You keep curving and climbing in elevation until you reach the peak. There were piles of snow still on the sides of the road! Once again I was thankful for headed grips haha.
We highly recommend Bear Tooth Pass for all motorcycle riders. It should be on your bucket list.
From there we headed into Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone has beautiful scenery and amazing wildlife but the traffic is horrendous! It took most of the day to get through Yellowstone because one animal near the road would cause the biggest traffic jam ever from tourists trying to take pictures. There were a couple instances of super long lines of cars and we thought there must be a bear or something really cool to look at (people were running down the street between cars with their cameras) and all it would be was another bison. Don't get me wrong...bison are cool but there are millions of them everywhere in Yellowstone. There's definitely not a shortage of seeing bison there.
We ended up seeing a grizzly bear (from a distance thankfully), a black bear, a herd of elk, and lots of bison. The last part of our day in the park was saved for checking out Old Faithful. Who knew it would be such a production?! They had bleachers all around it, restaurants and gift shops galore, and a ton of people arriving in big buses. It was still cool though. We bought a soft pretzel and sat on a log away from all the crowds. The coolest part was all the smokin hot sulfur pools.
Once we made it through all the traffic leaving Yellowstone, it was too late to try and find a campground (all the campgrounds in Yellowstone were full) so we got a cheap hotel room in West Yellowstone.
The next day we headed out to Bozeman, Montana. Jason's dry bag had a hole in it, so we spent most of the day driving through all the streets of Bozeman looking for a rafting store that sold dry bags. We finally found one in the late afternoon, got his stuff switched over, and headed out of town to find a campground. By the way...Montana is absolutely beautiful! If we hadn't of just bought our first home in Colorado, we would have bought a home here. Anyway...we found a cute little campground near the mountains and next to a creek called Aspen Grove. Bob, the campground attendant, was the nicest person ever. He stopped by to chat and even gave us firewood for the evening. Side note...there are lots of great secluded places to camp in Montana but we are now in grizzly country and everyone has recommended either camping with groups of people around or camping in a campground that has bear boxes (metal storage containers for your food and stuff that smells good that bears cannot open). That is why we have only stayed in campgrounds so far. Here was our site in Aspen Grove:
All the nights we have camped up until that night we had made freeze dried soups and chili (bought from the Amish stores back home) and they have been so yummy. Better than normal camping food! That night however we made backpacker meals. Definitely not as tastey but very filling.
We made it through the night without any bears so we packed up and headed toward Glacier National Park. It was quite a long drive through Helena and some beautiful twisty back roads (plus we had to drive through a vicious thunderstorm) so our plan was to camp outside the park and then spend all day the next day driving the Road to the Sun. We found the most beautiful campsite on Hungry Horse Lake (they even had bear boxes)! We had a little extra time so we bought a couple fishing licenses and a few beers and spent the afternoon fishing. We didn't catch anything but we had fun trying.
We had a deer walk right up to us at our campsite. We named him Charlie since he looked like a bigger version of our dog haha.
The next morning we fueled up and entered Glacier National Park. Thankfully we started somewhat early so the traffic wasn't too bad. Glacier National Park is absolutely beautiful!! We highly recommended adding the Road to the Sun to your bucket list too. There were waterfalls everywhere, glaciers in the distance, and beautiful mountain views everywhere.
We didn't want to try crossing the Canadian border in the evening, so we found a campsite at Talley Lake (recommended to us by our friend Shahn who grew up in this area). We have been very fortunate to have all our campsites near a creek or lake. We love hearing the sound of the river while we are laying in our tent. Oh!...almost forgot...we had quite the gourmet campfire supper that evening. We bought a small collapsible cooler to put beers and stuff in so we bought hotdogs and beans to cook over the campfire. They were delicious!! The campground host came over to chat while we were cooking and told us stories about his motorcycle adventures. He said he bought a Harley and didn't come home til 70,000 miles later. It's amazing all the random people we meet at gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants, etc that have been on some kind of motorcycle adventure. We have even ran into some riders we met in one city and showed up again in another city.
Anyway...the morning had come for us to try and cross the border into Canada! We were a bit nervous because Jason's ability to get into Canada determined the fate of our trip. We grabbed a coffee in Eureka (the last US town before the Roosville border crossing) and sat in a parking lot making our last few phone calls before our phones stopped working. When we rolled up to wait in line at the border crossing guard stand, there was a small line but we had a couple other motorcyclists to chat with. They were heading up to Jasper for a little vacation. Once it was our turn, Jason went first. The guy took Jason's passport, asked him a few questions, and sent him on his way into Canada. Then it was my turn. Same thing happened...hand the guy my passport, asked me a few questions, and then went on through. We were kinda shocked at how easy that was compared to past experiences of other people. The border guy was super friendly too. Jason did his happy dance and we headed off toward Cranbrook.
Our bikes really really needed oil changes so that was our most important task to tackle in Cranbrook before heading to our friend's house in Kimberley. During lunch we asked some locals if there was a dirt bike shop in town and thankfully there was. It was called All Season Motorsports. They were the nicest people ever! Jason bought a new front tire for his bike because his knobby tire was all worn out and then we bought all the supplies we needed for our oil changes. The bike shop was super kind to loan us a corner of their shop to work on our bikes. Jason did a quick easy job on his bike but mine on the other hand was a pain in the butt!! BMW seems to make everything complicated. Normally to do an oil change there is one main oil pan bolt you take off to drain all the oil and then empty the oil from the oil filter compartment, etc. Well...I drained all the oil from the drain plug...blah blah blah...and then went to fill it and the oil tank was still half full of oil!! Neither of us knew what was going on so we did all sorts of things to try and figure out this issue. It wasn't until we researched on the computer later that we found BMW has a second drain plug on the bottom of the upper oil reservoir! You have to take the left side panel off to access it....ridiculous. At least we know now.
Our bikes were so happy to have clean, new oil. They were so much smoother after that. A huge thank you to All Season Motorsports!!
We arrived in Kimberly early evening, grabbed a few groceries, and settled in. We are so grateful to our friend, Irene, for letting us stay a couple days at her home. We were able to shower, do laundry, and reorganize ourselves. We enjoyed great company, explored the cute little town, and had some amazing food. Irene went over some maps with us, so I think we have an idea or a general direction for where we are going tomorrow. From here on out we won't have many days with available wifi, so we apologize for not updating things as often. At least our gps tracker will follow us the whole time. We uploaded a bunch more pictures too:
http://mommer.smugmug.com/Motorcycles/Alaska-2015/49948984_NtmPzL#!i=4132717478&k=qHFcmx7
Thanks for following along! :)
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