What A Great Day!

Many people had told me about one road that I MUST ride on during this tour. The Beartooth Pass. They were not wrong.

My day started by riding to a town at the north end of the pass called Red Lodge. Just before arriving there I passed some old mine buildings that I stopped and looked at.

Back in 1943 there was a disaster at this mine and 74 men were killed as a result of an underground explosion and the methane gas released by the explosion. The sign on the following photograph tells the story of the disaster. I have repeated here the words written by two of the workers that died. The words are both chilling and wonderful at the same time....

“Walter and Johnny. Good bye. Wives and daughters. We died an easy death. Love from us both. Be good.”

Can you imagine having to write such a note, or even more so, having to read it if you were one of those wives or daughters. It made me shiver as I read that part....

Red Lodge is a small town that has most things a tourist will need....

I arrived here early, so I had a great breakfast in the Pollard Hotel....

I saw this excellent sculpture as I left Red Lodge. Wouldn’t it be terrific to be talented enough to be able to make something like this from wood branches....

Beartooth Pass is US Highway 212 and runs 69 miles south and then west from Red Lodge in Wyoming to Cooke City, in Montana. It is an incredible road to ride a motorcycle on and would compete with riding through the Alps for excitement. The road is essentially in two parts – the lower section that rises as you head south out of Red Lodge and the upper part at the higher elevations.

I filmed both parts. Here are the highlights of “the lower” part....



The views on the way up are terrific and it is a difficult call whether to carry on riding or stop and take pictures. I did some of both!

These are some of my pictures from part of the way up....

At one of the places I stopped, a woman was feeding chipmunks. One of these guys had so much food in his cheeks!....

The upper section of the Beartooth Pass can be, and was, very windy. I had to be very careful riding along some sections as the wind was not consistent from bend to bend....



The slopes were very steep....

But the views were fantastic....

Looking down on where I had just ridden....

This is where the road enters Montana....

More views from the top at nearly 11,000 feet....

Here I was standing on snow....

A short video on the snow....



I met other riders along the road and they all had big smiles on their faces! This guy was born in England and has lived in the US for 20 years....

A lake at the top....

On the top of the mountain, you can see much further than these pictures show....

Soon after finishing riding over the pass, I reached the 9,000 mile point of my tour, so in keeping with my now established practice, I stopped and took a picture....

I cannot recall the name of this bridge that passes over a deep canyon....

A sign on the bridge. I am not sure what they had in mind....

Here is a short video of the view from the bridge....



Here is a tree clutching onto life perched on the rocks. How it is able to grow there is beyond me....

Soon I turned onto Wyoming Highway 296 which is also called the Joseph Scenic Byway. Part of this road is the Dead Indian Pass....

Tonight I was staying at the Irma Hotel in Cody. This hotel was built and run by Buffalo Bill Cody and Irma was his daughter....

I was staying in the Ned Frost room....

I liked this hotel. A lot of places that claim to be historical and “world famous” are really not, but this place is. I enjoyed walking around and looking at the various rooms, the dining room, the lobby and the famous bar, which is suggested as having been given to Buffalo Bill by Queen Victoria of England to say thank you for him bringing his Wild West show to London. I was sceptical at first, but it does have many English furniture features....

I like the way the guy on the right seems to be looking at the camera....

That evening, there was a “gun fight” outside the hotel and people started to gather....

I am not normally a fan of touristic re-enactments, but I sat through this one and thoroughly enjoyed it....

Overall I liked Cody. It had a good feeling to it. Sure, it had a lot of tourist shops, but they were not the normal type selling cheap and dubious junk, but these sold good quality products. Would I go back to Cody? Yes!

All in all, a great day!

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A few of my readers have asked how I took one of the photos at the Big Horn canyon. I was there on my own and I took a picture of myself standing on a rock arch about 100 feet away from the camera. This is the picture that raised the question “How did you take that?”....

Well, I used a wireless remote control unit that plugs into the camera and is triggered by a small hand-held transmitter....

I have enlarged the arch picture and if you click on this picture below, you can see the remote control unit in my hand....