Riding Solo 14 - Motorcycling at 11,000 feet - Beartooth Pass Montana

On this journey so far , I can tell you my contact with people has been very minimal .

I usually leave my campsite in the morning and when it's convenient , I'll pass through a town and gas up and maybe use the restroom and then I'll ride some more and stop somewhere for lunch and then I'll ride some more and maybe in the afternoon I'll stop and fuel up again and get some supplies for the evening and fill up my water jugs and head out into the back country .

And I would say , you know , almost all of those interactions are like , not even conversations , just a transaction on this whole trip .

So far .

I can only think of two instances where I talked to somebody for more than 10 minutes .

Right now .

I'm in the town of Red Lodge and had a good breakfast here and I'm going to hit the road and go over Bear Tooth Pass and it's supposed to be one of the most epic motorcycle rides in this part of the country .

It gets up to almost 11,000 ft .

So I'm super stoked to be going over Bear Tooth Pass today .

And that will bring me into Wyoming .

So this is bare tooth pass .

I'm up at about 11,000 ft of elevation , almost darn near .

And it's just amazing .

It's cold .

It's below 50 degrees up here .

It's beautiful and past the tree line just looking down on lakes and the rocks and the forest below there's snow up here still in the middle of July .

And it's just a real high point literally of this trip .

All right , I've made it up to bare tooth pass .

I'm gonna brew a cup of coffee while I'm up here because you know what ?

It's coffee time .

When isn't it a good cup of coffee time ?

What a great ride so far today .

I mean , I've been stopping and filming so much on this ride today that I haven't made any progress .

I mean , I'm only up at the top of the past now and it's like six o'clock in the evening .

So I basically made it from like Red Lodge up to here , which it's like , I don't know , maybe I went 50 miles today , but all in a day's work and now I'm going to have a good cup of Joe up here on the summit because , hey , why not ?

It's coffee time .

I got a little bit of riding to do today .

If I'm gonna make it anywhere at 10,000 ft , the border between Wyoming and Montana and I just rode up the pass today and it's been really probably the highlight of this journey so far .

So from here I'm going to head down the pass .

I'll be in Wyoming for a little while going to do some exploring there .

Some back roads , probably going to be a little hotter .

A little dustier and drier .

A little flatter .

But you never know , you never know what will be out there .

There is scenic beauty in every state and that's what we're , that's what we're finding and what I've done in Montana so far on this trip has been amazing and beautiful .

Um , but I have stuck to secondary roads , forest roads , scenic highways .

I haven't done any interstate , but I haven't really went too deep into the back country like hundreds of miles at a time because I'm riding solo and , you know , it's a safety and security thing .

If something were to happen to me all alone on my bike in the middle of nowhere , I don't have cell service .

Sometimes I don't have a sat phone , anything like that .

So I , I got to , you know , be safe , play it , safe , play it conservative .

So I'm sticking to fairly easy dirt roads .

And what I'll typically do is look for a National Forest in the evening where I can camp and I might ride 20 or 30 miles into the back country before I find a spot that I like .

Pitch my hammock , build a little fire , cook some food .

I've camped every night so far on this trip , I've never stayed in a motel and I've cooked my own dinner and breakfast every day .

And that's been a big part of this trip .

You know , I set out on a mission on this trip to rough it to live in my live with everything on my vehicle stop once a day for supplies .

Get out into the back country , cook a good meal .

Sleep in my tent or my hammock , get up and make some coffee and some breakfast and then hit the road .

And that's kind of been the agenda for the last two weeks and there's a couple more to go .

So I hope you guys are enjoying this .

Stick around .

There's more to come .

I'm going to wrap up my coffee break here on the summit of Bare Tooth Pass and then head down the hill and check out Wyoming .

All right .

So tonight I'm camping up here at Bear Tooth Pass and I just went over the pass this afternoon , which turned into this evening because I spent so much time up there taking pictures and flying the drone and I thought I was gonna go down the pass and get deeper into Wyoming and spend the night .

But as it turns out , it's like seven o'clock and I'm just starting to head down the pass and I came across a little store up there in the middle of nowhere .

They didn't have a lot , but they had a can of chicken noodle soup .

And so I was able to get that and decided I'm just going to spend the night up here at the pass .

So I decided to lay off the beer for a night .

And so instead I'm gonna drink Pendleton whiskey .

That's what I've got here .

These two cute little bottles of Pendleton .

So me and the mosquitoes are gonna sit down for dinner here .

We're gonna eat our chicken noodle soup , have some chips , drink some pendle and whiskey .

And then if the mosquitoes go away as the sun goes down , I'll set up the Hammock and sleep in that .

If not , I'll set up my tent and sleep in the tent .

And then tomorrow we will hit the road to Wyoming .

Hm .