Day Nine

Breakfast View
















Highway scenery

















End of the day - delay in trip



It is about midnight local time as write this. I have very mixed emotions about today.

It started out great. We had a late breakfast at the hotel resort in Polson. The view during breakfast was great. The resort sits on Lake Flathead and has a small marina. The sky was a little cloudy but it was still beautiful. Lake Flathead is a huge lake. This is the lake we road along last night for about 35 miles.

After breakfast we got on the bikes and headed out of town towards Yellowstone. Our route took us south down US93 to I-90 where we headed back towards the east. We have been as far north and as far west as we were going to get to go. The ride down US93 was a challenge. They were doing road construction, which in and of itself is not a big deal. But, this was unlike any road construction on a US highway I have ever seen. There were numerous stretches of a mile or more where the road was nothing more than a two lane gravel road. This was between Polson and Missioula. The same stretch of road we would have ridden in the dark and possibly in the rain the night before had we decided to try and make it to Missoula. We make a good decision the night before. This would have been a nightmare in the dark. After reaching I-90 we rode until we needed gas (and could find gas), which happened to be in a town called Deer Lodge.

After filling up with gas I was looking over the bike and just happened to notice that my rear tire was separating and had one large chuck out of it. This is not something you want to see on a trip on a bike. I have no idea when this happened or how far I had ridden with it like that. The problem is that a tire like that is not safe to ride on. A blow out at 65 miles an hour on the interstate on a motorcycle could be disastorous and even fatal. The fact that it was Sunday put us in a hole as far as repairs go. We managed to find a bike shop that had been open, but was closing. The person that answered the phone was as helpful as he could be. He did not work on Yamaha bikes, but gave us the name of someone who did in Butte, which was 35 miles down the road. Since the bike was unsafe to ride he gave me the name of someone to call to come and pick it up and take it and us to the shop for repair in the morning. It is actually a little humerous to me that the wrecker driver was named Moose. About an hour after calling him, Moose showed up, loaded up the bike. We hopped in the cab and Doug and Teresa followed us into Butte, where we got a room near the bike shop.

We will be at the shop at 9am in the morning . Hopefully he will have or can get a tire that fits and get it on the bike early and we can get on down the road.

When all this occurred I was pretty upset. It had us way off our schedule. It is going to cost me towing, a tire, a forfeited room deposit at the hotel we had booked and a lot of time. But after reflecting on it for a while I have decided that it is not such a bad thing. Had I not seen the problem we would have continued on and possibly have had a catastrophic event. A little money and time is nothing compared to what could have happened. Instead of sitting in hotel room, some or all of us could be spending in a hospital or worse. I am blessed to be sitting here typing this. I am blessed to have friends along with me who love me and understand that things happen. I make sure I am prayed up before we start out each day. I firmly believe that God has watched over us. He kept us out of bad roads at dark last night and He pointed out the tire to me today.

We ended up only making about 100 miles today. We are about three hours away from Yellowstone and may not get to see everything we want tomorrow, but we get to wake up and see tomorrow. Beat the alternative !!