2024-08-20: Livingston to Glendive

After spending the night at the exorbitantly-priced “Econolodge” in Livingston, Chris and I partook in the absolutely mediocre breakfast offered by our hotel. Mine consisted of a stale toasted bagel and Yoplait, while Chris’ consisted of a plate of biscuits and gravy. For the $200+ they charged, I’d certainly have rather stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, but such are the prices of accommodations within a day’s drive of Yellowstone.

When discussing our options, Chris wanted to head north, all the way as far as US-2 before turning east. I explained to Chris that the shortest way between two points was a straight line, but Chris insisted that because we could do 80mph the whole way to US-2 and along it that it would take the same amount of time to get to our destination his way as taking the Interstate. With some clear evidence to the contrary by way of Google Maps, we eventually agreed to a compromise. We’d take route 200, saving us only about 10 minutes along the way.

A bit of a slow pack-up ensued and, we departed around 9:00am from Livingston. The plan was to follow the Yellowstone River from Livingston, Montana all the way to its confluence with the Missouri River some 400 miles away in Williston, ND following I-94 nearly the entire way. Chris had other plans.

Along some of our break stops, Chris and I got to chatting about a few issues I was having with my bike, first was that without cruise control, I would tend to vary my speed on the Interstate a lot, making Chris have to adjust his cruise control too much for his liking. (That and my wrist was getting sore from having to keep the throttle opened to 80mph for a hour stretch at a time). The second was that my phone was having troubles charging from my bike, and one idea was that it was getting too hot on my handlebar mount in the sun.

We decided to plot a course via GPS to a motorcycle shop in Billings, Montana. I tried looking for a Cycle Gear, but one didn’t seem to be there, so I picked what I could find as the highest-rated other motorcycle shop in Billings and we headed there. As we rode into town, we went by several dealers on the frontage road in western Billings, but eventually pulled off the highway most of the way through Billings. The roads as we approached got smaller and smaller, eventually going to small stone in the dealer’s lot at the end of a dead-end industrial road. The shop was purely a repair shop, with nothing but dirt bikes, with even a converted KTM snow bike.

Undaunted, Chris suggested that we press on and we proceeded to visit each of the dealers we passed on the way into town looking for a throttle lock and a tailbag. An hour or so later, we came away from the three dealers with neither of the things we wanted, but with the knowledge that there is a gun rack accessory you can buy for your very own motorcycle, and having seen the new Triumph TF250X in their showrooms. But none of the things we were looking for were in stock.

Eventually, we gave up and decided to go find some lunch in Billings, so wanting to see my first Montana town of a reasonable size, we headed downtown to find a nice spot. Chris asked a random passerby on the street for a recommendation. He was told to check out Jake’s, just around the corner.

We had a great lunch, and afterward, took a bit of a stroll around, before Chris spied an antiques market and had to browse their wares. It was a pretty big space, and with only an hour left on the meter, we didn’t have time to go over the whole thing, but there were some pretty interesting items on offer. Chris didn’t find anything to replace his broken pipe with from his fall in Yellowstone, I didn’t find any coins to buy within my price range, so off we went.

We took US-87 north out of Billings, and took a rest stop in the town of Roundup, Montana about 60 miles up the road. In it, we spied a Radio Shack store. I went in looking for some help with my phone charging problems, and got to chatting with the franchisee about how she was able to keep a Radio Shack store running with all their corporate troubles. It was neat to hear how she was basically now running it as an independent business at this point, just with a well-recognized and storied name. Turns out there are several of these “rogue” Radio Shack’s left around the state of Montana, she told me, and none of them have been told they have to stop using the name, so they’ve just kept on keeping on with things.

After Roundup, we carried on to pickup route 200 east, and after some time, came to a spot that Chris recommended we stop, the village of Winnett, Montana. We pulled into the little town and Chris pulled up right in front of the bar on the main drag, saying he had great memories of this place from previous trips with Lester Katz. We sidled up to the bar and ordered some soft drinks, much to the bore of the bartender. After some time, I asked about getting myself a Montucky Cold Snack beer (a cheap grocery store beer available in California, at least, that’s marketed as the unofficial official beer of Montana). The bartender hadn’t heard of Montucky Cold Snack, but that did get us talking about her running the place with her husband, what kinds of interesting beers and alcohols they had available. One thing led to another, and before too long she was offering us free samples of some really interesting whiskeys that were locally stilled in Montana. What a salesperson! We left with two bottles in our saddlebags and some more nice memories from Winnett, Montana.

Onward down route 200 we went, at another stop in Jordan, Montana we watched as a group of 3 big dudes and 3 kids managed to change the tire on a big rig tractor without even taking the wheel off the thing, all in the space of 15 minutes while we had some cold drinks and got gas. These country folk know how to get shit done!

As the sun started to get low, it was becoming apparent that we weren’t going to make it as far as North Dakota this day. Chris had been telling me all day of a story where he was offered the role of chief of police of the town of Circle, Montana by its mayor on one of his first trips down route 200, so we decided to stop in once again, hoping to make it our night’s endpoint. There was also a weather forecast warning of an impending thunderstorm due to hit the area in an hour or so. Plenty of time to grab a bite, then make it to the motel on the outskirts of town — or so we thought!

Chris wanted to try one of the restaurants downtown that he’d never been able to before, The Wooden Nickel, so we parked out front and had ourselves a nice meal and a couple of beers.

With about 30 minutes to go, we headed out to the motel to find the office dark, with a closed sign hanging in the window. There were plenty of cars parked around the place, and rooms occupied, so we tried calling the phone number, only to find it went straight to voicemail that hadn’t been setup yet. Huh. What do we do now?

I went off to ask one of the guests if they knew how to get in touch with management, they didn’t. The gas station attendant next door also didn’t know, and suggested that we go 60 miles down the road to the local center of Glendive, Montana. All the while, the clock was ticking as that storm was getting closer and closer.

We wheeled the bikes under the cover of the portico at the motel’s office to keep them, and us, dry as the storm rolled in and we thought about what to do next. We debated camping right then and there, as it’d been a long day already. But then, around 9:30pm, the storm came in and what a storm it was, making it impossible to stay dry even under that roof!

I started to setup what bit of camping gear I’d brought under the portico, but as I did, I got to thinking about our ride schedule, and how we were nearly 200 miles behind on where I’d planned to be. Eventually I realized that we’d been planning all a day behind schedule to meet up with my brother in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada on Friday! Uh-oh. With that realization, we figured we needed to make it to a real hotel to get a good night’s sleep, since tomorrow would need to be a real mile munching day if we were going to catch up to make it on time. I found and reserved a Holiday Inn Express room in Glendive and suited up in our rain gear as we waitied for the worst of the rain to finish.

Around 10:30, the storm was finally starting to peter out and we got on the bikes and started heading down the road. It was only 60 miles, but in the black of night, with unknown wetness, we wanted to be careful. All the while a seriously epic display of lightning played out in front of us. I wish I’d brought my GoPro to take some video from this ride, it was a pretty incredible experience. Somehow we barely even were drizzled on through all of this, and by around 11:45, we rolled into Glendive.

Chris made sure that we celebrated the experience with some iced glasses of our Devil’s Brigade Montana whiskey before we finally were able to call it quits and get some well-needed rest.