Day 7 July 6, 2014

I left my campground and entered Teddy Roosevelt National Park, finally purchasing my Golden Age lifetime National Park pass from Alicia, the park ranger for $10.

I cruised through the park for about an hour enjoying the interesting rock formations and topography, before leaving for another stint on Interstate 94 westbound.  The hungry man breakfast at a café in Glendive, Montana was just the ticket to fuel me up for the 600-mile ride in front of me.  After gassing up in Glendive, I headed west towards Circle, Montana on desolate two-lane route number 200 S.  Realizing the long distance ahead of me to reach Glacier National Park, I was traveling at a steady pace of 90 miles per hour when I was stunned as a small bird flew up and bonked the top of my helmet, luckily just above the visor!  Quite a wake up call, and very unsettling- hope the bird survived.

I reached the town of Wolf Point, Montana and headed west on Route 2, which traverses the entire width of the state of Montana.  I was happily humming along in the vast grasslands of this part of the state when for no apparent reason after only 136 miles since my last gas fill up, the bike sputtered and died and would not restart.  I could not understand why I ran out of gas- I had traveled earlier 176 miles on a fill up and still had approximately a half a gallon of gas left in the tank. 

My analysis came up with three reasons for the sudden terrible fuel mileage – 1) excessive speed 2) head winds 3) lousy packing job allowing the two blue dry bags strapped on top of my  hard saddlebags to stick out further and catch the wind.

As I rolled to a stop I looked around and amazingly found myself opposite an ice cream shop in the middle of nowhere.  I rolled my bike down a short grassy hill to the shop and parked it.    I asked for the manager to see if perhaps they had some gas for their lawn mower that I could buy but he told me the closest gas available was in a town about a half a mile away.  He said if I could get the motorcycle there, the gas station in town was closed, but I could use my credit card to buy gas at the station.  I decided to take a table, have some ice cream, and determine my next course of action, when a friendly older man named Larry approached me before I could even sit down.  He overheard my conversation with the manager and volunteered to drive into town, purchase a couple of gallons of gas and bring it back for me.  Overwhelmed,  I pulled out my wallet and offered him money for the purchase but he refused, asking if regular grade gas was okay for my motorcycle.  He left the ice cream shop and I sat down and ordered a root beer float.  As I was finishing the root beer float, Larry returned with a full 2-gallon gas can. We filled up my tank I paid him $10 with many, many, many, many, many, thanks.  He handed me the receipt for the 2 gallons and offered to give me change back but I refused. I gratefully shook his hand and the bike fired up immediately and I was back on my way west.  Wow!

This is where I ran out of gas....

Beautiful, but empty.

Amazingly lucky place to run out of gas, opposite an ice cream shop,

with Larry to the rescue!  

Thanks, Larry!

I arrived at Glacier National Park perhaps 30 minutes before total darkness and was able to secure a camp spot in St. Mary's campground on the east side of Glacier National Park.  I had just enough light to set up my tent and ensure that everything was secured from the weather before darkness fell.