8-24-08

Western Ride

I got a call from Keith Blount asking if I wanted to go for a ride? I thought a few seconds and said “yeah, where are we going to ride?” I never did get a confirmed destination on where we were going to ride but it started out that Gramps was going along with his big R1150GS so I knew we wouldn’t be taking the little ‘tough’ back roads as that bike is just too big for that kind of stuff. I happened to be talking on the cell phone about the trip and the yellow dog heard me. The Yellow Dog has been way in the back and I haven’t had it out much this summer other than short rides where I needed the big bags for groceries and such. The Yellow dog started jumping up and down yelling “take me, take me!!!” Well, what could I do? I got him out and had him packed up with all my gear and ready for the ride. I even took a couple of quick trips to town loaded just to get the feel of that big dog again. It is a big heavy bike when loaded down with camping gear and such.

My friend Doctor Toast was making a run over to Amigo Bob’s to get his toaster tuned up and offered to bring my Bloodhound back. It was good to get the Bloodhound back and I was just so pleased to have it back in the pack again. It is a nice light bike and running well after several months sitting around in Bob’s shop after he put its rebuilt tranny back in. Shortly before I was to leave Keith mentioned that Gramps was not going to be able to make the run. That changed thing….. I knew that Keith and Charlie would be taking the ‘Tough’ route now on their little Jap bikes…… I hated to break the news to the Yellow dog but I unpacked it and transferred the camp gear to the Bloodhound. Yellow dog was pissed!! Bloodhound was thrilled to be going after the rest period. I took the old highway over to Billings and stopped this time to take a picture of this sign on the edge of the highway. This is the north side of the sign the south side is almost all faded away. Not very many bikes ride this road anymore although it is a wonderful way to get to Billings. The road goes through mostly farmlands and there is almost no traffic. I like to check out what is happening on the farms.  

Here they were harvesting wheat. There were two combines working and the tractor and grain wagon would follow along and let the combine unload on the go. The wagon would then bring the load to the trucks that were waiting along by the old highway.

When I got to Pompeii’s Pillar which is now a National Monument or something I decided to stop and check it out. They have spent a lot of money on the visitor’s center. My tax dollars at work, your too…

This is the big pillar that always has been a land mark along the Yellowstone River.

Ahhh, sheep chutes……….. I just love these.

So here is the signature and I think the only evidence of the trip those guys made of the journey.

A few other folks have left there mark as well.

The Police now have a camera to watch and be sure that no one now adds their name to the rock.

This is grain country and I understand that some first rate malting barley is grown here.

When I got to Helena Keith was ready to ride.

We went over to Charlie’s place and took a tour though his back yard garden. He has ten foot deer fence all around his place and still the damn deer get in. There are quite a few ‘town’ deer in Helena and there is quite a controversy of what to do with them. Supposedly they are going to finally shoot some of them. We finally got out on the highway and headed over to the Darby area on mostly the smaller paved roads.

My camera started acting up and I have several photos like this one.

We took one of the back roads across the mountains to come down into the Darby area and stopped at this roadside attraction.

It is always nice to travel along the little rivers and creeks. Ya gotta watch out for bears though.

We camped just south of Darby at a little lake campground. This is Charlie’s Barbie KLR.

After a nice breakfast in Darby we headed out over the Magruder Corridor which is a little road that goes between two wilderness areas. The road was in fair shape and I was going along well at probably 30mph following Keith around a right hand bend. All of a sudden a guy comes around the corner looking back over his shoulder at Keith. He was headed directly at me and there was nothing I could do….. He finally looked forward and saw me and corrected and missed me by maybe a foot of so. That would have been a really bad accident as we were not too far from this sign. We had been averaging about 20-25 mph and it would have taken two hours to alert someone and then another two hours or so for the ambulance to make it to us. And then another two hours over that rough road to the hospital. I am glad he missed me. It happened so quick I didn’t get a good look at the bike but it was one of the newer BMW’s. It would have been quite a feat for two BMW’s (the only ones on that road) to crash into each other out in the middle of the wilderness. Not my time yet evidently …..

There had been a fire that went through there several years ago.

We made it over to Elk City and were surprised to find that the town was having a party. It was Elk City Days and they had Bar-B-Q and music and of course Beer. My camera went on the blink again or there would be pictures of some of the activities. The boys got a few beer and we went over the hill and found a nice rough camp. In the morning we went back over to town and had a really nice breakfast that the VFW was putting on. We had a chance to visit with some of the local guys as we went over and watched the chainsaw guys getting set up for a buck saw and chainsaw contest that afternoon. We couldn’t hang around for the fun as we had dirt roads to travel. We followed forest road 443 up to the Selway River. This is logging country but most of the logging has stopped but there was a little area where we went through that they were logging along the road. Fortunately it was the weekend and I suppose everyone was over drinking beer in Elk City so there was no log truck traffic on the road. I would imagine it could be sort of exciting to meet a log truck on that little road.  I finally got the camera working again when we got to Selway River bridge. .

This was the first part of the falls and this group of guys were going to do something buff for the girls that were watching from the cliff. Testosterone is a dangerous thing sometimes.

The falls get fast and lots of big rocks to go through. I hope those guys made it through ok.

further down the river it calms down and there were quite a few floaters and fishermen along the way. It was a fast gravel road along the river and there was quite a bit of traffic.

I was having trouble with the camera again and Keith offered up this when I tried a test photo of him.

We finally got back on the little roads.

We finally made it to forest road 500 where they have it blocked off and only motorcycles and ATV’s are allowed.

This was a really nice road through some really nice heavy old growth forest. There were quite a few trees that had fallen down over the road but we were lucky that someone had been over the road recienty and had cut a path for us.

Charlie found a patch of Salmon berries and stopped for a forest feast. It has been years since I have had a salmon berry feast. You don’t get much of a chance for those when you live in the desert and out on the prairie.

There is a big hole here in photos since the camera quite again.

We made it over to the old Lolo Motorway, which is the old road over the mountain. That road was pretty rough in spots and we didn’t make it all the way across it. We made it about ¾ of the way and found a little road that brought us out to Hwy 12 where we found a campground next to a resort where we camped and had a meal. The next day we were able to slip around Missoula by following Keith using the back streets which was nice not to have to go though that mess. We took the road south of Clinton that goes by the Welcome Wilderness area. That is a really nice road that follows along a stream. We ended up in Pillipsburg where I had never been. It is getting to be a little tourist town with some really nice old brick buildings. We hit the candy store and scored some highgrade licorice. Thank Keith!!

I split with the guys and headed on down to the Wise River and took the road to Elkhorn Hot springs. That is a really nice road. I think it is called the grasshopper road and there were a few on it for sure. I made it down to Dirty Mike’s place where I spent a day resting my butt. After three days of rough dirt roads my butt felt like it lost an ass kicking contest. Gary who was running a wild horse auction over in Billings stopped by while I was there. Mike’s old black lab Lucky wasn’t so lucky when he got out of his pen and as run over one night on the highway. Mike got a new chocolate Lab who is a year old and was just starting to learn the rules.

Milke’s place is just out of Dillon and I went in there and got gas and then headed out south on the Blacktail road down to the Red Rock Lakes Wildlife Refuge. That is a really nice road with little traffic. I was hauling down that road when I noticed that the rear tire was going flat. It was interesting after I had the tire off and fixed a couple of trucks and pickups stopped to see how I was doing. Not much happens in this area and it was nice to visit with a stranger I guess. I had my tire gear with me and was surprised to find that when I went to glue on the patch I had to go through four tubes of glue before I fond one that was still good to use. Yikes!!! I need to keep my tire patch stuff more up to date!!! You might want to up date yours too if you ride the back roads…….. these were new tubes of patch glue but for some reason they cant be trusted even when they look good and have never been opened.

I stopped in at the ranger station in Lakeview to top off my tire pressure and talked with a nice guy that was doing research on the refuge. He told me that I should stop at the little campground down the road and top up my water bottles at this spring. Wonderful water and it is always nice to get it right out of the spring.

The road gets a little high but the weather was great.

I had in mind to stop at the hot spring outside of Gardner but when I got there and looked, there must have been 40 people in the spring with that many standing around watching. Bummer. So I took the road (sheep chute) over to Cook City. Not too far from there I came across this Motorcycle accident. There were three ambulances and five cop cars. I passed two of the ambulances on the highway and they were in a hurry with lights blazing. This bike along the road I am not sure if it was involved. It is one of those Big Dogs with a V-8 chevy engine. I think the other bike was a Goldwing but not sure if there was another one or not as the cops were herding us through and I didn’t have time to look.

It was a nice trip over the Beartooth Highway and I spent the night at Bob’s in the shop. The next day I headed over across the Rez. Just outside of Crow Agency is Custer Battle field and I did stop this time and had a run through the sheep chutes. Well actually I didn’t run the chutes but did walk up and look at the place where Custer did his last stand. I had always wondered what it would be like. It is a nice place to die.

Back at camp I got busy and finally got my bed made. I have now moved in (actually in the process) and it is a nice cabin for sure. I missed the Beartooth Rendezvous this year but getting moved in the new dog house took priority.