Day 13 - Glacier NP to Salmon, ID

We said goodbye to Glacier this morning and got a few parting shots.

Our route took us on scenic road US89, MT42, and US2 around to West Glacier.

South of Glacier, the actual glaciers disappeared and the mountain landscape began to change.

We encountered a long stretch of road being tar and chipped, which Rob especially enjoys riding a heavy motorcycle on.

Past the construction the views continued to change.

We made our way into a wide valley full of ranches and were surrounded by the mountain peaks. Out here in Big Sky country it’s easy to see weather in our future.

At Noon we rode past Lake Flathead and arrived in Polson, Montana. We felt like we were back at Lake Superior, not expecting to see this scenery in Montana.

We stopped for a quick lunch and afterwards even more quickly shed our jacket liners.  The day was heating up.

Back on the road we saw more ranches and looked forward to being back in the mountains in the distance.

Near Dixon, we saw the sign for the National Bison Range. Ironically, just beside it was a café advertising the best bison burgers and a sign a few feet behind it advertising bison jerky! We didn’t see any bison roaming the range—uh-oh!

But we did see this black goat being transported in a pickup.

The landscape became a bit unreal changing to very dry, humpy hills.

Along the way we noticed that most properties had at least one horse and several had impressive bee keeping operations.

For the last 60 miles or so we crossed over the Lost Trail Pass along the Lewis and Clark Trail (US93). It was a highlight of our ride today. The roads were wide sweeping curves, the wind kept us on our toes as it whipped us around between the mountain ranges, and we tried to outrun two rainstorms on either side of us.

Just before we crossed into Idaho with 30 miles to go, a sign indicated we could instead turn left towards Wisdom. Rob opted not to.

With the rain behind us and temperatures cooler now we really enjoyed the scenery of our first glimpses of Idaho.

Today’s destination was Salmon, ID. The hotel we are staying at, The Stagecoach Inn, sits right along the Salmon River. Occasionally we would see folks swiftly floating down the narrow river on inflatable rafts! It's not a common sight one sees outside their hotel room window.

We grabbed dinner at a local restaurant called the Shady Nook. We had a 6oz sirloin with bourbon mushroom glaze that was very good. We finished off the day with cheese cake and huckleberry ice cream. (Locals are nuts about huckleberries here, road signs offering pie, berries, ice cream and more. We heard they are basically blueberries, but considered a huckleberry at 4,300 feet elevation and above.)

Tomorrow we continue south for northern Utah and even warmer weather, making us question why we bothered to bring our heated gear.