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Dream Ride of a Lifetime
Club HOG 23 in Billings, Montana at the end of June 2006 was more than this year's National HOG Rally. For us, it was the dream ride of a lifetime.
As a-matter-of-fact Push and I only spent about five hours in Billings for the HOG Rally. We took a few pictures of the parade and of people having a little fun watching some of the events and happenings, but that was it. Instead, we spent our time and found our fun in other areas of Montana and Wyoming:
- riding through mountains that reach the sky;
- riding in areas where the weather changes 50 degrees in a matter of minutes;
- riding at altitudes as high as 11,000 feet; and
Monk
Dixie Biker Moto-journalist Hark, his wife Push, and a group from Lake County Harley Owners Group ride to Club HOG 23. They don't spend a lotta time in Billings where the event was, but they hadda blast "Ridin' the West."
By Hark
Article originally published in the August 2006 issue of Dixie Biker Illustrated
- riding some unbelievable roads in the West.
For us, the early morning adven-tures from Red Lodge, Montana up the Beartooth were very important. The emphasis is on early because around one o’clock every day the sky fills with clouds that touch the tops of the mountains.
Those clouds bring ice, snow,
hail and rain. Almost every
afternoon in the summer the
Beartooth is closed for a few
minutes or a few hours to al-
low highway personnel to
clean up land slides. Our daily
rides into, what was for us,
the most wonderful riding in
America took us to vistas,
discoveries and wonders that
I could only imagine in a
dream or fantasy. There’s a
saying many of you know - “If
I have to explain you would
never understand.” - that really applies here. Even the pictures we took, as beautiful as they are, don’t, and can’t do justice to the beauty and majesty of the Rocky Mountains. This ol' Florida boy was totally impressed.
I began my first day in Red Lodge by riding the Beartooth all alone. You begin your journey at about 4,000 feet and climb to nearly 11,000 feet. The first leg of the journey is lined with the most magnificent trees, large rocks, snow covered mountains and land-slide areas.
These are easily noticed from below, before you start the ride. As you make your climb each corner or s-curve - there are simply too many to count - provides a different challenge each time you lean into the turn. Most turns are less then 20 MPH corners, the slower the better because you just never know what’s around the bend. When you reach an area around 6,000 feet, most of the trees have disappeared because of large rock slides. These areas are protected by large steal fences covering entire sides of mountains. Awesome, but the best is still to come.
As you reach the top of Beartooth you leave Montana and enter Wyoming. Though it was June, I could walk a few feet and start a snowball fight. Even so, I picked a wonderful day to do this ride alone; I was wearing only a light long sleeve T-shirt and my vest. No chaps, just good old fashion blue jeans. If others had been with me they would’ve been bitching about the cold.
Standing atop the world, alone, not a soul in sight nor a sound on the wind,
I was actually breathless with the fa-ntastic views. Few places I’ve ridden in my life could affect me the way this area did. I only wish I could have brought it home with me. My decent was as spectacular as the ride up, maybe more so. You see a lot more of a road while descending then on the ride up. Looking
down on the right side you can see the next three legs of the highway coming up. Oh, almost forgot - rarely did I get out of second gear going up or coming down. I couldn’t shift up to third until I hit the bottom. You are unable to get into a higher gear until you are at the bottom. Here’s a neat fact: the Beartooth was built over seventy years ago by man and horse. Yep, man and horse. It has also only recently reopened since two years ago it was closed for not quite two years after some major landslides.
Check out the house below this pinnacle.
The second day of our trip had our group journey back over the Beartooth to the Top Of The World. After the requisite stops for pictures, we continued on to what is called the Chief Joseph Hi Way. I know I talked a lot about the Beartooth, but the Chief Joseph is, by far, one of the most spectacular rides you’ll ever take. The Hi Way is filled with spectacular scenery including water falls, bridges that compete with the Royal Gorge, and changes in terrain from mountains to nearly desert. You also want to make sure you have a full tank of gas before you make this ride. We didn’t see a gas station for nearly 150 miles, and when we did find gas it was 85% octane. We never did see 93 octane gas; the best you could get was 91.
Our days always ended with a group table, eating at restaurants in Red Lodge, Roscoe, or Fishtail. There is no such a thing as a bad restaurant in this area; each of them provide a great selection of food including buffalo burgers, buffalo steaks, and some even had those famous Rocky Mountain Oysters. In Roscoe we found a place called Grizzlie’s that had a 36 ounce T-bone steak for around $26.00. If you wanted an extra plate to share with your partner, it was only an additional $7.00 and the food was out of this world..
While we were there, Fishtail, Montana had
their Third Annual Testicle Festival at the Cowboy
Bar. The T-shirt is real cool - at the bottom is says
“GOT NUTS?” To some this may seen a little
crazy, to them it is a way of life. That certainly
aren’t worried about being politically correct.
Believe me on this though, these people are a
cut above the rest of America. They are the
friendliest people I have ever met.
On our way back from the Testicle Festival
(Hark didn’t have this second mention in his ar-
ticle, but I’m the editor and I liked the way testicle
festival kinda rolls off the tongue so I hadda put it
in again. Okay, so I’m juvenile. What’s your
How's this for dining with a view?
point? Monk) in Fishtail we got caught in an ice storm. In June! Man. The rain started pouring and the next thing we know the water turned to ice, it was slippery like hell and you talk about cold, man, it was cold all of a sudden. Thank God we were only about six miles from Red Lodge when the sky let loose. We found out from people at the lodge that these kinds of storms are common in the Rocky Mountains during spring and summer.
On day three of our journey we rode back over the Beartooth, past the Chief Joseph Hi Way and over to Yellowstone National Park. Even though Yellowstone is only about 80 miles from Red Lodge, this is a long day trip. Summer is the prime time to visit Yellowstone for tourists and our speed rarely reached 30 MPH in Yellowstone Park. Our first stop of the day was in Cooke City Montana, founded in the late 1800’s when gold was discovered. Miners dug in the mountains for many years looking for the Mother Lode, without success, and the city nearly died.
About ten years ago a geologist went back to the mountain, started digging again and found the Mother Lode only fifty-seven feet from where the original miners stopped digging. However, because Yellowstone National Park is so close, the gold will remain in the ground. The chemicals used to extract the gold would be extremely toxic to the fragile ecosystem in Yellowstone, hence it won’t be mined. The land is privately owned by a person who is a sixth generation local and the town survives because of its unique location to Yellowstone National Park. The East Gate Park entrance is only two miles from the town.
After entering Yellowstone we saw buffalo, wild turkey, deer, elk, coyotes and a host of other wildlife. The traffic at times was going less than 5 mph because people stop for nearly everything, us included. We stopped at many places in the Park, and during our journey to the area from Central Florida, at each major stop such as States, Parks and other points-of-interest along the way, our HOG Chapter stopped to take pictures. All together I’m sure we took at least 1,000. Anyhow, back to Yellowstone. Our journey ended at Mammoth Hot Springs.
I tell you what, this place is beyond my natural ability to understand - it’s a mountain being formed from mineral-laden hot water boiling out of the ground. The art the water creates would be a challenge for the best artist in the world to paint and recreate. A picture can’t begin to show its beauty. Indeed, only the thoughts of it you left behind tells the true story. We rode out the North Entrance of Yellowstone for our 125 mile trip back to Red Lodge. It was a great ride. We followed the Yellowstone River for miles, watching boats head-ed downstream working to catch the big trout in the river.
At all times we took the back roads, those that challenged a person’s riding ability. The terrain around us changed constantly, not like many areas we ride every day. You don’t have to ride too far to see change of one type or another. It might be an altitude change, a road grade change, a weather change, a terrain change or whatever. All I know is the changes were continuous.
For me, two things that stand out more than anything are at the top of mountains looking down, and below the mountains looking up. Each has its own characteristic; each has its own magic power; and, most important of all, each has the power to burn images in your memory bank forever. Our trip will not be forgotten for the rest of our lives. A very large piece of the Beartooth, St. Joseph Hi Way, Yellow-stone National Park, Red Lodge, Montana and the sur-rounding areas is etched in our minds and hearts forever.
After this trip, all I can say is “Savor every moment.”
