The Campground in the Little Belt Mountains

There’s a magical feeling I recall when I think back on that trip, the one I got when we were gathered around our campfire in the early evening as a light summer rain fell through the dying embers of the day’s sunshine on our camp in the Little Belt Mountains of Montana on our way to Sturgis in 1995.  We were listening to Craig Chaquico’s “Sacred Ground” from the Harley Davidson Road Songs cd on L.C.’s stereo as the rain fell and dissipated the heat of the day around us.  Something about the light and the music combined to form something special.  Then reality set in.

Our day had begun in the KOA campground in Glacier, Montana.  The five of us had decided to vary the routine that year by taking Highway 2 out of Washington State through Glacier Park, then cruising the back roads of Montana down to rejoin I-90 and the parade of bikers headed for Sturgis by the direct route.  It was our third day out.  It began when my bike wouldn’t start when we were packed and headed to breakfast.  I sent them on ahead while I fiddled with the starter relay and caught up shortly when that worked.  The old girl gave me a scare that day, but never let me down when it counted, then or later.

Breakfast was in a bar, of course.  Everything in Montana happens in a bar, (except for the Tastee-Freeze in Laurel, which serves the best biscuits and gravy in the whole state, but that’s another story), in a bar, or on the road.  After breakfast we saddled up and headed out into the morning, always the best part of a day on the road.  First thing we did was head up the Going-To-The-Sun Road, and we caught perfect weather.  If you’ve ridden that section in bad weather, as I have, it can be nasty, but in the warm sunshine it is impressive.  You can see the handiwork of thousands of farm boys from across the Midwest who the government put to work doing something useful, with lasting results.  Their work is evident in the scattered National Park Lodges, great timbered structures that drop your jaw every time you walk in the door, and hidden in the roads that lead to Sturgis and Mount Rushmore.

  On the way out of the park, we bore right at Browning and took Highway 89 south and east to Livingston.  This is a classic forested beautiful two-lane highway with few people living along it, the type for which Montana is famous.  No speed limits, no traffic, no cops – a biker’s paradise, and, at the end, a good lunch at a nice little bar in downtown Great Falls.  That’s where we made our critical mistake.

Leaving Great Falls on 89 you literally ride off the end of the earth.  There’s a valley that starts outside of town where the cliff wall drops a few miles abruptly, and, as you approach the cliff at 60 miles an hour and wonder where the road is, the downhill right that starts the switchbacks gets close enough to make you hold your breath and cover your brake until you see it.

We rode across that valley until early evening, then pulled into the first roadside campground we found as we left the grasslands and headed into the Little Belts.  Our mistake was, when we left Great Falls we were full of food and beer and just assumed there would be a place to stop for dinner, not a good assumption in the back hills of Montana.  When we arrived at what proved to be our campsite, it was early evening and a squall was forming over the mountains that promised to drive us into our tents for the night.  We held a quick conference by the fire.  Everyone was tired, we were miles from anywhere, and we had no food, and a little water.  I volunteered to run down the road a few miles and look for a truck stop.

As I pulled out of the campsite I remembered to look back and form a mental picture of what the driveway looks like coming back.  Hate to miss it at night in the rain.  Then I booked on down the highway.  That’s a moment when you really get to know your bike.  It’s just the two of you powering into the gloom on a hope and a maybe.  This was before the cell phone era, and if a guy disappeared out here on a blind curve they might never find him.  It’s a time when you feel fully at attention and alive.

About 14 miles down I spotted our salvation:  An obvious roadside store with an old gas pump under the canopy and a general store in one end of a long structure with outbuildings.  There were lots of cars and trucks in the lot. I parked and walked in the door.

I offered the two old ladies behind the counter a heartfelt, “Boy, I sure am glad to find you here, still open!”  They gave me funny looks, and said nothing.  Then I glanced to the side, and realized the long low structure to one side of the store was one big room, connected inside the building.  There were rows of picnic tables arranged inside, and at those picnic tables sat what appeared to be every man, woman and child who lived in them there hills, and they all sat quietly staring at me, not saying a word.  There had to be 50 of them.  They were all white folks, dressed plainly, and it seemed on that quick glance that all the women wore full length skirts.   I had barged in on a town meeting, or a revival, or a church service or something, and it was quickly evident that they did not want me in their midst at all, no how, no way, and I should leave at once.

I turned to the old ladies and said, “We’re camped up the road and we need food.  Is there anything you can sell me?”  “Sorry”, she replied, “we got nothing for you.”  I looked wildly around the room.  There on the bar was a display case with candy bars and potato chips, about 5 of each.  I pointed.  “I’ll take them”.  She rang them up, I said thanks, and out the door I went.

We had M&Ms, both plain and peanut, for dinner that night, along with Doritos for dessert and bottled water to wash it down.  It was a splendid repast.  The next morning we rode by that place on the way out of there, but not a creature was stirring.  We found a little town, White Sulphur Springs, about 18 miles down on the other side of the state forest, and stopped there for breakfast.  It was a lesson learned:  never leave lunch in Montana without knowing where your dinner is going to be, or take it with you.

The rest of that trip was a typical Sturgis experience, noise, heat, smoke, sweat, lines for everything and all prices doubled.  That’s why it took me 5 years to go back, the memories have to fade some.  But that picture, those 50 people sitting in silence staring at me, that is a picture I will always keep in my brain.  What were they doing?  What was their story?  Some things you just never will know.  :-{)}