Day 3 - Going the Sun... and Beyond (543 km)

We rode from Columbia falls to Glacier National Park, bought a park pass we can use for all the parks on our trip, and had breakfast at the local restaurant. I forgot, when ordering the ham and cheese omelette, that Americans use American cheese (which may be the former, but really doesn't qualify as the latter). Still, it was good enough for the purpose, and the coffee was excellent.

We then began the painfully slow ascent of the Going-to-the-Sun-Road. Painful, because of tour buses and timidity, especially of those drivers from Louisiana. I would like to suggest that the National Parks folks set aside certain days of the week, ideally those ending with a 'y', to be 'motorcycle only day' on the road, which was amazing in spite of the low speed of the ascent.

After we descended to St. Mary, we wound our way along Hwy 89, through the foothills of Montana. Past sylvan cemeteries of burnt birch trees, their dessicated trunks leaning at odd angles like the stones in some forgotten churchyard. Through the vast expanse of prairie and sky, dwarfed by hulking buttes, their spines looking like the remains of enormous ridgebacked beasts.

We passed through Augusta, and I filled up at the same gas station Scott and I had visited four years ago, the streets still a gravelly mess, but this time no forest fire and no command centre in the back of the garage.

From there we rode Hwy 287 till it met up with the I-15, the most brilliantly windy interstate, at least the section from Wolfe Creek to Helena. The stretch between Helena and Butte wasn't nearly as terrifying in daylight. In my memory, the twists were much tighter. But the dark distorts everything.

I briefly thought of stopping for the night at Boulder, as Scott and I had, getting a room at the O-Z, and dinner at P.K.'s Pub. But it wouldn't have been the same as I remember, either, and I don't want to pollute that memory with something more banal. Better to create new memories, and keep the old ones intact.