Monday 19 December 2011

Wyoming

From Helena we drove to Bozeman to visit Carl Strong (and Loretta too!). Beautiful tidy shop in a nice building he owns. Talked bikes, tourism, bike riders and life. Carl has a great wall photo of Tejay van Garderen with a Strong bike - he worked at his shop for years in Bozeman while working his way up the American scene. Visiting the shop and the craftsman was wonderful, it's quite an art to build frames of such excellence.

When we left, he asked if we had lunch plans. None yet... So he recommended stopping in Big Sky at Broken Spoke which is a Texas BBQ place run by a guy named Anderson who rides a couple of Strong frames.

Bozeman to Big Sky is a beautiful drive. We found Broken Spoke, but it looked closed, some dog barked and smashed the door when I peeked in. Hard to explain from the perspective of the building how that worked, but we accidentally went to back. Anderson opened the door, dog was some friendly yellow lab that loved being pet, and we ordered what he described as the two best things on the menu - pulled pork and brisket sandwiches. And man was he right... just too much meat. He told us stories of him and a buddy trying to ride the length of the Mississippi and all the people you meet along the way being extra-interesting. No doubt. Sounded like a lot of catfish too.

Big Sky is beautiful, mountain looked great. Not much snow, and not much population near by made it feel desolate, even before the economic landscape tempering people's desire to spend on lift tickets.

The next several hundred miles south were Targahee forest, which must be a native word for "high horsepower snowmobile". I should have stopped to take a picture - every gas station had half a dozen sleds filling up, with 6 more ripping around. The ones in fields had big dirt piles covered with snow for jumps. Seemed like a couple hundred mile stretch where you could go motel to motel and just tour via sled.

We made our way south by sunset and approached the Tetons from the west. Beautiful.

Checked in to lovely little cabins, then walked to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Can't beat that.

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