8-8-05 To Sturgis and back the fun way.

I have a friend in Fort Morgan who had a little time to wiggle away from ‘work’ and made a run up to see me on his new Kawasaki KLR. The KLR’s are really getting popular as they are cheap, under $5000,  and seemingly fairly reliable dual sport bikes. Dual sport bikes are made for highway and back road travel. They aren’t a true dirt bike nor a great road bike, but do very well at both.

Ken is an old motorcycle motocross, enduro, and trials racer and loves the back roads. He came up mostly on gravel and showed up here at camp on Friday afternoon. We hung out and talked bikes until supper time when we headed  into town to get a bite to eat and take in the music at the Veterans park downtown Miles City.

I got a chance to introduce Ken to some of my friends while we listened to live music played outside. The only bad part is that the kids on their Quads and loud bikes sure do detract from the music. Jeez,  I sound like an old geezer, bah humbug!!!

We headed out in the morning after a visit from Rich who has a KLR and is going to head down to South America this  fall with me (?). We got a fairly late start and headed down the Tongue River road. We stopped  at the Brandenberg bridge to stretch and check out the river.

Ken lead out and he can really make some dust.

The Tongue River road was in great shape as usual and we had good roads all the way south.

I ate a little dust  but tried to stay far enough behind to keep out of most of it. We didn’t have any traffic once we got off the TR road. We stayed off pavement all the way down below Gillett. At a junction near Wright I headed east toward Sturgis. I didn’t make it to Sturgis and made camp north of Newcastle in the National forest. I just took off on a small forest road and kept taking the smaller and smaller roads until I found this really nice quiet spot at the end of a road that only cows had used lately.

It  was very clear and I watched satellites until I finally went to sleep. It was really nice to wake up at first light and make a hot drink and watch the forest come alive. A couple of pine jays found me and looked me over good before they decided I wasn’t a threat or a food source.

By the time I got to Sturgis the town was full and jumping. I went for a walk up and down the street and the sound is really amazing with the bikes and music basting from the buisness’s.

I am going to publish a separate page of photos of Sturgis bikes as I know that  isn’t interest to some folks.

I headed out of town and found a small forest road. I was looking for a place to camp as I sure didn’t want to camp in a campground as they are nothing but a huge zoo. I came to a place where this guy was working on his ‘trike’(?).

He was very friendly and pointed out a good place to camp right across the road from his camp.

He was having trouble with the exhaust system on his trike.

The muffler had rusted and finally broke off on the washboard road. This machine has a VW bus engine and a Cushman front end. He was pulling a bike trailer  with three bikes. He had a cool Triumph that the former owner had changed the shifting and brake levers to opposite sides. He said that he was going to change them back to original, but they worked so smooth even though they were fabricated out of all thread and found parts.
 

He had a cool little hill climber motorcycle that he had built up for the trials held in Sturgis. The bike has a Yamaha engine like Tuckers bike (update; it is  not terminal, it has new parts on order and will soon be back on the road). The bike has a wide variety of parts. He said he made fourth in his  age group last year.

He had a dirt bike along as well for fun in the back country. He had some friends come  in that night who had several bikes along. They were a 74 year old guy that had a bike dealership and racer in former years. He was packing a Norton and a beautiful little Triumph as well as a wild dirt bike for his grandson who was with him. I guess they are quite a team as they blast down the roads flat tracking all the way. I guess 74 isn’t too old to have fun.
I took the road back into town in the morning and waited for one of the venues to open where I picked up a cable  bike lock that I have been needing for my adventures south this fall. By late morning it was a zoo as usual and getting hot. I headed north and at Belle Fourche and soon found  the gravel road to Camp Crook. The road was well traveled gravel across open grass lands.
There  were a few ranches/farms as well as quite a few abandoned places.  I really like this old Chevy hanging with his Ford friends.

I finally made  it to Camp Crook where I located the Forest Service office.





The gal was trying to sell me a great weather resistant, abuse tolerant map for seven bucks, but I talked her into making a Xerox of the part I needed that goes through the Custer Forest just to the northwest.

The main road was a little dusty and well traveled for three or so miles until I turned off on this road north through the forest.

What a nice little road. It did have some use but very little.
The forest had burned several  times over the years as I suppose the grass that surrounds it makes it vulnerable. The trees were coming back but it will take some time to make a forest.

An all steel lookout that looks similar to the one I saw back east in Minnesota with Bill.

There were several places where the forest had burned recently.

This is a really nice little road in good shape until I got  to this point where I was alert (my South American senses) to ambush by bandito’s.

It turned out that there were no bandito’s and I had to find a route through the forest around the tree.
The road comes out of the Forest near Mill Iron where I found this sign.

These cowboys have style, eh? I cruzed into Ekalaka and found the town mostly asleep. I did find a restaurant and had a late lunch at one of the cheapest prices in a restaurant I have seen in a long time. Can you believe a hamburger for a buck fifty?

There is a nice little court house here as it is the county seat of Carter County.

It is nothing  fancy, but it works. They have a nice new old folks home right  next door. It is the first time I have driven around Ekalaka and it is a really nice town. There were several really nice big gardens and even what looked like a small truck garden, way cool!!!
The waitress lined me out on how to get on the gravel road to Miles. She thought I would do better taking the pavement but understood once I told her I was taking the back roads on purpose. She said that it was a beautiful road and she was right. She was such a nice lady and I could tell that she loved the country she lived in. She had that fine leather skin and work hardened hands of a prairie lady. The road was easy to find but it got really yucky a short ways out of town.

I have never seen a rig like this grader had on it. it pulled dirt out of the ditch and put it  on the road. The patrol behind spread it out and it had packer wheels on the back. The road looked like  it was pretty good  but looks  can be deceiving.

There are actual big voids and ruts beneath this surface. I didn’t fall over but it was tricky for several miles until I came to a place where a truck had driven over it. These little counties get money for Terrorist protection and I guess they didn’t have anything else to do with the money but build a better road to get the hell out of town if something happened. They did build a nice road after it gets packed down and graveled.

This road was  fast and the further I got down hit the faster it got. The corners are all banked and it was fun to zip around them at  speed,  maybe flat tracking a touch. J
The road crosses the Powder River at this cool bridge.

The Powder River (an inch deep, a mile wide, and runs up hill, too thick to drink, too thin to plow).

The river is  running high and clear right now. This  is a dangerous time to irrigate with this  water as it is high in salt. When it is running thick and brown is the best time to use the water for irrigation.

Back in camp.

It was good to get Big Yeller back in the shed.