Most people tend to turn their face toward Mecca, but in a blatant disregard of protocol, I turned a blind eye toward Mecca and rode on. Actually, truth be told, one eye was on Mecca and the other was on the road. OK, OK, sometimes both eyes were on Mecca and I was lucky to not crash and burn.

In my last post I posed a little challenge to determine the two places I stopped. I said it was a trick question, and Harry was pretty quick on the draw when he said “bike trip” and “foolishly didn’t take a fly rod with you.” The fly gear was left home on purpose. Foolish? Hmmmm…jury is still out. Where were the two stops? Red Lodge and home and for the same reason: saddle sore!

In looking at a map of our motorcycling trip, it would probably be hard for a diehard fly angler to comprehend how one could choose to leave the fly gear behind with so many tempting choices in the path. Not to sound boastful (if that’s the right word), but most of these places I’ve been to multiple times and are a 4 hour drive or less away—it doesn’t elicit a great pull on me to fish them. But it does leave me in awe of the amazing opportunities I have to fly fish within a relatively close distance of home. I’m truly fortunate.

So a friend, Paul, invited me to come along with him and a few other guys for an annual trip they started doing a few years ago to Red Lodge, Montana. I jumped at the chance. These aren’t anglers, strictly biking. In fact, Paul is a bit of a speed junky (snowmobiles, jet skies, motorcycles, etc.). My wife and I went with him and a few other couples for a five hour bike ride a few weeks ago. He liked my riding style (fast), and that’s why he invited me for the Red Lodge trip.

We took a circuitous route to Red Lodge, not the fastest route. In fact, my father-in-law asked how long it took us to get there and how far it was. When I told him it was about 460 miles, and it took us 12 hours. He said that we must have been going awfully slow since that would average out to about 40 miles per hour. For those of you who might be motorcycle riders, you’ll understand that frequent butt breaks are important. And, one of the guys needed to stop every 100 miles to refuel. Plus, there is The Park.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Yellowstone as much as the next person, but it can be a real trial for those of us with traffic patience issues. Many of us who visit it, or the surrounding area with any amount of regularity find it both funny, and irritating, that people will stop in the middle of the road to take pictures of deer, elk, moose or bison. Or flowers. Really. (If you haven’t been to the park before, just picture a narrow, two lane road with virtually no shoulders.)

So, there we are, putt-putting along at 7 1/2 MPH. Then some stop and go stuff. And what should we find? Some guy stopped (which automatically means that that lane is now blocked) taking pictures of flowers. Again, I love flowers, but, aw, come on people!

And then the construction. We happened to pull up to some stop-n-go traffic just in time to hit the tail end of a pilot car line. When we got to the traffic stopped going the other direction, Paul decided to count how many cars were waiting in line. 278, with a couple dozen more rolling up right behind them. Boy, I’m glad we got there when we did!

Just outside the very northeast corner of the park (probably the least visited area, but it does have Slough Creek and Soda Butte Creek) is Cooke City. That’s where the grizzly attacked the three campers, killing the one. It’s a fun little town, but more importantly, it’s the gateway to Beartooth Pass.

If you aren’t familiar with Beartooth Pass, you’re missing out on one of the most spectacular drives in the lower 48. The summit is nearly 11,000 feet (10, 947), making it one of the highest roads in the US. It is amazing to look down at snow in August. A large section of the road is brand new, making it an incredible ride for the motorcycle enthusiast (just make sure you aren’t stuck behind cars so you can really enjoy those corners).

This page has some great pictures and video of the road (none of it taken by me).

I tried taking some video (you’ll see it below), but ran into a couple of problems. For those of you who have ridden cruisers (that’s what the Harley-type bikes are called, as opposed to bullet bikes, etc.), you’ll know that these machines are a bit on the rough side—not very smooth. Your head can do a lot of bouncing around. At least, mine does. And just about everything else bounces around too. I took my Kodak Zi8 camcorder and taped it to the inside of my windshield in hopes of capturing our trip. Well, you can see some of the results in the little bit of video I put together. It’s a bouncy bugger! Also, I couldn’t see the screen, so I never knew if I got the thing turned on or off. At one point in time I didn’t get the thing turned off, and I ran out of battery before making it anywhere close to Beartooth.

On the other end of Beartooth is Red Lodge. This is the first time I have ever been there, and I can say that I’ll definitely be back. It’s a nice little town with some incredible background scenery. We decided to avoid traveling through the park again, so the next morning we left for Bozeman, crossing Yellowstone River (which I have never fished outside of the park) then rode south along the Gallatin River (another one I’ve never fished).

I must say, that for being a bike ride, I was looking at a lot of water as we rode past rivers. I did see a number of rises and quite a few anglers and wished I were on the river too. Maybe I’ll sneak a rod along with me next year.

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