Day 4 - Big Sky Country

Today I left the hell hole I called my motel this morning bright and early.  I kept thinking bugs were biting me all night...like the song goes...it was just my imagination.  Whew, lesson learned.  Beautiful morning, no clouds and it was mid 70s...I had to stop in Sturgis and check it out.  I ate a good breakfast at Bob's Family Restaurant in down town were it all goes down each first week in August.  It was tame today but I could tell the preparation is in full swing.  I stopped at and outside vendor to look at Sturgis shirts...and met Bob, the guy does food and shirts.  Both were awesome and I picked up a shirt for me and Conor, and a sticker.  I am a sticker guy.  I picked one up in Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana.  All of them are on my bike bags.  

So I took Route 90 to 212 and headed north.  There was a warning of construction 130 miles out and "motorcycles were advised to use another route". That did not scare me, I am an adventure rider.  The road was nice but desolate, hardly any traffic, cross roads, houses, etc. I motored on this pretty much two lane road and was struck by the barren beauty.  I saw many deer and antelope but they were just eating, not playing.  And I saw cattle...and more cattle...many cows and they are dang entertaining when you are bored going across the high plains.  I really enjoyed seeing the cattle in the big water hole splashing and playing.  So I noticed the temperature drop from high 80s down into the 70s.  I was happy for about 10 minutes, because then it dropped down to 70 and I was cold in my shorts and t-shirt (the same stuff I wore yesterday, the day before and before that) -more about this later.  So I pulled over and put on the gear I should have been wearing anyway...warmer and safer.  :)

So then I am motoring along, had lunch somewhere, it said the bowling alley only I just saw locals and no bowling balls or pins, let alone lanes.  I had a really good "French Dip" sandwich that my waitress said was fed and slaughtered locally.  I believe her, it was really good.  Sorry my vegan friends and all the cows who entertained me today. 

So eventually I hit the major construction as warned 130+ miles ago.  Funny thing is I was listening to Cheap Trick, jamming and singing to their tunes when the traffic went from 75mph to 25mph...oh geez.  Then we were stopped by a flag woman.  Heavy construction was going on and the road was a gravelly, sandy, rocky mix.  Red Velvet (my motorcycle) barely flinched.  I am sitting there jamming to "The Dream Police" when I noticed the flag chick...she was kind of hot :) waved at me to come forward around the other vehicles.  I thought she like me or Red Velvet...I pulled up and I THOUGHT she said to go forward and I clarified..but remember the Dream Police was inside of my head (ha!), so I rode forward thinking it must be a narrow lane or something so I cautious rode forward...About a mile into this gravely road a guy gets out of a huge truck and flags me off the side of the road and yells at me "what the hell am I doing riding down through there"!  I told him I was on my way to Alaska.  He screamed at me why I was riding down the road and I told him the good looking Flagger told me to proceed.  What I did not know was she had told me I could go to the front of the line!  The guy yelled at me quite a bit and told me to wait for the traffic to come and emphasized I had to be last in line...I told him no problem I was not in a hurry.  I seriously pissed him off but geez it was not clear what was going on.  So I waited a while and finally traffic passed me (I felt like an idiot) and then I ate dust behind traffic for many miles.  Eventually when the road returned to normal, I got to pass all the traffic anyway, take that bitter construction worker!  Ha!

So a few other things, I did hit a bird today..it hit around my front tire and had no chance...I saw it bounce down the road in my mirrors.  I managed to miss a small deer or antelope, that woke me and Red Velvet up.

Lastly, in Lame Deer, Montana, it is the home of Chief Dull Knife University.  For some reason, this made me chuckle.

Tonight I am bedded down in Billings, MT.  It is a bigger town than I imagined. I stopped at FedEx and shipped my handgun to my friend back home and a box of crap I decided I did not need, back home.  Red Velvet thanked me for reducing the load by almost 20 lbs and FedEx thanked me by charging me $58 (sending the gun is expensive).  I decided to travel into Canada with out my pistol in my attempt to stay on the good side of the Mounty's and to not deal with the paper work of trying to take it through Canada.  They have strict handgun laws up north.

Tomorrow and I will be at Glacier National Park.  I need to say no more!