Since I live right in some pretty good riding area here in Western Montana, I don't often get to do overnighters out there since I can make some pretty good loops discovering new ground, and end up back at the house in one day. Well, Mrs Shady had a softball tournament for the weekend up in Kalispell, so my buddy Adam and I schemed up a little route that would afford us a camp night and swing into Kali to check up on the girls (scoring good hubby points) and ride beyond. Perfect. Normally I look over new areas on Google earth, pick some fire road routes, then write down some GPS points at designated points to keep me on track. Sometimes during the ride I'll use this info, sometimes not. You get up in the hills and the route you pick is usually obvious. So I didn't make those plans this time. Wut da hell, I know what I'm-a-doin'. I head out Friday from home base in Hamilton, heading north to Adam's place up in Ronan. Bike turned to 15,000 miles right then. I pick up Adam in Ronan, and we roll west towards Hot Springs. Over the mountains and to the valley Once in the little quirky burg of Hot Springs, we head to a place called Fergie's that we heard had decent food. I'm a sucker for a hamburger steak and when I see one on the menu, it's mine. With a Flathead Pale Ale, of course. Adam goes for chicken fried steak. Gemma nutha one deez So we finish up dinner, and hopping on the bikes discover nuts missing from Adam's fork tube clamp. Probly otta have those. So, we walk across the street to the closed hardware store, where two older ladies are sitting on a bench chatting. Turns out they own the store. They open it for us after we promise to hug and kiss them. We get away with some 8mm locking nuts and Adam threw them a 5. Didn't kiss them but I woulda. We head for the hills west of town to find a camp spot. Adam built this cool rack for his KLR. It's made out of solid rod but is lightweight, and its structural design makes it very sturdy. I like it. After shooting stuff with the .22 pistols, we chat around the campfire over some cold beer and zonk out late and sleep hard. We could hear the band playing in town way below us in some outdoor festival they were having. At the crack of about 8:30 we make some coffee and pack it up. Lots of exploring to do. We will head west through some remote country, and catch a road that goes north up to highway 2 between Libby and Kalispell. This is where we could use some GPS coordinates. We did a couple of big circles out there, and came back to the same places a couple times. My GPS is not one of the cool ones that does everything, I need to plug in numbers to it. Or learn how to run it better. It kept telling me to just get the hell back to Hot Springs and go home. We came upon some folks camping and asked them how to get to Little Thompson river road. The guy looked at me kinda funny, and said "how much fuel ya got?" We were a little off track. He gave us some short instructions and we took one left that we had considered on an earlier loop and it got us in the right direction, and over all the big hills. Beautiful country back there. Came down to the river road, which was just as dusty as all the rest, and headed up north to Highway 2, right by Lake McGregor where we ate lunch at the cool old lodge. From Lake McGregor, you can head north through Lost Prairie, and loop around and back to Highway 2 close to Kalispell. We did just that. Lost Prairie is home to a yearly Skydiver boogie that is a pretty wild time. Little schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere. We make it to Kalispell and say hi to the girls. The team is winning and they're having fun. I said give me an ADV-worthy picture, and got this. From there, we just had time to head down to the east shore of Flathead and have a beer at the Woods Bay Brewery. Great beer, tiny little old building. Adam has to head home from there as he had a road race in Helena to be at the next day. I whip back over to the Swan Valley to camp on Swan Lake. First I have dinner at the Swan Bar, a little place I just love. This was dayamn fine, as was the young bartender named Brooke. Back to the lake to see some old friends, and have another night of deep, comfortable sleep. In the morning I head back to Kalispell to check on the girls. They are undefeated and go right through to the championship game and win the whole kit and kaboodle. It was great sport and their co-rec team is a lot of fun folks who can compete and still not take it too seriously, and always have the other teams and the umps in on the fun. We take some pictures with the big trophy and get ready for the long ride home. I rode 635 miles from Friday to Sunday, and besides a pretty sore butt right at this minute, have nothing but the greatest of memories. Good riding, good friends, good times. And cold beer.
Great stuff! I've made an Alberta-Helena-Missoula-Kalispell-BC-Alberta loop twice this year. Love Montana! Great shots.
