Day 1 – Windy…Wet…Wild(life!)

We experienced all these things, in one, loooong day.  But first, allow me to go to the beginning.  My husband Terron and I agreed that we would not set an alarm this morning.  We would begin our trek to Key West when we woke up, leisurely.  No rush to run out the door.  Leisurely, however, turned out to be an understatement here.  I did not get to bed until 1am and didn’t sleep well at all.  Still, imagine my surprise when I woke up and the clock read 10:20!  Yikes!  I’d hoped to be on the road by now.  We ‘rushed’ around the house to get ready to go and finally suited up and drove off into the afternoon sun, our great next door neighbors taking photos of us. (Thanks Karen & Rick) We pulled out at the crack of 1:00pm to ride more than 500 miles to Missoula, Montana!  Just about 10 miles from our house, in complete stop and go traffic, Terron gets on the CB; “How far are we from home?”  Oh, I know what’s next.  I’ve been married to this man for almost 25 years now, so I calmly say 20 minutes and ask’ “Why?” Gadget man Terron, who’s motorcycle is rather ‘farkled up’ says, “I left an important electronic at home!”  And so, as we pull back to the house 30 minutes later, we grab the part and Karen takes our ‘…and they’re off, again!’ photos.  (BTW, a “farkle” is a term common among adventure motorcyclists. Enthusiasts will “farkle up” their motorcycles with aftermarket accessories such as radar detectors, GPS units, tall windscreens, steering stabilizers, carbon fiber bits, cushy aftermarket seats, and so on.  Terron has a lot!  I’ll post our list of farkles another day.)

Okay finally, the adventure is underway, now at the crack of 2:30pm!  We should be in Idaho by now!  We finally get out of Seattle traffic and hit the highway.  And it’s now raining hard!  It was a bit wet and cold, crossing Snoqualmie Pass.  I planned for this, starting in my heavy gloves, but my fingers still ended up numb by the time we reached the other side.  No worries, I know that the other side of the mountains will be warmer.  The temperature reading on my bike climbs from 50 degrees crossing the pass, to 70 degrees in no time at all.

At Ellensburg, we turn off Interstate 90 and hit the two-lane.  I smile wide, the beautiful blue skies above me, broken up with fluffy, cumulus clouds and nothing but farmland and rolling hills all around to keep my gaze.  Riding through areas like this takes me back to my childhood and the wonderful days my family spent at Grandma and Grandpa Whitaker’s place, a large farm, down a gravel road, Whitaker Lane, outside Hannibal, Missouri.  A few miles down the road here, a young boy playing outside hears the motorcycles coming down the otherwise empty road and runs to the top of a farm implement and waves wildly at us, as we zoom by.  I give him a huge wave back!  Oh to be a carefree kid again.  Wait, we are at this moment, two carefree kids going where the road takes us!

Eventually we hit the Palouse, an area I’ve really only read about, never seen for myself.  It’s amazing!  Rolling hills of golden wheat, flashing left and right, like squares of a quilt under those broken blue skies.  The colors from one hill to the next just continue to amaze me from brown, to gold to bright green and yellow.  The scenery lives up to what I’ve read, but I don’t recall ever reading about the winds!  Boy is it windy here.  I see Terron almost leaning horizontal to keep his bike straight on the road.  He later tells me that I looked like too was at a 15 degree angle, trying to keep my bike upright in these cross winds.  It rally made me laugh and chuckle all the way to the the Idaho border, where my smile only widened, as I look down at Lewiston, sprawled out in the valley below

, cut up by rivers and water.

Here, we miss the turn to Missoula!  So, we pull over in Lewiston for gas and I add the liners to my jacket and gloves.   It’s now 7:30pm.  The sun is still shining.  It’s still warm.  We’re still wide awake. But should we find a motel, even though we’re far short of our goal of hitting Missoula?  Nope, we gas up and decide to push on.  Now on highway 12, we enter the Bitterroot Wilderness area.  It is the third largest wilderness in the lower 48 and slightly larger than the size of Delaware.   It’s amazing!   We’re riding all along a river that at times is raging and other times, just lazily moving along.  The mountains tower on either side of us.  As the sun sets, the orange glow beyond silhouettes of trees ahead of me is majestic and the smell of campfires is in the air.

But now it’s getting dark and with each sign announcing the miles until Missoula, I wonder if this was a good idea.  I think, “Oh boy we should have stayed in that hotel back at Orofino, so we could ride through this amazing wilderness tomorrow, after sunrise when I can really appreciate its beauty.”  Then I look at the temperature gauge on my dashboard and see that it’s steadily dropping (the lowest we hit was 35 degrees) and I believe it would be colder in the morning, so now is good!  Let’s keep riding.  We slow our pace, knowing that we need to look out for wildlife.

When that first deer darts out in front of us, we both say we should have found the first hotel and stopped for the night!  But we’re deep into the wilderness now, so we keep going and the deer keep darting in front of us!  One poor guy was so confused by our headlights he darted back and in forth in the middle of the road, to the point that Terron locked up his rear brakes!  Terron says those new tires kept him from going down.  We both think that deer came within inches of him, at his hard braking from a speed of 40 mph. I could actually smell his brake pads!!  After this encounter, our adrenaline’s really pumping and we slowed our speed down another 10-15 mph.

A few more miles down the road, we spot a lodge.  We roll down the gravel road to see if they might just have a room.  Nope.  The clerk tells us this time of year they’re always full.  Next closest place she says is 20 more miles.  Oh and she adds, “Watch out for them critters!  We’ve got deer and moose out there.”   “Yes”, we tell her, “We’ve seen lots of deer.”   Then I say to Terron, “Critters? I call squirrels and raccoons critters.  Deer and moose are not critters!”  Those are called giant obstacles to be feared on a motorcycle, in the dark, travelling 50 miles an hour!   By the time we travelled the 164 miles through the Bitterroot, we’ve dodged a dozen deer and a bear!  And we’re not even to Missoula!

20 miles down the road, we spot the lodge she mentioned.  We pull in and again, no vacancy. The bar was sure hopping but we keep moving!  Finally, the town of Lolo!  Terron yells into the CB mic, “Days Inn!”   It’s well after midnight, but now I now have a hot shower to warm my frozen toes, a cup of hot tea to warm the rest of me and soft pillows to lay my freshly washed head of hair!