July 6 - Friday - Casper WY to Billings MT - 296 miles

Had a nice long chat about western history, genealogy, the usual, with a woman driving from Texas to Montana to see her father and brother (annual trip) in the motel coffee room (well brownish stuff anyway).
The sun this morning is brilliant as usual, high 60's, but the forecast is for really warm temps. I picked a roue that takes me through some remote areas and then near enough the interstate for there to be towns. The old road is open on and off next to Rt 25 so I'll try to stay off the 4-laner as much as possible.
I filled up across the street and started west for 15-20 miles and found the turnoff. Looked good, paved, but the sign said BLM road so not sure what that meant, but ok. The pavement was really rough for about 15 miles, and then the "Pavement Ends" signs pops up, so ok, nice 2 lane gravel road. Another 15 miles and the road turns into what looks like a previously muddy road that had mostly dried into wheel tracks, aka ruts. If I had not committed so much time so far in this road, I would have turned around. It is a little spooky to be this far out with 100 deg temp in the forecast, alone, and having seen zero cars going either way for the last hour.

I tried some Google Map thing (still had a little cell service) to send my location to Deb & Dave and it seemed like it worked but not sure. Hopefully Deb would get this and if she did not hear from me tonight (I always check in), she would know where to send the ambulance.
The cool thing about this road is how many antelope I saw. At least 100 just this morning, wandering around in little packs between 3 and 8. Beautiful animals. They usually took one look at me and ran off.
I spent half the time standing on the pegs and half in the seat. This little bike is super stable on this gravel and rutty stuff, but one big rut and..

So about another 15 miles or so on this one lane rut-fest and I saw a power pole with wires. This hopefully meant civilization, and over the next 10 miles, a few houses showed up and the road went back to gravel and then it widened and then a ranch or two and finally I hit Rt 25.
I called Deb & Dave and said never mind (they never got any location thing anyway) and spent the rest of the day alternating between the interstate (at 65) and the old 2-laner (55).
The temperature rose all day and by the time I got to Billings it was 100 degrees. I dove into the motel, took all the bike stuff off and drank n the cool air conditioning.
Odometer = 27214