my legs would be shaking!! I wanted to stop but I figured standing around on a dark twisty mountain road in the rain was probably not a safe thing to do.
I got back up to the 45 MPH I had been doing and crossed the pass a few miles further and about five miles on the other side the rain stopped. I only brought the speed up to 60 as I descended to Buffalo (a name more apt for a town in Wyoming than upstate New York) In Buffalo I jumped on the freeway for the 44 mile ride into Sheridan with a few sprinkles here and there and a downpour through the only five miles of construction on this stretch of road – go figure!
I checked in and was thankful to have a great travel agent who, when she made the reservation, had instructed them to give me a ground floor room, instructions which they followed. After unloading I walked across the street to a gas station and bought a pre-wrapped ham and cheese hoagie and a diet Seven Up as they had no beer!!
I should have been in here by 7:00 pm but it was now 10:00 pm. However, I was here and safe so I was happy, tired but happy.
I checked the weather for the next day as I ate and saw that they are calling for rain again. Thankfully, it is a short mileage day and I should be able to make it in before dark. Well, we will see what the day brings!
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