Another eventful day. Left the Great Falls, MT hotel at 5:45
am in overcast, cold and rainy weather. Eventually made it to Cheyenne, WY; 681
miles.
I had checked the weather several times the night before and
again just before leaving and it looked like the weather would improve as I
moved southeast towards Billings, MT. After riding about 35 miles in the
weather I could start to see a thinning of the weather so I kept moving as fast
as the conditions would allow. At 50 miles I started breaking out of the weather.
I stopped and took a few pictures of the weather at that point.
Just as I was getting clear of the weather I rounded a bend and
there were two deer in the middle of the road. I grabbed some breaks and
stopped before impact and they scattered. After that I was much more aware of
potential critters. I must have seen 50 different antelopes/deer along the road
the rest of the day but no more on the road.
I finally got to Billings and it was an extremely neat town.
I came into town from the northwest and the highway was on top of a ridge
overlooking the town. I took several pics of the town from the ridge but they
don’t do justice to the view.
As I rode out of town I see a sign saying “Little Big Horn
Battleground 55 miles”. This was originally one of the places I wanted to see
on our return trip. I didn’t realize that my rerouting to Tulsa would take me
right by the spot. I decided that if it wasn’t more than 30 miles off my
planned route I would divert to the battleground. It turned out to be 1 mile
off the main highway (I-90)! In fact I-90 runs right through the valley where
the ~5,000 Indians were camped with the ridge where Custer made his last stand viewable
from the highway. I rode up the ridge to where the monument is located and took
a couple pics of some of the burial sites. I had been interested in the Little
Big Horn for years and read several books about the battle so it was a treat to
actually see the site. An interesting side note is that as I rode down the
ridge to get back on the highway I noticed several casinos (I assume Indian
owned) located just off the I-90 exit. I thought this pretty amusing. If you
find yourself riding through Montana on I-90 be careful; the Indians are still
scalping white men at Little Big Horn.
As I got into Wyoming the weather was great but the wind
started blowing again with a vengeance. I passed several highway warning signs
saying “Caution, wind gusts of 35+ mph”. I did take a picture of a windsock
they had by the highway. I have never rode in wind that felt like it was trying
to rip off my jacket. In fact it was trying to rip off my helmet; really. It
felt like someone was standing on the back of my bike and pulling on my helmet.
If I did not have it buckled it would have flown off my head.
This was also another milestone day; I crossed the T. On our
trip out we rode I-80 west bound through Cheyenne on our way to Rawlins, WY to
complete the Iron Butt on day 1. I crossed I-80 on 1-25 south bound as I came
into Cheyenne on day 18; today. That’s a big loop! I’ve ridden 6,208 miles to
date with another 783 miles to Tulsa and another 290 to Little Rock. Counting
the 355 miles I rode from LR to St Louis to meet up with Jim that makes this a
7,636 mile ride. I’ll have all the final numbers when I get home.
Tomorrow depending on the wind I will probably stop in 500
miles for the night (mid Kansas) then get to Tulsa before noon on Saturday.
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