Montana wheat fields, prairies, and hills

This is the 12th day we've been on the motorcycle, with extra days in Moscow, Idaho for a rest day, and then in Bozeman, Montana to visit our son. The days quickly developed a rhythm: eat breakfast (sometimes after going for a run), load up the BMW, enjoy riding for 5+ hours, enjoy an air-conditioned hotel, hot shower, and hopefully find a great place for dinner. Eat-ride-sleep-repeat. We see something different every day, talk with interesting people, and enjoy time on the BMW eating up the miles.

We left Havre, MT just before 9am, riding south on US Route 87 through fields of wheat, barley and hay as far as we could see.

This area is part of the Golden Triangle in Montana that is a top producer of wheat in the country which explains why we rode through miles and miles of wheat fields the past two days.

After we passed the town of Big Sandy, the landscape changed dramatically from flat or barely rolling  fields to rugged uplands known as the Missouri Breaks where the road curved, climbed, and then descended.

In Fort Benton we turned east on Montana Highway 80 and crossed the Missouri River.

This area is part of the Lewis and Clark Trail, following the route the explorers took in 1804.  We were either riding on a straight road through fields and range land, or winding through more of the Breaks which made the ride really fun.

In Stanford we stopped for gas, a snack and cold drink and chatted with the friendly woman working at the counter, then continued south on US 87/Montana 200 East until we intersected with US 191 and continued south through a valley with the Little Belt Mountains to the west and Big Snowy Mountains to the east, giving us a preview of the twisty mountain roads coming up in the next few days of our trip. We even saw snowy patches on the mountains!

We stopped in Big Timber, once home to the largest woolen mill (and over 3000 sheep) in Montana, for lunch in a bakery/cafe on the main street and enjoyed the meal and air conditioning as the temperature was heading over 90 degrees.

The last 38 miles of today's 330 mile ride was east on I-90 along the Yellowstone River to Columbus, MT, our stop for the night. There just aren't any other paved road options going our direction in this part of the state and since the temperature continued to climb, we were happy to make good time for the last part of the day's ride.

Tomorrow we're looking forward to mountain passes and higher, hopefully cooler, elevations.

Smoky skies

 We started off the day under clear skies with temperatures in the mid-50's which meant I wore all of the liners to my motorcycle gear to stay warm.

Instead of taking interstates from Missoula to Bozeman, our destination for the weekend, we opted for the more scenic route starting east on Montana Hwy 200. We rode through valleys with views of the mountains to both the north and south, sometimes through forested hills and other times past fields planted with corn, wheat and hay.

We turned south on Montana Hwy 141 and crossed the Blackfoot River. We crossed many smaller creeks and streams and almost everywhere saw signs pointing out fishing access points.

Hwy 141 passes by Nevada Lake, created with an earth dam in 1938.

In Avon we turned east on US 12 and climbed up 6,320' MacDonald Pass on the Continental Divide. The skies had been clear until we started down the eastern side of the pass, and for the rest of the ride it was so smoky from hundreds of wildfires in Canada that we could barely see outlines of mountains.

US 12 skirts Helena and then joins with US 287 heading south, crossing the Missouri River which starts near Three Forks Montana and ends at the Mississippi River. At 2,341 miles, it's the longest river in the United States.

We continued south on US 287 to Townsend, then diverted to a series of county roads, once again taking the scenic route into Bozeman instead of the interstate. Even though we knew there were towering mountain peaks surrounding Bozeman, we could see none of them due to the increasingly smoky skies.

We'll stay in Bozeman through the weekend with our youngest son and then based on weather and air quality conditions, decide which direction is next.