Our trip to the Pacific NW....

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Sagebrush
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Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#1

Post by Sagebrush »

Or what we did on our summer vacation.

The plan:

1. Load the bikes on the trailer and pull them for four days straight to Missoula, MT.

2. Unload the bikes, put the truck and trailer in storage and ride the bikes around the Pacific NW starting with Glacier NP.

3. Attend the NGW Western Rally which determined the dates for the entire trip.

4. Load the bikes back on the trailer and pull them for four days straight until we get home.

Mission accomplished we left on June 19th and got home the evening of July 13th.
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HA! I bet you were expecting to see some pictures, weren't you?

Well, between my pictures and Terrie's I've got about 2000 of them to sort through so be patient. As I get them ready I'll be posting them in batches as my busy (tongue in cheek) schedule allows.

First four days:

We drove in approximately 620 mile increments in order to reach Missoula from Raleigh a distance of 2500 miles in the four days that we allotted. Because it was all about getting there we didn't take too much time for pictures but we have a few. Some were taken from inside the truck at speed so please pardon if the foreground is a bit blurred and there are reflections from the glass.

First stop, other than for gas, was a rest stop along I-77 in Virginia. Since we were in the heart of the Appalachians we took a picture to show we were going from the major Eastern mountain chain to the major western mountain chain(s).

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I thought the designer's placement of the dead trees in order to show interest and contrast in the layout was brilliant.

We buzzed through the rest of Virginia and West Virginia except for one incident. We stopped at a rest stop in WV near Huntington for a break. As we were merging with traffic on I-64 leaving the rest stop Terrie realized that she didn't have her purse. Oh Joy! We drove 4 miles to the next exit merged back onto I-64 Eastbound and after 10 miles flipped our direction again and returned to the rest stop where after careful examination of the women's restroom her purse wasn't found. As I was taken mental inventory of the damage to our finances that could occur Terrie questioned a rest stop worker if anyone had turned in a purse. Joyfully someone had and we retrieved our property along with our sanity. All told this little episode cost us about 45 minutes and 20 miles of extra driving. As a result Terrie wasn't allowed to take her purse out of the truck for the rest of the trip except to put it in her bike when we unloaded in Missoula.

The second day out we passed through St Louis so we took the obligatory picture of the arch. Its a tough drive through downtown with several state highways and a couple of interstates all merging to cross a couple of bridges. Ad the construction in and its a tense stretch of road.

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We pulled over for gas somewhere in the middle of Missouri and this barn in a wheat field was adjacent to the station so we took the picture. By this time the traffic around St. Louis was a distant memory.

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The rest of Missouri and all I Iowa along the Missouri River was uneventful and un-photgraphic. But we stopped in Mitchell SD on our third day to view the world famous Corn Palace. The Corn Palace is civic auditorium that the locals decorate with various murals inside and out using naturally colored corn grown specially for the job. They use a different theme every year. Unfortunately, they were getting ready to do major renovations to the building and most of the murals had been removed and the building was surrounded by construction equipment. We did get some pictures of one outside wall that they were retaining the murals on for as long as possible but even those had some of the decoration removed.

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Western SD is all about the plains. Some plant that we tried several times to get the name of by asking the locals but never could get it identified was in full bloom. With myriad yellow flowers on a leggy light green plant it covered the prairie in chartreuse which contrasted nicely with the darker green of the prairie grasses, throw in numerous prairie potholes and you had an interesting landscape.

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One of the things that the folks in SD provide to keep you occupied while crossing their state are the Wall Drug signs. We crossed the SD border from Iowa on I-29 and from there to the junction with I-90 west to Wall, SD we counted 88 Wall Drug signs, + or - six or so. Finally we arrived.

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Actually we blew right by Wall because our destination for the night was Spearfish.

We had an interesting experience in Spearfish. We stayed at a Best Western that had an unusual layout. Our first floor room had a door that opened onto the parking lot and one the opened on to and interior hall. Around 11pm while I was sleeping very soundly, because up to this point I had been doing most of the driving, Terrie stepped out to the parking lot to get some pain meds because of a wound on the instep of her foot that was bothering her. She had barred the interior door with the lever and latch but the exterior door was unlatched but had locked behind her. When she tried to get back into the room her card key wouldn't work. So she had the desk clerk make her a new key. That one wouldn't work either. So they made another one. That one wouldn't work either. The desk clerk said they had been having problems with that door lock over the last then days or so. Terrie knocked on the door but I never heard it. The desk clerk called the maintenance man who took some time to arrive. When he got there he tried the card keys without success. He finally opened the door using a push rod inserted into a hole on the underside of the key reader. Terrie finally got to bed after midnight.

We used Best Western gift cards gotten by cashing in our credit card rewards points to pay for most of our BW stays. The reason I mention this is because when we checked in to the Spearfish BW the afternoon clerk did not correctly credit our room stay to the gift cards. We woke up early and after breakfast checked out where Terrie noticed that our room was billed to our credit card and not the gift cards. Essentially we were paying twice for the same room. The night clerk, the same on that helped with the door lock, couldn't find the paper work the afternoon clerk filed and he couldn't find where he rand the gift cards. Finally after much searching he found the gift card, depleted of funds, in the trash cans and eventually found the paper work that had been mis-filed. However, he was at a loss as how to correct the error. We had to wait half an hour until the day manager arrived to sort out the mess. Altogether we lost about 45 minutes of prime road time on our way to our final destination with the truck, Missoula. I wasn't in a good mood for quite awhile.

But the Montana country side began to make up for it. We saw numerous antelope in the pastures feeding early in the morning. Interestingly this was the only day we spotted antelope. Some picture of MT.

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Enough of the pictures from the truck. The next installment will be while were on the bikes.
Dean Spalding
Raleigh, NC

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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#2

Post by El_Taco »

Cool. I want to see more.
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#3

Post by chewy999 »

Looks like a great trip.

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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#4

Post by Whiskerfish »

Sorry in advance but 2 smart alec comments I can't resist. First I never heard of the world famous corn Palace :lol: :lol: :lol: and second my Snoring keeps you awake but someone pounding on the door does not :P :P :P

Yes I am just jealous, it looks like a fantastic adventure shaping up. I just wish I could have Managed to make the trip with you guys!
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#5

Post by Roady »

There sure are some amazing contrasts there. The Eastern and Western mountains sure are different.

This is already shaping up to be a fantastic travelog.

You were so lucky to be going thru StL at this time of year. Some say there are two seasons: Winter and Construction. But there's a new bridge over the river and on to I-70 that does ease the pain a bit.
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#6

Post by Brant »

:popcorn:
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#7

Post by Sagebrush »

We unloaded the bikes in the hotel parking lot and drove the truck and trailer to a storage facility near the airport. The owner of the storage facility asked where we were going and pointed out a much more scenic (but slightly longer) route to Glacier NP than going the most direct way. We took him up on his suggestion and were glad we did. We were early in the season and the jewel of Glacier NP, Going to the Sun Road, was not open due to avalanche threats. As a result we had to get to the east side of the park using US-2 which skirts the southern edge of Glacier. That was OK as we had ridden Going to the Sun about 10 years ago and even though it is certainly worth a revisit we decided to explore other areas of the park which we might not have done if Going to the Sun was open. A few pictures along Montana 83, US-2, MT-49 and MT-89 on our way to Many Glacier Lodge.

A little lake in the woods with the mountains in the background.
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One of the world famous (even if Whiskerfish never heard of it) Ford tour buses parked at a rest stop. These buses were specially built in the late '30s for the National Parks and they are still on the road. I think they've been upgraded a bit over the years though.

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The center fork of the Flathead River

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The one mountain goat we saw all trip. This picture was taken on maximum zoom without a tripod, sorry for the focus. It was the best picture of three taken though.

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Lower Two Medicine lake in the foreground.

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Terrie is mesmerized by the scenery.

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Near the junction of MT-49 and MT-89

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The approach to Many Glacier Lodge along Many Glacier Road

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As you may have noticed the weather up to this point had been cloudy and unsettled. The first morning at Many Glacier broke clear and sunny for a change and I got up early to catch the eastern light on our surroundings.

The view from our room balcony.

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Pictures of the Lodge and its surroundings.

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I finally figured out where the white goes when the snow melts.

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More later......
Dean Spalding
Raleigh, NC

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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#8

Post by Whiskerfish »

Absolutely Awesome pics Dean!!!

Made some of those mountain shots look like the Alps.

Oh and yes I have heard of the Park Tour Coaches. Watched a special on the History channel about them a couple years ago!!
"Agreement is not a requirement for Respect" CDR Michael Smith USN (Ret) 2017
"The book is wrong, this whole Conclusion is Fallacious" River Tam
2008 GL1800 IIIA "TH3DOG"
1975/6/7/8/9 Arthur Fulmer Dressed Road bike
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and a whole garage full of possibilities!!

Psst. oh and by the way CHANGE YOUR BELTS!!!!
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#9

Post by HOTT »

Oh sooo fine. Beautiful. :orange
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#10

Post by Roady »

Gorgeous places and scenery ... stunning pictures!
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#11

Post by Oldewing »

Great job as always on the pic's Dean. Real nice to come along with you guys on the trips.
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#12

Post by Mrirbic71 »

Great pics. Thanks for sharing.
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#13

Post by Sagebrush »

Since Going to the Sun was closed we decided to take a little trip to Waterton in Canada for lunch. When we got to the bike we found a note from the park rangers that they had confiscated the contents of our cooler (which is permanently mounted to the trailer) and could pick it up at the ranger station. They did this because of bears breaking into coolers and cabins in search of food. We have been towing that trailer with our picnic lunch makings and adult beverages in it for years and leaving it overnight in the cooler including many national parks without any issues and never gave it a thought when we parked the bikes for the night. The note was worded in such a way that it gave us the impression that our food was in a cooler or in a refrigerated locker. Because of this we decided to go to Waterton and get our stuff.

About three miles from the hotel on Many Glacier we got lit up by a park ranger. After doing the usual license and registration check he asked if we knew that the rangers had our food. We said we did and told him our plans based on what the note implied. He told us that it was not the case that our stuff was in a locker and refrigerated and in fact was in a cooler on another rangers vehicle and would we please return to the ranger station in order to reclaim our stuff. So off to the ranger station we went.

The rangers were really good about the situation after we told them we couldn't remove the cooler from the trailer and take it to our room. We devised a plan of getting a Styrofoam cooler while we were out and put the stuff we needed to keep iced in it and take it and all the rest of our stuff to our room for the night that and clean up our trailer mounted cooler really well to remove any food smells from it. That we ended up doing buying a cooler and bleach product while on our way back from Waterton.

It turned out the rangers had to kill a bear just a couple of days earlier that had broken in to a cabin and found food and was now breaking in to every cabin it came across. Turns out the Grizzly bears aren't the problem but the black bears are.

So on to Waterton, AB;

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Chief Mountain is the main focal point along Chief Mountain International Highway

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Heading north you have the Rockies on your left and on the right the Great Plains.

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At the entrance to Waterton there is a kiosk similar to the ones at the US national parks entrances. We stopped and the college aged kid manning the station informed us in a smug little way that it was $15.80 Canadian to enter the town of Waterton. Didn't offer any other suggestion like maybe our US park passes might let us in, just wanted the money. We figured paying a price like that just for the privilege of buying lunch and maybe a t-shirt was too much so we returned to Many Glacier.

Not having lunch in Waterton we improvised and made lunch from our picnic supplies now located in our room. We went out on our balcony to eat our sandwiches. Many Glacier lodge was built, as all the lodges in Glacier NP by the Great Northern Railroad at the turn of the last century. Some improvements have been made since that time but most of the original layout of the rooms and their amenities (or lack thereof) date from that time. Our shared balcony was equipped with a simple wood framed screen door secured with a hook and eye latch. Upon finishing our lunch we found that when we let the screen door slam shut behind us the hook had jumped from the impact and had inserted itself neatly into the eye locking us both on our balcony and unable to get back into our room. After considering and rejecting yanking the door off its hinges or yelling down to the bell hops manning the entrance to the hotel I hit on the idea of using one of our plastic forks left over from lunch to insert between the door and the frame and lifting the hook out of the eye. The idea worked brilliantly and we were back in our room in a flash.

As it was threatening rain again that afternoon we decided not to stray too far and to take a walk around part of Swift Current lake that fronts Many Glacier Hotel.

A pair of loons playing hanky panky in the lake

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Interesting flower, more on these later

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The next morning dawned partly cloudy and with the wind torn clouds in combination with the rising sun I decided to take some of the same pictures I did on the previous morning but with different lighting.

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Leaving Glacier NP along the route we came in on we decided to ride the 13 miles on Going to the Sun Road that was open from the East Glacier entrance.

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Going to the Sun Road was just getting good when we had to turn around. If ever you have the chance to ride this road don't pass it up. A road that we would probably have ignored if Going to the Sun was open is the road into Two Medicine. It was the original tourist destination of Glacier NP until Going to the Sun was built and stole its thunder.

Looking into the Two Medicine valley.

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We ate lunch at a picnic table directly on the shore of upper Two Medicine lake.

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The end of Glacier NP now on to Kettle Falls.
Dean Spalding
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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#14

Post by Rat »

Great stuff ..... was it cold ?

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Re: Our trip to the Pacific NW....

#15

Post by Mrirbic71 »

Looks very relaxing.
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Being happy ain't nothing but having something to look foward too..
No matter what I'm doing I'd rather be riding.
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