Day 46

Had another great day of riding today. Left Townsend, MT around 9:15am and kept heading east along route 212 all the way to Billings. There I had to jump onto I-90 for a bit, and eventually turned off onto route 212 to go and check out the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument where Custer made his last stand. One thing that I found out while I was there was that there are grave markers strewn all over the place and this is because in the days after the battle, the union soldier where buried pretty much where they died on the field of battle. It wasn’t until 1881 that they were reinterred in a mass grave under a large memorial marker. I even found the marker of General Custer. From here I continued east on route 212. I was a bit unsure of this decision because not half a mile down the road there was a huge, blaze orange sign stating that there were unpaved sections of road up ahead and motorcycles should consider alternate route. I looked at my map, but any other route was a serious detour, so I decided to just press on; after all, how bad can it be!? Well, after about 80 miles I figured the sign must be mistaken, but just 10 miles outside of Broadus, MT I finally hit the road construction. It started of lightly with 7 miles of freshly torn up asphalt. Now, if you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle you know exactly how nerve racking this can be; the groves continually pull your motorcycle left and right, making for a very uneasy feeling. Now, this of course was not the end; the main course was 2 miles of somewhat compacted dirt and gravel! Yeah! I finally pulled in to Broadus and stopped to get some gas along with this other motorcycle that I’d been trying to keep up with for the past 60 miles or so (a Kawasaki Concourse if I remember correctly). So I struck up a conversation with the guy, Bradford is his name, and it turned out he was in the process of doing a similar trip around the country, but a little faster than myself. So of course we swapped stories of our respective trips so far and about the roads we were planning on taking from here. Check out his blog, http://blog.bidnick.com/ . From Broadus we road together down route 212 for a while until he turned off to head towards Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. I myself continued on 212 all the way to Belle Fourche, SD where I am spending the night. Tomorrow I hope to make it through South Dakota.

Here are the few pictures from the day: