Surprise. Rain came in overnight.
Two real cowboys.
Montana is a hay producer.
Lots of it.
Looking back fover my shoulder found Larry correctly alighned
with my radio antenna.
As we approached Billings (25 miles north), the prarrie
again begins to give way to rising trerrain.
July 5, 2015. Overnight in Billings, Montana. We travelled south, while zigging and zagging, all day.
This morning we were surprised to find that rain had fallen most of the night, and continued to fall beneath an heavily cloudy sky. The warm-hot temperatures of the last week were also gone. We pulled the bikes under the canopy of the motel, from where we had left them in the motel parking lot, dried our seats, and loaded the bikes. Then after putting on the rain gear we departed for Billings in a light rain and 49 degrees.
It rained on us for the next two hundred miles, and the temperature remained in the low 50's. We managed to stay dry (mostly) and reasonably warm (sometimes), or at least I can claim that. Larry had/has more exposure to the wind and rain on his Harley and I felt badly for him all day.
The speed limit over the roads we traveled is 70 miles per hour, although as I posted yesterday, we were riding on two-lane roads. The roads were well maintained, with some exceptions. Thirty miles or so south of Shelby, Montana (our starting location for the day) the four-lane highway suddenly ended with a "Road Closed" sign directly in front of us in the southbound lane. In addition to Larry there were several vehicles behind me. I pulled to the "closed" sign and the traffic behind Larry proceeded into the northbound lane, which was a mixture of gravel and detriotated asphalt. Soon we saw that there was also northbound traffic coming our way, sharring the road, which was under construction. We joined in on the "under-construction-northbound-road"to continue en route. We did this for the next 20 miles, when we arrived at a point they had not begun to rebuild. I guess we are fortunate that we were there on a Sunday or we may have experienced delays, which is never good, but even worse when it is raining, and you are on a motorcycle.
A word about the speed limit. Although the speed limit along our route was 70 mph I maintained a constant speed of 63 mph (most of the time). From my time in Montana I recall that Montana's speed limit was R&P, or Reasonable and Prudent. This was the legal speed guidiance until the Montana Supreme Court struck it down in December 1998. To read more about Montana's history for speed limits click here.
We stopped after the first eighty miles or so in a place designated as Moore, Montana (Pop. 183). At Moore was a service station-restaurant-convenience store combo (Eddie's Corner) that was as busy as a bee hive with activity. The food was good, and the price of fuel was the lowest we have paid in three weeks - $2.749 per gallon. As we were leaving we had a pleasant encounter with two cowboys, Will and Blaire (second photo in this posting). Both looked like real cowboys, especially Blaire (the shorter of the two cowboys). I should have asked him if being named Blaire caused him any problems thoughout his life. Thought about it. Thought better of it.
As we continued south we saw a lot of hay that had recently been harvested, still in the field. It was all in round bales. There was so much hay on the ground that I was curious about Montana's hay production. So I looked it up. I learned that Montana is the 7th leading hay producing state in the US with a production of 5,460,000 tons (2013 figure). Texas was number one in 2013. That is a alot of hay.
It continued to rain on us until 100 miles or so north of Billings. After the rain stopped the cloud cover remained. The temperature stayed in the low 50's until the rain ended, and as we neared Billings the temperature peaked (for us) for the day at 66 degrees.
Another good day.
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