Vast expanses of…..Nothing!

Keith

We started the day waking up around 9:00 in camp. Leah got up first and when she came back I heard her say “the party of children have destroyed their camp”. One of the morons was sleeping in a completely collapsed tent, the others were in a tent that one of the poles had been broken and the door was wide open. Before we went to sleep last night both tents were in working order, so they accomplished destroying their camp at some point of time while we slept.

After packing up camp we headed into town for breakfast. We settled on the Perkins in town and after enjoying this huge breakfast and mediocre coffee we hit the road.

The day before we were told that there had been a train derailment right outside the junction of highway 41. This just happened to be the route we wanted to take. After checking on the road report, we were relieved that the road was reopened. If it had not been, we would have had to backtrack towards Lethbridge. I really didn’t want to go that route.

Hitting highway 41 we were immediately greeted with a heavy crosswind. Anyone that rides knows that a crosswind with a fully loaded bagger or solid rear wheel makes for a miserable ride.

Much of 41 was just vast rolling hills and sagebrush without a tree in sight. That was till Cyprus park came into sight. Picture vast expanses of nothing and then a mountain with a lush forest in the middle of it. It was so weird to see green in the middle of nothing but browns and grays. One of the joys of riding is the smells that you can enjoy along the open road. The sage was much more enjoyable than the fertilizer we kept getting wafts of yesterday.

We powered through to the boarder crossing and were greeted by the nicest boarder guard that I’ve ever met. We quickly answered every question and were on our way into Montana. We stopped in Havre for fuel and some water, I asked the locals which route would be more scenic after some debate from the employees behind the till it was decided that we would head east on highway 2 then to 66 south.

66 south was a really strange highway. Once again we were greeted by the same crosswind we started the day with. The road started with the nothing but expanses of nothing. I mean absolutely nothing, no fences, no barns or farming facilities NOTHING. Things started to look promising when some mountains with greenery came into the horizon. Finally we hit some twisty roads, but we found that this was short lived as the mountains only extended for a few km and then we were back into the straight and flat. After a while we hit the Upper Missouri River breaks area. Imgine Drumheller crossed with Lilloet. This area brought some nice sweepers but they were short lived and we were back into the straight and fast.

It had been nice to see that both Alberta had no fires to the south this year and I was hoping to not see one in Montana but around Roy we started to see a fire to the east and another big fire that looked like it had just started to the south.

Stopping at the junction to head to either Billings or Lewistown we stopped at the only corner store we have seen in hours. The lady inside has some insight into the direction we should head as she indicated that Lewistown had a new brewery that had just opened up. Leah and I both decided that the direction that we should head was into Lewistown.

We quickly hit Lewistown and found the Yogo hotel as the lady from the corner store suggested to go there plus it was right across from the new brewery. We arrived and parked right at the front of the hotel entry to see if they had any rooms available. As I was waiting at the checkin a wedding party came through and received a pelting of bird seed right beside our bikes.

We lucked out and they had one room left at the Yogo hotel. I quickly snatched it up and we head to the room for a well deserved shower. Leah found a live grasshopper in her shirt along with plenty of other dead bugs.

We are now sitting at Big spring Brewing enjoying a pint or two ( or maybe three or four)