NoDak and Back 2011: Heading East

As we checked the weather prior to our trip, all signs pointed to the day of departure, Wednesday, being the only iffy day. Once we made it to Spokane, it would be cloudless and warm to our destination. We took off as early as possible to hopefully avoid any potential weather and felt super lucky as we rolled into Spokane after a day of sun and nice roads and no hint of rain. We checked into a hotel that we love and had a delightful dinner and mini pub crawl around downtown. We awoke to a couple clouds but confident in our forecast research.

While we gave it time to warm up we jogged down to the water power plant, worked out a bit and got coffee before packing up for what tends to be our longest day, but always a beautiful day on the bike.

As we were getting ready to leave, some rain clouds moved in and we figured we were leaving just in time. As we moved east,the sky got more foreboding and then completely opened up on us. We rolled through the first mountain pass cautiously as we got soaked...





We dried off as we moved down the road until we hit another patch of rain outside of Bozeman and rode through it until we finely landed safely in Livingston. We got warmed up and dry and hung out in the hotel bar for dinner and took a nice evening ride to our favorite local bar for a nightcap.

The next day was the trek across Montana. We stopped for a breakfast that we look forward to for a year and hit the road..  We started off with a few clouds but nothing too bad and when we hit Billings, we finally got what we'd been expecting!

We packed our jackets away and rode the rest of the way in the beautiful sunshine of the Big Sky state..

...happily landing at our destination.