Yesterday I took a direct flight in the morning from Denver to Missoula Montana to pickup my new bike - the '03 BMW GS Dakar. The guy I bought it from picked me up from the airport. He has a beautiful house on a golf course and has obviously done well for himself. He let me test drive the Dakar - which looked brand new - and she rode perfectly. Then I handed him the $5.5K check. He also helped me plan my route through Montana. North through the Salish Native American Reservation (my roots) up to Flathead Lake and through Glacier National Park and south from there through Yellowstone and on through parts of Utah and Colorado.
From his house I took off around 1pm and it was only a few miles (like 40) to St. Ignatius where my great-grand parents and grand parents lived. It's a small but lovely town with friendly people and buffalo ranches and a large cathedral that would not be expected for such a middle-of-nowhere town. I took the day to walk around town after settling down at a motel that mom recommended. I first walked just around the corner to the cathedral. It had painted walls and ceilings and rows of benches and statues and all the things that a proper cathedral has.
Next stop was my great-grand mother's old house (on First and Diamond) and took pictures for my mom, since she has such fond memories of the place. Two streets down was ‘downtown' or city centre or something that contained an old Malt Shop and grocery store.
I took a few pictures of the buffalo but they were so far away that they didn't turn out too great. It was nearly sunset by then so I took my motorcycle off a ways to capture pictures of the landscape with the SLR. I my have gotten a few good shots but won't know for sure until I download them to my laptop back home.
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This morning was overcast and gloomy and looked like a rainy day so I put the rain gear on my luggage - no photos today, all packed up. I went north to Flathead Lake and took the beautiful Eastern shore road. The land was all lush and pretty with huge trees. But, of course, the government only gave the Reservation half the lake so a the halfway point across where it said ‘You are now leaving Salish Reservation' the trees were all cut down and trailer trash people clutter the once beautiful land.
I kept going north from there and filled up the bike (78MPG!) before entering Glacier National Park - and holy shit - what a beautiful place. I stopped a few times and just stood there admiring the view with my mouth hanging open. Just beautiful. It was still drizzly so I didn't take out the camera. Halfway through the ‘Logan Pass' (main road through Glacier) there became a thick cloud cover and a downpour putting a bit of a damper on the rest of the day. I didn't have any raingear for myself so I suffered through 70mph winds and cold wet weather for 250 miles to Great Falls, Montana.
I was freezing and shaking so I settled for comfort - the Hampton Hotel for $130 a night. I watched an Angelina Jolie flick and hair-dried my only pair of jeans and turned the heat on full blast and left four hours later, refreshed, to eat at 9:30pm - and everything had closed at 9:00pm.
The above was copied directly out of my hand-written journal.
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