June 20 - Weds - Missoula MT to Eureka MT - 353 miles

 I called Keith (our new friend and Montana motorcycle travel guru) about 6:30 since he knew the best coffee places in Missoula. There are lots of coffee places (college town), but not many open at 6am so we went to an alternate and Keith told us all the best places to ride in Montana. He also had a friend (Steve) who lives up in the mountains and is a BMW guy and also a huge model train guy. I love passionate people so we had to meet this Steve train guy.
We told google to get us to Eureka, MT (just below the Canadian border) and no interstates please, and it took us on a great ride. It got a little confused way up in the mountains (no cell service), but in general, it did a great job.
Today we gassed up every 100 miles or so since I knew we were going into the boonies. Nice feeling when you have a full tank and 300 miles of range. Bad feeling when you have been 280 miles and the fuel gauge has been blinking for an hour and the range display stopped guessing when you are going to run out a long time ago (blink, blink, blink). But no problems today.

Montana is drop dead gorgeous with lots of rivers (running really high right now after a week of storms), and mountains and big valleys and skies. After a few hours we figured out where Steve lived. A nice place with log cabin and a couple out building for his "hobbies". The big builing is for his HO stuff. He had been collecting model trains for quite a while, but never had a place to set them up. He retired and built this nice place in Montana and he has more trains than you can shake a stick at. All wireless, computer connected with lights and sound and, well you name it. He is also a very nice guy! Lots of outdoor projects, good bear stories, and also has a BMW GSA with 50K miles on it? Where does he find the time? These retired people..

So  we tried to take the shortcut "over the top" to Eureka, but there was no cell service and we ended up almost kissing the Canadian border on a dead end back road and backtracked back to Yaak (who would not want to live in a town called Yaak?), and took the crazy bumpy cold patched one lane road back to civilization (Libby) and then an hour plus along Lake Koocanusa to Eureka. Little town with a couple gas stations, a couple motels (our is suspiciously cheap and empty...). Walk next door for a burger and brew (more unknown but delicious local brews), and end of day. Tomorrow we go into Canada and Banff!!