Its certainly apt that Montana is known as Big Sky Country… the sky just seems so vast there compared to other locations.

Heres a shot I took just past the small town of Ennis heading west towards Virginia City MT:

I was traveling through western Montana and specifically to Dillon MT to camp after my ride through Yellowstone. Its a good 3 hour ride on these back highways and I booked it pretty hard in order to get there before sun down. After camping in Dillon it was off to Missoula on July 4th. I figured it best to take the back highway again, this time 287 to 93 just north of Salmon Idaho and through the Bitterroot Forest.

Here is a compilation video of the evening into Dillon, then the next morning covering areas north of Salmon and through the Bitterroot national forest:

At the bottom of the pass, I ran across a hot springs – Lost Trail hot springs on hwy 93 and figured Id stop for a dip and a bite to eat. I think this one is an artificial hot springs (no sulfur smell), though you can find these and natural ones all around this area of Montana and Idaho. Either way it was great to relax for a moment and reset for the last leg into Missoula in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, I had a bit of a mishap after the hot springs. After covering almost 4k miles by then and not really encountering much “bad luck” per se, I guess I was due.

Shortly after gassing up in Hamilton about 40 miles north of the hot springs I realized my front fork bag was open and that my expensive prescription sunglasses were missing. Which meant backtracking 40 miles on the highway into the area that was now experiencing freak rain storms with my eyeballs scanning the roads back and forth until I found them – which I did, luckily unscathed in their case in the middle of the highway. How they lasted there for over an hour without being smashed is beyond me. So, my good fortune intact, I made my way again towards Missoula.

However, the bumps in the road were not quite over as about 10 miles down the road I suddenly felt an intense pain on the back of my neck while at full speed and realized immediately that I had been stung by a bee. Now Ive had bee stings before and yeah they are a pain in the ass, but last year I was stung by some sort of wasp and had a full blown reaction – Swollen hand, couldnt breathe, rash, the whole nine yards. So experiencing an unknown sting on the back of my neck 30 miles from the next town was a bit unsettling. After waiting about 10 minutes to see if I would pass out, I figured it had to be just a plain old bee and began to once again push towards Missoula.

Upon reaching the motel I had to hit a nap after the day I had and figured it would be good to get refreshed before the 4th of July fireworks. I had never spent the 4th in Missoula but heard from the locals that I could get up Blue Mountain via a road and trail. I figured I could get up there and get some nice shots of the scrambler against a backdrop of multi-colored celebratory explosions from down below. I was incorrect.

With no lighting it was impossible to get anything that turned out, and I made the decision a few minutes into the fireworks show to hit the road downtown and see if getting closer could help.

It did not. Ha. Heres some examples of what I ended up with:

You cant win em all… so, with that I called it a night. The next day would bring the final leg of my journey – back into Idaho!

Travis