It was a chilly morning in the Upper O’Brien campground along the Salmon River. When I finally did get up, I checked the air temperature on the bike’s readout and it was 33 degrees. I did bring warm clothes but was at the lower range of what I needed. I put everything on and went out for a walk to get the blood moving. I’d slept OK with the sound of the river nearby and almost no traffic overnight on the nearby road. The sun eventually started lighting up the tree tops and I was ready for a long day’s ride. Some views from around there.
It warmed up to the low-40s by 8:45 so it was time to go. This is the road out and what I was on for quite a while.
Riding vs. stopping to take pictures is always a tough decision but after the ride, I'm always glad that I took them.
Then, in the middle of nowhere, I passed by a place with an old car for sale. I’d usually just keep going but this was a Volvo so I turned around and went back to check it out. It looks like a pretty good deal. It’s too bad that I can’t tow a trailer with my bike.
The road beckons.
In Salmon, ID, I stopped for gas and set up a route to Billings on my phone. It had me head south to Tendoy and take a road there that heads east. OK, I did the 20-mile ride only to find out that the road there is gravel. No thanks. I headed back to Salmon and stopped for lunch.
I rode Hwy 93 north and it was great with lots of twists going up to a mountain pass. At the top was a rest stop at the turn to the Lost Trail Ski Area. I took a break.
As I turned onto Hwy 43, the voice navigator said “Welcome to Montana.” The road traveled through the forest before it opened up to the Big Sky, adjacent to the Big Hole National Battlefield. Time for a few more photos.
I passed through Wisdom, MT and then stopped in Divide for a photo.
A word about weather. On this trip I’ve had, mostly, really nice weather, the rain and hail in the Cascades aside, and the one thing I haven’t contended with is wind. As soon as I got back into Montana’s open country, I was hit with a strong crosswind from the north. It’s hard to ride in that and I actually changed my course a bit to go through a canyon that added 5 miles to the ride just to get a wind break.
It was already getting late in the day so I had to make some decisions. If I stuck to riding 2-lane roads I would be going through countryside after dark with a higher likelihood of encountering wildlife. That, on a motorcycle, can be fatal. The alternative was to grab Interstate 15 and take it 20 miles north to Butte and then take I-90 back to Billings. That seemed to be the wiser choice so that’s what I did.
I stopped for gas in Butte, layered up, and then headed east. The traffic was very light but the temperature was dropping, about 48 when I went over the pass out of Butte. Things went fine and I made it across Bozeman Pass only to pick up some rain in Livingston that didn’t let up until I got to Big Timber. It wasn’t heavy but it was steady and it was getting dark.
I stopped for gas in Columbus and pretty much cruised easily the rest of the way home. My wife tracks me with the AirTag I have on the bike and she had the garage door open and ready for me to pull in when I arrived.
It was a 528 mile day and a total of 2,694 miles for the trip. I was gone for 10 days and 8 of them were on the road which averages to 336 miles per day.
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