Distance traveled: 486.7 km
Cumulative distance: 6,250 km
Maximum speed: 130 kph
Moving average: 87 kph
Temperature range: 5.8 - 27.6 C (this after waking up to 1.2 degrees)
The campground was full over night. Only hours earlier, I had been thinking to myself that it would have been possible to do this trip, with the exception of the eclipse nights, without any reservations. We didn't have a reservation at the Many Pines Campground but we had the good fortune to get there early enough to snap up one of the last of the tent sites. We still might have been able to get away without reservations but it may have added some stress.
We were away in reasonably good time; it was so cold that we needed to layer up and we went about tearing down the camp with business-like focus. It has typically taken us an hour and a half every morning to get up, take down all the gear, have a little bite and load the bike. This morning was no different but we did make a point of getting up a little earlier, so we were actually on the road about 8:40 a.m. For five minutes. It was a six km ride into Niemont, where we had gone the night before to get a few provisions for dinner from the lone store there. We were obliged to take our garbage from the campground with us since they had no receptacles there so we were looking for a place to dump our garbage. Turns out there was a big garbage can outside the store in Niemont so we opted to stop there and since we were stopped, get a coffee. When we walked into the place there were three guys sitting around just shooting the breeze with the owner. Idle chit-chat, I would say. The coffee was good and strong, so it was a great way to start the day. For the guys sitting around - remember this is before 9:00 a.m. - they were dumping liberal doses of brandy into their cups. I said, "what are you guys, Fresh Air Inspectors?" This was the term an old friend of mine had for people that would just come and hang out in his store with nothing better to do. They were in fact, helpful to us because they were pretty knowledgeable about Montana roads we planned to travel and which were gravel and how bad the smoke had been the day before when one of the guys had driven that way. One of the guys, who had retired when he was 55, was planning on heading up to Jasper for a vacation. He was a motorcycler, too, but liked to ride adventure bikes.
We were soon out of the park and on the flat lands, riding into smoke. We discussed whether we would stick with our original plan about riding along the edge of the mountains or straight up Hwy 89. Staying on 89 would shave 30 or more km from the day but the ride would be much less interesting. The smoke was coming in thick from a couple of fires in Glacier Park but we opted for the route closer to the mountains, anyway.
It turned out that the smoke was bad only in a few places and at other times, the air was pretty clear. Also, we knocked off the last of the trips' squiggles, which was in the final 50 km before crossing into Canada. It seems the U.S. government couldn't be bothered putting in a straight road to the Canadian border or even, for that matter, properly maintaining the road they did put in since it was a total piece of, well, crap. Huge potholes, poorly patched other abrasions - it was almost a safety hazard. The good news is that the border crossing was not busy, which we had thought about beforehand, it being the Friday of a long weekend.
Belly River Campground is a camping destination we have been to four or five times in the past. It really is a nice spot; the tent sites are large, generally private and well-treed, there are some nice views of the peaks in Montana across the border and there is a great, clean, river flowing by that we always like to visit for a swim when we camp there. And, the place has some emotional attachment to us because some ashes of our first two dogs, Mahaba and Kalinda are scattered there.
Despite being tired from the day - we had been fighting a strong crosswind all day - and that we had enough emergency provisions on board that we could have cooked what we had and that would have been fine, we opted to ride the 20-odd km into town and get water, since there is no potable water at the campground and some food for the evening. On a lark, in the one-room grocery store, we bought ground beef, an onion, taco shclls and seasoning and cheddar cheese and made ourselves tacos and threw on a bagged salad to balance the meal. Oh, and a half sack of beer. Nan had to perch all this precariously on her lap for the ride back to the campground.
The campground was full over night. Only hours earlier, I had been thinking to myself that it would have been possible to do this trip, with the exception of the eclipse nights, without any reservations. We didn't have a reservation at the Many Pines Campground but we had the good fortune to get there early enough to snap up one of the last of the tent sites. We still might have been able to get away without reservations but it may have added some stress.
We were away in reasonably good time; it was so cold that we needed to layer up and we went about tearing down the camp with business-like focus. It has typically taken us an hour and a half every morning to get up, take down all the gear, have a little bite and load the bike. This morning was no different but we did make a point of getting up a little earlier, so we were actually on the road about 8:40 a.m. For five minutes. It was a six km ride into Niemont, where we had gone the night before to get a few provisions for dinner from the lone store there. We were obliged to take our garbage from the campground with us since they had no receptacles there so we were looking for a place to dump our garbage. Turns out there was a big garbage can outside the store in Niemont so we opted to stop there and since we were stopped, get a coffee. When we walked into the place there were three guys sitting around just shooting the breeze with the owner. Idle chit-chat, I would say. The coffee was good and strong, so it was a great way to start the day. For the guys sitting around - remember this is before 9:00 a.m. - they were dumping liberal doses of brandy into their cups. I said, "what are you guys, Fresh Air Inspectors?" This was the term an old friend of mine had for people that would just come and hang out in his store with nothing better to do. They were in fact, helpful to us because they were pretty knowledgeable about Montana roads we planned to travel and which were gravel and how bad the smoke had been the day before when one of the guys had driven that way. One of the guys, who had retired when he was 55, was planning on heading up to Jasper for a vacation. He was a motorcycler, too, but liked to ride adventure bikes.
We were soon out of the park and on the flat lands, riding into smoke. We discussed whether we would stick with our original plan about riding along the edge of the mountains or straight up Hwy 89. Staying on 89 would shave 30 or more km from the day but the ride would be much less interesting. The smoke was coming in thick from a couple of fires in Glacier Park but we opted for the route closer to the mountains, anyway.
It turned out that the smoke was bad only in a few places and at other times, the air was pretty clear. Also, we knocked off the last of the trips' squiggles, which was in the final 50 km before crossing into Canada. It seems the U.S. government couldn't be bothered putting in a straight road to the Canadian border or even, for that matter, properly maintaining the road they did put in since it was a total piece of, well, crap. Huge potholes, poorly patched other abrasions - it was almost a safety hazard. The good news is that the border crossing was not busy, which we had thought about beforehand, it being the Friday of a long weekend.
Belly River Campground is a camping destination we have been to four or five times in the past. It really is a nice spot; the tent sites are large, generally private and well-treed, there are some nice views of the peaks in Montana across the border and there is a great, clean, river flowing by that we always like to visit for a swim when we camp there. And, the place has some emotional attachment to us because some ashes of our first two dogs, Mahaba and Kalinda are scattered there.
Despite being tired from the day - we had been fighting a strong crosswind all day - and that we had enough emergency provisions on board that we could have cooked what we had and that would have been fine, we opted to ride the 20-odd km into town and get water, since there is no potable water at the campground and some food for the evening. On a lark, in the one-room grocery store, we bought ground beef, an onion, taco shclls and seasoning and cheddar cheese and made ourselves tacos and threw on a bagged salad to balance the meal. Oh, and a half sack of beer. Nan had to perch all this precariously on her lap for the ride back to the campground.
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| The swimming spot at Belly River. |
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| Cooking tacos |
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