06.18.07June 18: Billings, Montana to Sun River, MontanaPosted in Uncategorized at 11:30 pm by jwalters First off, just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has posted comments. Matt and I have both read every one of them. Ryan, Ian, Debbie, Josh, Donnie, Chad, Kendra, Tom, Ash, Aimee’s grandparents, Jason, Lil’ Lee, and everyone else, its great to see that others are following this, because it is a lot of work to keep the site updated, especially after a tiring day or riding. But it is fun too, especially when we know others are watch it! This morning we headed over to Reiter’s Motorsports and got two new rear tires fit to our bikes. Unfortunately, we didn’t get on the road till about 2:30 by the time the service was done and we were back on the road. Since we had all of our gear off the bikes, we thought it would be a good opportunity to double check all the nuts and bolts. These single cylinder “thumper” have a tendency to rattle every nut and bolt loose. A lil’ bit of loctite is always a good idea. Here’s the gear in the corner of the dealership.
Leaving Billings on highway 3, we hit scattered showers to highway 12. We decided to hit some forest roads as we approached the eastern foothills of the Rockies.
Highway 12 hooked up with highway 89 in White Sulfur Springs, which took us through the Lewis and Clark National Forest. This Forest was the highlight of the day.
Jesse spotted a spare seat on a goldwing, and was trying to bail on Matt.
This river was spectacular and following the highway all the way through the park!
We weren’t sure what this was, but it was old and made of wood.
Just before leaving the Forest on highway 89, we road past Lazy Doe bar and cafe. We decided to turn around and check it out. Glad we did! This place was great, we got a real dose of Montana hospitality. We even were offered a free place to stay for the night, lodge and showers to boot! Unfortunately, we had some miles to make up for the late start today. But to our new friends at the Lazy Doe, we will be back! (and we want a ride in the corvette and are hoping the free shot offer is still on the table )
After leaving the Lazy Doe, we road the rest of highway 89 out of the forest, and it only seemed to get better as we went. Riding through Great Falls, it was getting dark and we stopped at the Ramble Inn for some food. Turns out the Ramble Inn, gots its “Inn” status because it was a former brothel in its previous life. The bartender offered a place to pitch our tents, and that’s where we are headed after this post.
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06.20.07June 19: Sun River, Montana to Radium Hot Springs, BC, CanadaPosted in Uncategorized at 7:35 am by jwalters So the bartender, Lennie from the Ramble Inn got us all setup at his place last night for camping. What we didn’t expect was a great breakfast the next morning. Lennie, Angela and Oden, thanks so much for the Montana hospitality. After breakfast, little Oden helped us pack up camp!
We hit the road towards Glacier National Park with the roads winding around the Rockies, it was a spectacular view, with the Rockies off to our left and open Montana prairie to our right.
As we made our way into the park, the views just kept getting better, but we wanted to keep moving since we’ve decided to return to Glacier on our return route.
Unfortunately, the Going to the Sun highway is still closed, this was one of the highlights of our trip. Apparently, they’ve received an abnormal amount of snowfall late in the season, and the road needs a lot of repair. So we traveled through Glacier on highway 17 which turned into highway 6 in Canada. Donnie, here is your border shot!
By the way, the ladies working the Canadian border were very good looking. If Matt or I had taken more than two showers since Friday, they might have shown some interest… Anyway, the Canadian side of Glacier is just as neat, and we wound our way up highway 6 inside the mountains till we connected with highway 3. Highway 3 was pretty busy, because it is one of a few passes that connect the two sides of the Rockies. The pass on highway 3 is called the Crowsnest and was a gradual pass, rising to 1367 meters. (ya we are in Canada, so we have to explain things in meters, its the law)
From highway 3, we met up with highway 93. Highway 93 takes us into the Canadian Rockies and Icefields Parkway, a highway that runs through the middle of the Rockies and Banff National Park.
Here’s a shot of Matt as we passed through another town. Every corner was another photo opportunity, what an amazing place!
We are all packed up and ready to ride the Icefields parkway into Banff and north through the Rockies. We have lucked out with the weather, and looks like today is going to be beautiful as well. Talking to some folks a couple days ago, they said they just received baseball size hail, and showed us a car that was destroyed from it. Needless to say, that kind of thing on a bike would not be good. But as I mentioned, we have not run into anything yet, and the weather is looking good! Now if my toe just looked a little better. I didn’t take my boots off for two days, and they are rubber lined so they don’t breathe too well. Anyway, I am wearing sandles now, letting them air out a bit.
Last night we splurged and got the first motel of the trip. Unfortunately, they didn’t have laundry, so we did it in the tube. Unfortunately, nothing was dry in time, so we are riding with a bag full of wet cloths… we didn’t think that one through.
By the way all the pictures I post can be viewed in high resolution here: |
06.21.07June 20: Radium Hot Springs, Alberta to Prince George, BCPosted in Uncategorized at 11:41 am by jwalters Today’s blog entry is brought to you by: Neither Matt or I actually received any financial backing from the makers of GoldBond, but after a few thousand miles in the saddle, we have grown fond of the stuff. Ok, our shameless plug is done. If you are in a hurry here is the day in one sentence. We saw moose, bears, rams, waterfalls, glaciers, and Japanese tourists (explained later). The day started off pretty good. We left Radium on highway 93 which took us into the Banff National Park, up through the Icefields Parkway and into Jasper National Park. This highway is awesome, tons of wildlife, and lots of scenery, this has been a highlight of the trip so far. The weather was beautiful all day. As you can image in the mountains, we’d go from 70s to 50s in less than a mile, when the road wraps around the shaded side of a mountain.
Through Montana and all of the Rockies we’d have rivers that followed the highway through the mountain valleys. They are a awesome color of blue and green. Here is a shot of one of the rivers at a turnout.
At Lake Louise we filled up amongst the RV traffic. We’ve been doing pretty good on mileage even with our loaded down bikes, but gas stops were 60 miles apart or more, so we filled up at every opportunity.
After getting back on the road, we came to our first glacier, Bow glacier. After riding in this area for a few days, you become a bit tone deaf to the scenery, but this place wakes you back up.
As we were admiring the glacier, a bus of tourists from Japan showed up and were taking pictures. In every picture they would make a strange hand gesture. We watched for a few minutes as every couple made the same hand gesture and had their picture taken. It was like these middle age tourists were flashing gang signs or something. Well, curiosity got the best of me, so I had to ask what they were doing. Turns out, they were making the shape of the glacier with their hands. While asking this, I noticed a Japanese woman discretely snap a picture of me standing next to his husband while we talked. Being 6′8″ I think I was quite a show. Instead of shying away I invited the camera lady to get in the picture. Well, it didn’t take long before the ENTIRE bus was in the picture! I felt like a celebrity. Notice the progression of tourists in these shots.
That was a hoot! They were really nice. With exception of the guide, none of them spoke english, and my Japanese consists of about 4 choice words my buddy taught me when we were little. None of them would be any use. But with a few hand gestures and the help of the guide, we were able to carry on a primitive conversation. Quite a few of them were from Kobe, and I explained that I had a good friends in the area, the Tadaki’s (hope your reading Yudia, you should have taught me more than swear words)! Back to the ride, we were cruising along about 10 miles north of the Bow glacier when we saw a whole group of people pulled over. We stopped to see what the fuss was about, like tourists are suppose to do. :-) This is what we saw.
In the picture above, Matt was busy filming the bear, I was already getting stretched out for the run. Remember if a bear attacks, my goal is to out run Matt. Besides I am pretty sure we can both out run the lady to the right. So I didn’t feel to guilty asking Matt to get some video of the bear. As I mentioned, there were so many views, and only so much time. Here are a few more shots of highway 93 and what we saw along the way. On a side note, up here, no one refers to highways by their number, instead they all have names. Keeping with local customs we will start doing the same! So highway 93 is now the Icefields Parkway.
About 10 miles south of Jasper, Alberta we came across Jim and Dennis. They are from Wisconsin and Illinois, and are headed up to Alaska as well. I think they are running the Dalton to the Arctic ocean like us, so we’ll probably run into them farther up north. We parted ways in Jasper, Alberta though, because we are taking the less traveled Stewart Cassiar highway up to the Yukon, where they are taking the Alcan highway. So in order to get to the Stewart Cassiar highway, we needed to head west out of Jasper on the Yellowhead highway (HW 16).
After kicking the tires on our bikes for a while, we were joined by some mountain goats. The funny thing was, those suckers didn’t move off the road for ANYTHING. Traffic just came to a complete hault while these things laid on the roadway. Notice the BMW 1200GS Adventure tricked out in the background. Never did meet up with that guy.
Don’t mind us! Further down the Icefields parkway, we came to the biggest glacier we’d seen all day. The Stutfield Glacier was amazing.
Just north of the Glacier we came to Wabasso Lake. I grew up in Wabasso Minnesota, and have never heard of any other city/park/lake named Wabasso until now. I wanted a picture next to this sign, unfortunately it was a dangerous part of the highway, and stopping would have been a bad idea. Curt, if you are reading, check it out on google maps, its about 5 miles south of Jasper, Alberta, Canada. From there, we road to Jasper, and ate lunch at the Dead Dog. One thing I really appreciate about Canada is their internet access. Every shop, gas station, and even bar/restaurants have free wireless. The Dead Dog was no except. So we had a burger and checked our email, then hit the road. This time heading west on the Yellowhead highway to McBride, BC. On this stretch we crossed the continental divide. While hanging out at a gas station in McBride, we started talking to some local truckers about their rig and what the roads conditions are up north. Who better to ask, right? They gave us a good idea what to expect in the coming days. I was curious to find out why they use the strange trailer configuration up here. As opposed to the 53′ trailers we see in the states. Their trailers have more axles which got us thinking it was one of two things: Turns out it was number 1. They said with higher gas prices, the only way you can make it in their business, is to haul big loads and always have a load to pick up on your return trip. These guys were hauling wood to a factory and picking up glue on the return trip.
The final stretch of the day was from McBride, BC to Prince George, BC. This was the more remote stretch of highway yet, covering 130 miles with NO gas stops. We are definitely off the tourists route now, locals like to poke fun at our accents now. But their the ones with the accents, little do they know the jokes on them! This stretch of the Yellowhead had tons of wildlife. We saw 5 bear, a moose and dear between the two of us. Arriving in PG (as the locals call it) we got another motel, because we were in desperate need of some laundry and it was pretty late. Got celebrity parking outside the hotel.
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