Well that was Part One!

Joel has a saying " Montana, where the skys are big, the women are scarce and the sheep are nervous. I didn't see many women, I didn't see any sheep, but this is certainly on of those big skys...

Mile after mile I pushed on down the Interstate, trying to close down the distance to Taz & Joel in Creston. What has happened to the 1000 mile days I used to regularly roll off, or at least 500 or 600ers. It seems neither I nor The Beast were up to it any more. The scenery was rather bland when compared to my early days up around Cape Breton and Cabot Trail. Every miles seemed hard won. As the wind picked up, hitting me at about 45 degrees, the ride became even harder, and unusually for me I was struggling to find my rhythm and settle down. Perhaps it was due to the niggle with the oil, perhaps I was just getting too old for these sorts of escapades!  I managed to grind out another meagre run of 260 miles before calling it a day at Medina, when I saw a campsite being signed from the Interstate. And what a strange campsite it was. Almost mirroring the previous night, the camp was set around the edge of the local playing field and right next to the school. It was however a nicely kept and laid out site with one very good shower, although again like the previous night the toilets were devoid of any sort of door or privacy….most odd! I guess that’s the way they do it in North Dakota!

It was still quite early when I turned in for the night. The weather had closed in and we had just a few spots of rain. I made sure everything was put away securely and out of any possible heavier rain! It was just as well, as later, I was woken by an almighty storm; the full works, thunder, lightening, high winds and rain in monsoon proportions. Just the sort of weather I hate riding in but love when I’m tucked up snugly in my tent. The storm  had run it’s course well before morning and had cleared the air nicely, with the sky looking as though I was going to get a fine dry ride across North Dakota.

The Painted Canyon

The first part of North Dakota had been fairly flat and monotonous, but as I rode on further the landscape slowly changed to the rolling hills we are all so familiar with from the cowboy films. I spotted a visitor centre of to my right for Painted Canyon. So needing a break I pulled in. Not only was it a visitor centre but it was also a viewpoint for the beautifully coloured and weather shaped hills. Unlike the painted rocks in Morocco, it was also all natural! I collected a map and info sheet from one of the rangers for the Theodore Roosevelt National Park which was just up the road at Medora. It looked interesting and also had a basic campground so I thought I’d take a look. Stopping at the entry booth I was told the cost was $20 or I could have a pass which covered all the US National Parks for $80, no seniors discount unless you are a US resident!  As I was hoping to do both Yellowstone and Glacier on my way across I forked out my $80 and went merrily on my way.

The first and by far the most amusing of the wild life has to be the Prairie Dogs. The park is home to thousands of them; in fact you could almost say they have a plague of them, so numerous are they. But hell, they are cute! Sitting up on their hind legs, little noses sniffing the air, one moment they are perfectly still, the next they dive back into their holes to reappear seconds later with just their heads showing as they look around for any dangers… I passed the Cottonwood Campsite, thinking to head on for another I’d spotted on the map, about half way around the scenic loop. At a junction I stopped to check which direction when to my horror I looked down and saw oil just running from the front right hand side of the engine. Parking in a closed entrance to the forestry I got off and checked to see what was happening. The oil was all coming from the bottom of the oil filter housing. I checked the three bolts but all were tight. I had changed the filter prior to setting out and had also fitted a new O ring and shim in the housing. It appeared that this new O ring had failed. Fortunately I was carrying the old one which I had replaced in my spare parts pack.

Whoops! Oil everywhere!

I took off the soft bags from the tops of my panniers and piled them on the floor and then laid the bike over onto them. That way, I wouldn’t lose all the oil and should have enough to top up the engine. Whilst I had the cover off I though I might as well fit the new filter as well… in for a penny! It was an easy job but rather messy, leaving a nice pool of oil on the road. Then all that was required was a pair of helping hands to pick up the bike. To say it is rather heavy when fully loaded would at best be something of an understatement! I soon flagged down a passing 4x4 and hey presto, job done. As I was cleaning up all the tools and putting the seat and luggage back on, a rather nice convertible Mini Cooper S pulled up driven by a lady. A little unusual at generally the only people who stop for a biker in trouble are other bikers. In fact a huge RV had stopped earlier but he had a 500cc bike strapped to the back! Anyway it of course turned out that Sue was in fact a biker with a Suzuki SV650 and a 250cc trail bike back at home in California! We chatted for quite a while with her giving me some “must see” places to go and also leaving me with a couple of tourist maps which she had finished with. All that remained was to cover the oil with some soil and gravel from the road side and head back to Cottonwood Campsite with my tail between my legs!!!

Cottonwood was a basic but very pleasant site, surprisingly large, but as it was still early season, sparsely populated. I did however manage to upset the ranger by tying up my shower in a tree ( You cant do that sir, it’s against park regulations to tie anything to the trees ) and  also by parking my bike next to my tent ( You can’t do that sir, vehicles must stay on the gravel areas and m ust not be parked on the grass ). In fact there actually wasn’t much grass on my pitch other that the little bit my tent was on, as it was a little threadbare! Anyway I didn’t get chucked out.  Next morning I was up and away bright and early, hoping to see more of the wildlife as rode the rest of the loop through the park. I was a bit disappointed as other than the inevitable prairie dogs, the only notable event was the sighting of a single buffalo. He just laid in the grass about 50 yards from the road and nonchalantly watched as I took his photo. I had spotted a whole herd of the wonderful beasts the previous day, but that was from the Interstate and it was not easy to just pull over to take any photos.

Heading back into Medora, I stopped for breakfast at a little café whilst I decided on my next move. The bike was back to it’s relatively small oil leak, or so it seemed and I was only a short hop north of Mount Rushmore so was contemplating a small diversion. I left town, retracing my route to pick up the road south which would take me in an almost straight line to the monument, but it wasn’t long before the tell tale signs of the leaks were all over my right boot once more. Despondently, I turn at the next intersection and got back onto the road heading west to Creston. At first I stopped every 25 miles to check the oil, then every 50. Even though the patch on my boot and the mess on the side of the bike got worse, as long as I left the dip stick loose, I wasn’t actually losing much. It was still about 790 miles to Creston where I could relax and sort the problem out properly. It was quite stressful having to keep checking the oil level, never being sure whether my rear tyre was getting nicely coated in oil on the right hand side. Right corners were taken very gently, though there weren't that many corners in either direction.

By the time I reached Malta I’d done just 240 miles but it was about 5pm so I found what looked to be a nice camp site behind a motel and pulled in.   I was the only tent there on the designated camping area, with a few RVs in gravel pull through sites. Only after my tent was up did I find out that there was a railway line just the otherside of the hedge carrying the huge freight trains that I seen during the day. As they slowly lumbered through pulling immense lines of wagons, the noise was incredible and the ground shook beneath my feet. I feared that it was going to be a rather sleepless night. Thankfully I had my trusty ear plugs but even they were going to struggle to keep out that racket! In fact I slept surprisingly well. The stress of the last few days of living with and trying to manage the oil leak had taken their toll. A hearty cowboy dinner of beans, beef jerky and noodles washed down with a couple of beers saw me zedding happily right through to 5am. I had 550 miles left to ride to Creston and it was Thursday. I reasoned that if I could make it there in one day, I could get the parts on order on Friday and hopefully have the parts by Monday, Tuesday at the latest. So after a quick cup of tea and a pancake with Maple syrup I got back on the road determined to put in some decent mileage, always assuming that the bike held up…

Apart from the nagging doubts about the oil, it was a great ride. Quite a few photo stop, lunch in a Tim Horton’s, and lots of stunning scenery. The first photo stop was just a few miles from the camp. All along the road there are marked Historic Points, with large display boards explaining about some event or other in the US and Canada’s distant past. This one put a whole new perspective on the railway that ran next to my tent last night. It was the very same Rail Road that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid terrorised in the late 1800s. On July 3^rd 1901 the gang pulled of what’s described as a premature Independence Day celebration by blowing the safe on the Great Northern Railway’s No 3 Passenger train getting away with a bag of gold coins and $40,000 in unsigned and worthless banknotes; the inspiration for the scene from the film where the money is seen floating in the air after the explosion!

I spotted lots of grain silos along the road and I was reminded of the Nancy Griffiths song Trouble in the fields… “The trains roll by our silos silver in the rain, leave our pockets full of nothing but the seeds of the golden grain” This was the wheat prairies, stretching as far as you could see. The wheat was only just appearing from the soil but at one photo stop I was again quietly singing the same tune to myself “There’s a book upon the shelf about the dust bowl days; and there’s a little bit of you and little bit of me on the photos on every page” I had walked

across to a ruined wooden shack with an old farm implement next to it. The soil was indeed very soft and dusty in spite of the recent heavy rains that the area had suffered. It was very easy to imagine the scene in the hot summer sun, with the wind whipping up the dust into dense clouds and the crops just withering in the fields.

I crossed the US/Canada border with little fuss. The border guard was a little confused by the fact that I was riding a UK registered bike stating that he had never had to enter one before and didn’t know what code to put it under… He soon managed to look it up and once more I was on my way west! Eventually the Interstate gave way to Hwy 3 which runs all the way to Creston and on to Vancouver and the coast. The part I was on was known as the Crows Nest Pass Hwy and was spectacular. I remembered it from my January 2014 visit when I traversed it three times, twice on the Greyhound bus heading down from Calgary and back, and once in my rental 4x4. However, then it was completely covered in snow and looked very different; still beautiful, but just so very different. As I got to Cranbrook the weather turned again and I quickly changed gloves and slipped my waterproof coat on. It didn't last long and by the time I got across the pass and down to Crows Nest Lake the sun was shinning once more. Another photo stop, waterproof off, a rather nice smoked sausage hot dog and it was away for the final run in to Creston. I’d passed through yet another time zone so was running an hour earlier than I had expected. Joel had sent me through the coordinates of their new house in West Creston so finding them was not a problem. I pulled onto the drive at almost exactly 7pm, much to their amazement, as they hadn’t expected me until the weekend. I had made my 550 miles and still felt really alert and wide awake. It was so good to see Taz and Joel’s smiling faces again, and their new house was simply stunning. A log cabin set in 7 acres of woodland, with a separate building which was to be my home and workshop for the next few day. End of part one of my fantastic journey I guess!

Crows Nest Lake