We partook of the somewhat limited complimentary breakfast at the hotel before hitting the road this morning. The road would take us into Montana and across Glacier National Park to St Mary’s for a night at the KOA camp. We knew it would be a cool day, and the thought of a hot tub and a pool at the other end was a happy one. A good soak for the tired back and bones after covering about 1400km on two wheels….that was something to look forward to.
We left the hotel and headed down highway 2. Nothing special as far as roads go, but it was pretty countryside. I’d kind of wanted photos of “Welcome to Idaho” and “Welcome to Montana” but when we passed them, I also didn’t really feel like stopping, so I just waved Kirk on.
As we crossed into Montana and brought the speed up to somewhere close to their limit, 70 mph, 65mph at night….really? Like 5mph is going to make that much of a difference if you crash into an elk…or worse?
Hans later told us that the first time he rode through Montana there was no speed limit, the guidance was “Drive at a reasonable and prudent speed”. The only reason that they have a speed limit at all is because the federal government forced them to by denying them funds for highway maintenance unless they complied. So they agreed on something only so long as it was higher than anywhere else.
The other strange thing to see was people riding motorcycles without helmets.
Although I didn’t stop for a photo, a few blocks before this well decorated cafe, was a shop called “Booze and Bait“. I am just loving the names of places here.
A quick stop for fuel…for me anyway…in Libby and we were back on the highway…after seeing a pretty cool spider sculpture on a garage next to the gas station.
We’d decided to get off the main highway at a place called Jennings and ride up the less travelled side of Koocanusa Lake. We looked the map over and reminded ourselves…”Don’t go over the bridge!”
Kirk took the lead and off we went.
Jennings wasn’t really a community and we zipped on through not realizing we’d done so. Kirk headed over a rive and up a hill and I looked back to see Hans falling behind. I had this niggling feeling that we should have turned a ways back.
Kirk happily zipped along ahead.
Hans fell farther back.
I backed off the throttle and fell back.
Hans caught up to me.
Kirk noticed we’d fallen waaaay back and stopped ahead.
Hans said to me “Don’t cross the bridge!”
Kirk pulled a u-turn and then another and stopped by me…..
I said “Don’t cross the bridge”…
Whoops.
Three bikes pulled a u-turn and went back down the hill, back across the bridge, and stopped at the turnoff, where Hans waved me on to take the lead.
About two minutes later I pulled off at Libby Dam and said…”Put me in the lead and this is what you’re gonna get!” I loved the names of some of the features: Cripple Horse Mountain, Dirty Shame Slide, Hornet Ridge (Kirk said, “I don’t want to go there…”), Gopher Hill….
All along this trip I was amusing myself with signs and place names. Back in Washington we passed a large farm with an old farmhouse painted the traditional white with green trim. As we passed I could see a large sign that was the entire width of the front steps, above the front door…it read “Farmhouse”. Does a farmhouse normally need an identifying sign?
There was also “Diagonal Road….which ran diagonally to all of the other streets.
Creative.
We also passed a very large tree at the side of the road that had a highly helpful sign, white with black painted letters that said “Big Tree”.
The road was pretty great. Virtually no traffic the entire length of it, pretty good surface, though some significant heaves here and there, a few helmet dusting trees fallen precariously over the road, and at least one really good example of why to not cut the inside corners tightly as more than one had a fallen tree lopped off with the log end still hanging out into the road, but obscured by brush.
Also, they grow very large dandelions here….whatever this thing was, its seed-head was the size of a baseball.
All of us wondered at the reason for the existence of the road at all, there were no homes, no farms, no logging….nothing at all. Almost 70km of road with nothing. I think four cars may have come the other way the entire run. The only conclusion we came to was that perhaps it was the old highway at one time. It was definitely scenic, even with the haze from the smoke from some fire somewhere.
We returned to the main highway on the other side after crossing Koocanusa Lake Bridge and immediately wished we were back on the road we’d left. The main highway was back up to 70 mph and the surface was complete crap. Luckily it was a short run to the next turnoff, a shortcut to Eureka.
Or so we thought.
Not such a shortcut when I’m in the lead.
I turned at Pinkham Creek Road and we found a bit of shade to take a break in. More chip-seal road surface. I hate this crap. It feels like you’re riding on loose gravel because, you kind of are. When we did a trip down into Oregon a number of years ago we were on chip-seal a lot and I came home with about a cup of gravel inside my fairing. It used to really wig me out, now I just don’t like it, but it doesn’t freak me out the way it used to.
Eureka was only 14 miles away this route, and off the main highway and away from the high speed rigs. I figured that would be about 15 – 20 minutes. Easy peasy and lunch was on the horizon.
Well…sort of easy peasy.
I’d been having trouble with my throttle hand the past couple of days. Numbness and pain, a combination of arthritis and pressure from both he gloves and the throttle. I could manage my weight not he throttle but the gloves were hurting. Hans had pulled out a throttle lock the day before and I’d been playing with it a bit, takes a bit of thinking to remember to roll the throttle off manually instead of the years of muscle memory involved in merely letting it slip. A couple of times I had a momentary fright when I tired to let the throttle slip after passing someone and it didn’t slow down because it was still locked…almost running up your riding companion’s tailpipe is a quick lesson.
But this was not the sort of road for a throttle lock and there was a fair bit of throttle work to do because it was varied and rough, with a few deer that bolted across the road. After about ten minutes I was thinking…should there not be some civilization soon? Or do we just pop out in Eureka like “EUREKA!!!, we found it!”
Eventually there was a little chapel, and a few homes…but the time…soemthing wasn’t quite right.
And then there was a cattle guard. Fine…but if you’re on the road that takes you to the local town…you don’t expect that the cattle guard has weeds growing a foot or two above the grates on one side.
Rolls to a halt as the road ahead is nothing but gravel in two directions.
Hans pulls up beside me and says “Paige! Where have you taken us?!?!“
“Clearly not to Eureka….also…I am not going down either of those roads ahead!”
Kirk rolls up and says “Well, we have three choices…..and the only obvious one is back the way we came.”
I said I’d take the back….
Hans led us back out and eventually to a fork that was a bit of a backwards hairpin. Neither of them had seen it on the way in, I did, but the road I took was better surfaced than the one I didn’t and it had been a natural curve rather than a difficult hairpin so seemed the obvious (but obviously wrong) choice. Turned out that a few hundred meters on the road not taken was infinitely better than the one I took us down.
But the next issue was the pain my hand was now in. I was having trouble managing the bike and when we got into Eureka and turned int the gas station I stalled the bike because I couldn’t feel the throttle. I then stumbled and almost dumped the bike. I hot it going and bypassed the pump heading for some shade, only to be cut off by a car coming the other way. At that point I just put the bike into a spot and put the stand down nd got off. Frustrated, tired, hurting, and hungry.
Bad combination on a motorcycle.
Some deep breaths, some water, and Advil, and a few minutes to compose myself before filling the tank and finding some very late lunch to fix my low blood sugar.
And then life was better.
From Eureka, on a full belly and with rising blood sugar, we were headed for St. Mary’s and hoping to get the campsite set up before dark. We stuck to highway 2 through Whitefish and West Glacier, where we filled up…or rather I did. The ride from West Glacier to East Glacier is scenic and the road is sticky. It’s a good chip-seal, but odd in that it is red, like the red dirt of PEI. But I don’t care so long as the road is grippy, and it was.
We stopped in at the Continental Divide and I almost took Hans and Kirk up my tailpipe …. it’s easy to go into Lala-land when riding a scenic road and they were both on the gears when I slowed to turn.
The divide is a drainage divide for the continent. To the left…the water flows west and eventually to the Pacific, to the right…the water flows east and eventually to the Atlantic.
We rode into East Glacier and stopped for fuel again….or at least I did. At this point I just want a full tank as much as possible, towns aren’t plentiful out this way. Hans told Kirk to take a shortcut through a culvert and I should have guessed what was ahead based on the condition of the road as we passed through. I saw a sign that said “Intermittent pavement ahead, motorcycles strongly advised to take alternate route”.
Wait, what!?!?
The “shortcut” may have been shorter by distance, but it was a miserable stretch of road because it was rough (though thankfully not gravel anywhere….have another Snickers Paige), extremely twisty, and not in a good way, it was cold, a bit wet, and there was a fair bit of traffic on absolutely blind corners on the edge of a mountain.
I mean, it was pretty, very scenic, and I think I’d have loved it in the truck…on the bike…not so much.
We stopped for a few minutes so I could pull another layer on under my jacket …. and the bugs!!!! I’m not usually bothered by insects, but wow!
When we finally descended back down to the valley level and arrived at a stop sign to turn onto the main highway into St. Mary’s I muttered “Thank god that’s over!!!“
Ohhhh, but there was more to come….
A few miles on we stopped at a line of traffic with construction signs ahead. A woman in a pilot truck pulled up next to the three of us and told us to fit;ter up to the front of the line of cars, trucks, and motorhomes.
Great.
No…not great, not great at all.
Ten miles of freshly laid, unpressed, chip-seal surface waiting to be sealed.
FUN!
I fell back at first, eventually getting my head straight and trusting that the bike would stay upright despite it feeling like a skittish horse underneath me….rather ….130+ skittish horses underneath me…. I picked it up a bit and eventually pulled back up into line.
But you know what you need when you’re riding 10 miles slowly on chip-seal behind a pilot car?
Rain….you definitely need some rain.
That makes it all soooo much better.
I was glad to arrive in St. Mary’s and get off the bikes for a pizza a some beer a mile from the campground.
And did I mention earlier how much I was looking forward to a swim and a hot tub?
Right, that.
We get to the campground and Kirk goes in to register. He comes out and says “Good news and bad news, the good news is that we get an escort to the campsite, the bad news, and don’t shoot the messenger, is that the pool and hot tub are closed because of the lightning.“
Well shit.
The escort came out and hopped on a. bicycle….he asked if we were in H7 or H4….I asked which was better and did one come with a hot tub.
It was clear why we got an escort to the site, the campground is huge, the tent spots are private and in a well treed area, and there are virtually no site markers. We would never have found our site. But it was a nice spot, not far from the showers, and the closed hot tub and pool.
We set up camp and were settled before it got dark, and stayed up fairly late talking. We’d initially intended to ride in over the Going to the Sun Road, but after hearing from someone back in Vancouver that it is really busy, we’d thought to reverse the route and head out early in the morning, before the traffic got going.
But Hans checked the web and discovered that one now needs a reservation for the road; the reservation is not a park pass (not that we actually got one of those), and the park pass does not automatically permit you to ride/drive the road. Reservations we sold out for tomorrow. We were not going to be riding the Going to the Sun Road.
Dammit!
Oh well, not had still been a pretty ride and there was a way to get out without going back over that hellish ten miles of garbage road construction…..thankfully!
Oh, and when is the last time you saw one of these…complete with a book?
