Day 7 - Great Falls, Montana: We scoff at rain but....

... we don't mess with snow. It's a good thing that I'd forgotten to mention yesterday that we've ridden in some crappy conditions on this trip but I draw the line at snow - or I'd have made a liar of myself. We've been obsessing about weather for days and knew that our final decision about going to Yellowstone and / or running the Beartooth Hwy would be made this morning when we got the most current report. We stayed in Buffalo, WY, last night because that's the best spot to start out for either ride. We finally got an early start this morning since the sun was more or less out and it was around 9 degrees. I wear my rain/wind layer inside my jacket unless it's really warm so I was good to go for when we ran into the inevitable 'weather'. Jim wears a rain suit over his leathers and he wanted to start out just one morning withOUT rain gear. Can't blame him. We took Hwy 16 out of Buffalo. Did some climbing, riding a few twisties (Jim much more adeptly than I), and stopping, when it started to sprinkle, for Jim to don his rain gear. A little further we go until we're about 55 km from Buffalo ... bit more climbing and the temperature is dropping. Finally, the rain turned to snow... and we tucked tail and made a run for it back to I-90. We weren't anywhere near the Park, where the weather forecast had been reasonable (or as reasonable as we've been experiencing all week) but we didn't know what might be in store for us had we stayed the course. I snapped this photo of the thermometer on my bike when I stopped to clear snow from my visor.

I'm ok with all of this business now. I had felt bad about leaving John behind and seeing all these wonderful sight without him. Now, I've decided, he and I'll just have to come back in a cage and see them together, right Honey?! :-)

A note about photographs. Some people carry a camera on a lanyard around the neck and take photos from the bike while riding. This works if you have cruise control (throttle is on right grip); or you're lefthanded or are particularly dexterous with your left hand; or if you're riding on a straight stretch of road and figure you can take your eyes off the task at hand for a few moments. I'm not any of those things. So, I have to spy a "photo op", get Jim's attention, find a place to stop my bike safely, dismount and take off gloves, get the camera out of tankbag, glove box, pocket (or wherever it's been planted that day), get my shot, camera put away, gloves back on and ride off. It's a bit of racket. And on more than one occasion we've had to turn around to get a shot (Welcome to Wisconsin, Welcome to Wyoming signs - in the latter case, we rode back against traffic on the interstate except we had the road pretty much to ourselves that day). And in the rain, it's a bit MORE of a racket since gloves have be donned so much more carefully with cuffs tucked and gloves cinched or you'll end up with .... all together now!.... wet cuffs and hands! Yesterday, we were soggy but still wanted a few photos so we finally just stopped taking our gloves off and handled the camera with wet gloves. It's a wonder the thing still works.

I DO have over a 100 photos but I'm posting only a few here as they need to be resized individually and I'm posting them without any editing for quality or cropping. I'll have them all on my Smugmug site when I get home.

A couple of postscripts to Day 6, Wyoming. Wyoming earth is red - like PEI's. At least in the places where I saw excavation. We rode by a huge strip mine that was interesting. And I saw pump jacks working for the first time! Oddly enough, there were some really, really unsightly properties along the interstate - like you've never seen. It appeared that people MAY have been living on the premises (trailers and modular homes) but there were so many junked vehicles and equipment, it was difficult to assess. And this wasn't isolated. It was strange. What I haven't seen yet is cowboys or bison :-(

Today... Big Sky Montana. Sunny and 20 degrees, cirrus and cumulus clouds, clear blue skies, mountain ranges, range and pasture land - where the deer and the antelope play - for as far as the eye can see. Today, we saw 10 antelope (including a d-e-a-d one) and 2 good-sized deer. One of the deer crossed the highway in front of us. They were very visible, lovely brown colour standing in high grass. Montana's terrain is similar to Wyoming's but with less of the scrubby range and more pasture land. It's as though a carpet of green velvet fabric has been laid over the rolling hills. About 50 or 60 km outside of Great Falls coming in tonight, picture Jurassic Park - with the hills and valleys, but no trees, and a highway snaking through the foot o the hills. That's what we rode through - even though much of our ride was over flat land. We did take photos along the way but, again, I could never do it justice with my little camera. And the cattle and horses - grazing on land that appears to be so far removed from an actual ranch. And they're all near the highway. I don't get that unless it's as I believe - that even the quasi domestic animals like cows and horses are social creatures. Although there's nothing particularly sociable about fast-moving traffic! When I saw a big herd of sheep this afternoon, I had pangs of really missing my Girls. I guess the Girls are more similar to sheep than they are to cows and horses! I DID get a doggy fix yesterday at the hotel in Rapid City. Someone was loading a golden retriever into the back of a truck so I scored 'patties' -- but no kiss. The owner thought I was whacko.

I had a white-knuckle moment today riding through Billings, MT on our way to Great Falls. There was construction on the street heading up a long gradual incline toward the airport where we were to turn left onto the highway. We were in a single lane climbing the grade, orange cones designating the lane. When we got near the very top, there was a stop sign - on gravel and hardpacked earth. Aargh. Another few yards and another stop sign - both still on the incline. Double aargh. Somehow, in the midst of cars, heavy equipment and all the excavation, we missed the fact that we should have turned left before we got to the stop signs - or I think, in retrospect, that's what we were supposed to have done. At any rate, the flag woman tells us to do a u-turn in front of the airport entrance (triple aargh!) and then proceed to the right - at yet another stinking stop sign! All this in coarse gravel on hardpack. I did it - but with white knuckles. Jim moved my bike tonight between parking spaces at the hotel. He came into the room, chuckling about how heavy "that thing is" and wondering, rhetorically, how I handle it. VERY carefully and with white knuckles at times !

Riding today, once we got off the snowy mountain, I was HAWT *whine*. LOL! I actually had to take off clothes and I was cross-eyed from looking through bug splats. Now THAT's what we're talking about and yearning for the last 4 days! :-) I was so out of the practice of cleaning my visor at EVERY rest stop as we did on Friday and Saturday, I forgot to do it when we stopped this afternoon at Wade's Diner (between Judith Gap and Harlowton) for coffee and a big, warm, yummy, homemade cinnamon roll and coffee. The photo of the Wind Farm was taken at Judith Gap. Impressive site: 90 windmills against snow-capped mountain far in the distance.

We're at the Comfort Inn in Great Falls, MT tonight. It was a 742 km day and we'll be in Calgary tomorrow after lunch. Just over 500 km. I'm sure there's so much more to tell you. I'll have to sleep on it.

ps - last night, John was 3 for 6 in dinner invitations. I'm not surprised. I'm sure I get invited to things mainly because it's a way to get John there. A few years ago, I asked John: "if something happened to me, how long do you think you'd be alone?". He pondered it for about 4 seconds and replied: "oh, about 24 hours". What a guy :-)

KSAO&E quiz:

1. How much power does the Judith Gap wind farm produce?
2. How did Montana get its name?
3. What is Montana's nickname?