Wet, Windy and Wide Open Spaces

From Vroom, Vroom to Wet, Windy, Wide Open Spaces

We ran away last weekend from a hail storm a couple days before - a storm that did our crops no good.  And it turned out to be a very interesting weekend.

Miserable is how I would describe our ride across the vast reaches of Montana.  Gale-force winds that eventually turned into torential rain.  But what do you do when you are out on a motorcycle in the vast reaches of Montana.  No towns, no trees, no shelter.  You ride.  And so we did , and arrived wet and cold.  Could go nowhere but up, right?  Well, most of the time it did.

This is the scene from Papa Bear's rear view mirror. 

Always keeping his brood tagging along.

But sometimes he probably couldn't tell who was in his brood

because they were all so bundled up to ward off Montana's summer weather!

In spite of it all, we still play poker.

Can you believe this hand. 

Of course, she won.

I've never seen this good of hand when we played poker on our rides.

Besides giving a short ride to the 91-year old mother of one of the gals,

we stayed at a century old hotel on Fort Peck Dam and went to the play.

Me.

We always pose our bikes for an official picture

to remember the ride.  One or our riders is a professional

photographer and does us up a big poster after the ride.

I will probably never go back to eastern Montana

because I will never see it as pretty as it was this time.

They had had so much rain that all the reservoirs were full,

creeks were overflowing their banks, pastures were lush,

cows were smiling, it was beautiful.  See?

As we approached Billings, we were all mesmerized by the cloud structure.

Spectacular cloud formations, shadowing was second to none. 

I was clicking my camera constantly from the back of Papa Bear's bike.

It was a beautiful day's ride with beautiful scenery

and beautiful weather.  And a beautiful bunch.

Just after this picture, we parted company next to a grocery store

and across the street from Montana's biggest event center, Metra Park

(aka Rimrock Auto Arena)

And within 1/2 hour this happened:

Left picture is the auto arena

Right picture is taken from inside the auto arena

And the middle picture is the culprit.

The tornado (Montana doesn't have tornados) hit 1/2 hour

after we'd been next to the arena.

We holed up in a restaurant across town, knowing where the

walk in freezer was, just in case.

This is a business just down the street from our stop.

This just is across the street from our stop.

So, we started windy and wet and we ended wetter.  2.25" of rain fell with the tornado and many, many homes were flooded and a mess.

But guess what?  When we arrived home 40 miles away, it was dry, sunny and we shared an outdoor fire pit with friends before calling it a weekend.