Day Two - Arriving at Glacier

Thursday, August 11th
I woke up Thursday morning to overcast skies. I never knew that August could be so cold. I rode most of the day beneath what appeared to be one giant cloud covering the entire state of Montana. It occurred to me as I turned onto North Hwy 89 when it separated from I-90 that after a day and a morning of riding that I was only just beginning to drive down roads that I had never previously been on. It was actually a good feeling to be exploring a new stretch of road. That is, of course, until you discover that the new stretch of road is under heavy construction. There was about a 10 mile stretch of Hwy 89 that had been totally ripped up and was currently little more than dirt and gravel with a couple of flag men directing traffic through one lane at a time. Of course with the recent rain the makeshift road had turned into muddy mess.

It wasn't all bad though. The highlight of the day was a 30 mile stretch of Hwy 89 between White Sulphur Springs and Great Falls, MT that ran through the Lewis and Clark National Forest. It was a beautiful stretch of road that followed a winding river and was lined with mountains carpeted in pine The road had recently received a fresh coating of tar and gravel; I believe that they call the process chip sealing. It wasn't so recent that there still signs up warning about loose gravel but recent enough that there was some loose gravel still on the road. As I was leaning hard into a corner at about 70 miles per hour I all of the sudden felt my rear tire give way and start to slide. I was able to pull out of it by letting of the throttle and reducing the lean but it still scared the hell out of me.

I stopped at the Harley dealership in Great Falls to pick up a t-shirt. I decided that Great Falls was going to be one of three towns that I stopped in for new Harley t-shirts. I'm also hoping to get t-shirts from Seattle and San Diego. The front of a Harley shirt is usually designed by Harley themselves and are available at any dealership. However the back of the shirt is always designed by the dealership. Although most dealers usually have several patterns to choose from including several that show little more than the dealer's name, city and state, I usually like to get a shirt with a dealer logo that shows the character of either the dealership or the town that the dealership is located in. One of the dealer logos at the Great Falls dealership depicted Lewis and Clark crossing a river with a Harley floating in a canoe. It was too hilarious not to buy.

I didn't see blue sky or sunshine until I was about an hour outside of the Glacier National Park. On the final stretch of hwy 89 before entering the park at St. Mary I had my second freaky experience of the day. As I rounded a corner I noticed something step out of the bushes and onto the road a 100 feet or so up the road. At first I thought that it was a buffalo, but then realized that it was just a very large bull. This thing was huge and had some very scary looking horns. I stopped about 20 feet away from it and seemed to catch it's attention. It just stood in the middle of the road giving me a very dirty look. If the thing decided to charge me I would have had neither the room nor the time to turn the bike around to run away. So, I just started to slowly walk my bike backwards to put some distance in between this behemoth and myself. Eventually a car came from the opposite direction and scared it off the road.

When I finally made it to St. Mary campground I was greeted by a park ranger who seemed to know not just who I was but where I was going. She took one look at me and said, “You must be Christensen”. It turns out that Chris and Sean, who weren't supposed to show up for another couple of hours had actually managed to beat me to the park by a couple of hours and left instructions for the rangers to keep an eye out for someone checking into the campground on a motorcycle. I was surprised that the description, “someone on a motorcycle” was a distinct enough description considering how many bikes were on the road in the park on the way to or back from Sturgis. Apparently not many of the bikers that pass through the park, camp in the park.

After settling in, eating and stocking up on supplies for the night and next morning, we decided to do a quick hike before dark. St. Mary Falls was the most interesting hike closest to our campground. Ironically, it was the same hike that I did last year when I rode through the park. I didn't mind repeating the hike since the last time it was pouring rain. Unfortunately, history was doomed to repeat itself. As we left for the hike thunderclouds were already starting to drift over the pass from the West side of the park. Just as we were nearing the falls the heavens let loose and we were made wet. It was twice as fun this time since on top of the rain we were competing with the waning daylight. By the time that we got back to the car it was pretty dark and we were all pretty damp.

Back at camp the rain had subsided and we were able to build a fire to warm up... at least temporarily. The rain started up again and this time with a vengeance. We let the rain put out the fire as we sought shelter in our respective tents. It was then that I originally began writing this post. But as I mentioned previously, as the rain and wind became violent, I thought it better that the laptop was tucked away neatly in my waterproof bag so that I didn't need to worry about it if I needed to make a mad dash for dryer shelter.