Day 7: Trouble in Paradise

We semi-reluctantly packed up and left the Dillon KOA. This is not any credit to the campground, but because later in the day we were going to start a long stretch on the interstate heading west.

The Montana that was so great the day before dropped 20 degrees and even in the middle of the sunny day we were freezing while riding on the bikes. When we stopped for lunch we realized that we were still shivering even after being inside out of the cold for a while. I was pretty sure that wasn't a good sign, but we pushed on. Later that day Paul ran out of gas and died of hypothermia. :(

Ok, not really, but it was unpleasantly cold and he really did run out of gas. We exited to Melrose, MT just after Paul had to switch to his fuel reserve, but didn't see any gas stations so we got back on the road for another 10 miles to the next town of Divide. My GPS showed a gas station in this town, but after driving around we didn't see anything and followed my GPS to it's exact supposed location: a bridge. Great. The next town with gas was 30 miles away, so we had to go back. Paul should've been able to make 25mi or so on his reserve, but heading back to Melrose his bike ran out of gas. Luckily Paul carries a liter of gasoline in a small bottle (for making Molotov Cocktails, I suspect), and I think he actually got almost half of it into his gas tank. The rest was left in a puddle on the side of the road as offering to the petrol gods. We continued to Melrose and finally found the gas station we had missed earlier.

We had lunch in Darby, MT and then got on the interstate in Missoula, MT. Sometime around Custer State Park Paul's bike had started to sound louder in a clacking sort of way. We thought it might have been his valves, but a few days later Paul realized that he had lost both mounting bolts on one of his exhaust pipes, causing the loud rattle. We stopped at a Harley dealer in Missoula, but they didn't have the bolts in stock. We did get a wrench to adjust the rear suspension preload on his bike. This compensated for the extra weight he was carrying and finally kept the bike from bottoming out over bumps.

We continued into and out of Idaho and into Washington. We were supposed to stop at Ritzville for food and gas, and to warm up before the last hour and a half to the camp. Instead, Paul missed the exit and we had to keep going. Now, we were tired and cold and I'd been looking forward to this stop for the last hour. I checked my GPS and the next food was almost an hour down the road. I could almost taste the bitterness I felt. I'll admit that it took longer than I had expected: as of Day 7, Paul and I were no longer on speaking terms.

We stopped for gas in the tiny town of Lind, WA where we had to drive for several miles through nothingness to the oldest gas pumps I've seen. Pump 24 (as the place was called) wouldn't even take my credit card, so I declined to fill up on principle. I can make it almost twice as far as Paul on a tank, so it wasn't a big deal for me. At this point, the best option was to continue all the way to the camp, so we got ready for another hour-plus of cold.

We got back on the road and kept riding to Richland/Pasco where we finally were able to eat and make camp at a KOA. It turns out that this KOA had only RV spots. The office had closed 4 or 5 hours earlier, so we just set up camp in an RV spot and decided to sort it out in the morning.