Day 3 - 4

Losing the Grid / Finding Amy Grace
Please don't worry about me when I lose contact from time to time. My trip is covering a lot of very sparsely populated territory where it isn't possible ... I simply cannot be in touch.

I packed up in Great Falls Monday morning and hit the road. I ate breakfast at a gas station (breakfast burrito and OJ) and set the phone up for a time lapse video.  (Look out for the wild horses in the road at the 2:15 mark.)  As recommended, I switched the iPhone to "airplane mode" to prevent issues with video capture interruptions ... the family tracker push notifications are a pain and downright dangerous to cancel when riding with gloves. So with my phone not transmitting, my Family Tracker dot stopped moving.

When I arrived in St Mary, Montana about 4 pm I turned the phone back on to find the dreaded "No Signal" ... the area is really remote and AT&T has no towers from Browning MT to the Canadian border. I checked for WiFi hotspots and found one but it required a password. I rode to Babb and ate at the Two Sisters restaurant ... a quirky / funky / artsy spot that proudly displays the can of pepper spray that Jack Hanna used to ward off a grizzly bear about two weeks ago. Art, pepper spray and a great burger, but no WiFi. I set up camp at the Chewing Blackbones campground ... WiFi?  Fuggedaboutit. I rode into glacier along the Going to the Sun Road to the visitor center at the top of Logan Pass ... "No Signal" and no WiFi. I headed back to Babb for a beer at the Cattle Baron Supper Club, no WiFi. I knew that back home Julie would be worried.



The Chewing Blackbones campground is a bit different.  There are literally hundreds of camping spots but only about six sites were occupied that night.  Most of the spots have no picnic table, just a post and electrical hookup in a field. I ultimately guessed that this had been set up decades ago as a big KOA campground, but they relocated to a better spot nearer the park entrance.  An ancient man sits in a pickup truck at the gate facing the highway.  When he talks you can count the missing teeth, about six of them. He told me to take any spot except G6 ... the only one that was taken at that time. I chose spot G23 at the far corner of the campground beside the beautiful mountain lake.


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So when I arrived back at the campground, I was a bit surprised to find that two tents were set up in spot G24 right next to mine. I strolled over and introduced myself to a group of five campers from "the other side" (of the continental divide) in Whitefish. They were surprised because they thought they had set up next door to a friend who was coming up earlier than them. They were coming for a memorial to their friend Amy Grace who died in a car accident two weeks ago. We talked a while and I headed for my tent while they headed for the bar in Babb. I heard them pull in four or five hours later after 2:00 am.

My feet were cold and I slept restlessly until 5:00 am. I could hear my neighbors' fire crackling and their low voices. I got up and strolled over to talk with them and they immediately offered me a glass of wine and a bowl of the pot they were smoking. I said, "You know, somehow I have managed not to smoke the stuff since 1982." One of the campers said, "Dude, what a coincidence! I was BORN in 1982." I suddenly felt very, very old. They told me the northern lights had been out (Amy Grace sent them) and that they tried to wake me. We talked a while and I went back to my tent and slept until nine.

Late morning, I broke camp and packed the bike. We all went to breakfast together in Babb. We talked and they were young people working jobs (computer repair, landscaping, hotel desk clerk) that kept them going and close to the ski resort in Whitefish MT. I picked up the tab telling them that Amy Grace had sent me.

I backtracked south along the eastern side of the mountains to the town of Browning where I found the AT&T network. There were a half dozen voicemails from my girlfriend Julie, increasingly frantic in tone. "WHERE ARE YOU???" I called her immediately and reassured her that I was okay and wasn't ignoring the outside world, I simply had no way to say "Hello world!"

From Browning, I proceeded to East Glacier - then around the southern boundary of Glacier Park to West Glacier into the park 11 miles to the Lake MacDonald Lodge. Beautiful. I stopped at the front desk to see if, by chance, there was a cancellation - no dice. I rode west 40 miles to Whitefish and stayed at a nice place called the Downtowner Hotel (two thumbs up). My bike felt at home in a corral with about ten other motorcycles. The hotel is owned by a man who used to farm in Alberta, he now rents out the farmland. He told me he bought the place and gave up farming and that the hotel had needed a lot of work. The effort he put into it really shows and the place has a great location a block off the main block of shops and restaurants.

Today's goal is Missoula. The ride along the eastern shore of Flathead Lake is said to be gorgeous, lots of cherry orchards and they are in season!

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