Northern Montana
Independence Day 2005
The yellow line is our GPS track for the day.
This graph shows today's elevation changes.
Jim (above) and I (below) with the Canadian border station behind us.
Notice how clean we are. Not for long.
This road through the Kootenai National Forest is single lane chip seal. It was a nice road, we didn't see another soul the whole way, but we were anxious for some dirt.
Finally the chip-seal gave way to dirt and gravel. These serve as fire roads in the summer and snowmobile trails in the winter.
The mountains of northern Montana are crisscrossed with these trails. You can't go wrong, even when you take a wrong turn, it's worth it.
Red Meadow Lake. What a treat, we don't have any of this in Nebraska.
Every once in a while the trails would break out into a full fledged gravel road. This one is called Bug Circle Road.
This is the road to lower Porcupine Creek. Typical of most of the double track around here; fast and fun through the trees, a surprise around every curve.
The day ended at Holland Lake Campground, near Condon, MT in the Flathead Forest. Montana is full of great state campgrounds for $5 to $7 a night. They don't have showers, but if it's been a few days and you're feeling a bit odoriffic, many of the little towns have Laundromats with coin-op showers.
We had perfect weather all day today. We made three wrong turns; there are lot's of subtle intersections up in these mountains, if that makes any sense. Still, we found our way and had a blast doing it. We rode from 8:00 am until 9:00 pm to cover 211 miles. A slow start, but so far it's been a hoot. Tomorrow it gets even better.
Sometime today Jim's fender bag, with his spare inner-tubes and patch kit, bounced off of his front fender and was lost. No worries, I've got a patch kit. Everything is covered with dry dusty dirt. It's gonna be that way for a while. After a huge cheeseburger at the Hungry Bear Bar, even the loons couldn't keep me awake.