Motocaching the Top of the Big Sky – Day 5

Super 8 serves a good breakfast at 6:00 am and I was there.  I had a nice cook your own waffle and visited with some of the other guests before loading up.  As mentioned earlier, it had rained during the night so my saddle was wet.  I dried it with a motel towel and it wasn’t too bad.

I headed west and then angled north toward Stanford, the county seat of Judith Basin County.  Before reaching Stanford I stopped at the small community of Hobson to try to find one at a little mini park.  I looked quite a while with no luck and some others before me had had the same experience.  So on to Stanford and the next cache called “Cemetery Gates”.  As I got to Stanford and began navigating toward this cache which was a little north of town I encountered road work and the road was closed.  Now I was getting a little desperate.  My fall back was my iPhone so I got it out and discovered two caches very near the courthouse.  Would you believe I couldn’t find either of those?  It showed another one at the edge of town which was a micro with the hint of “A gray rock”.  It was a kind of cutout of a cowboy over a planter surrounded with rocks of various shades, mostly gray.  I didn’t find that one either.  I don’t know when I’ve had 3 DNF’s in a row.  I went back and got into a discussion with the flagger lady at the closed road which now said “Closed to thru traffic”.  She finally let me through and I found the road wasn’t that bad at all and made it to the cemetery.  The hint was “hook, line and sinker”.  I looked quite a while and was about to give up when I spied a paper clip hanging on the top of a metal fence post.  The micro cache was on the end of a line down in the post.  Boy was I glad to find that one.

I continued north on that same Highway 80 toward Great Falls and Chouteau County.  I didn’t really have any close calls as far as accidents were concerned on this trip but I did have what could have been one on this road.  The country was pretty much rolling prairie until I came to an abrupt valley with an 8% grade.  As I was heading down the grade there was a sign near the bottom reading 25 mph on a sharp right curve.  As a motorcycle rider I like curves so I was pleased but since I didn’t know the road I didn’t take it too aggressively which was a good thing.  Half way through the blind curve the road abruptly turned to gravel.  No warning or anything just about a 100 yard stretch of gravel and then back on pavement.  I guess the motogods were with me because I went through it with no problem.  I encountered another 1 or 2 of these little gravel stretches but they weren’t on curves.

 Chouteau is a rural county and I soon came to the little community of Square Butte and my next cache which was the “Square Butte Jail”.  This was really a neat cache at a tiny isolated jail with a sign giving its history.  The cache was a magnetic key holder located on part of the door but it did take me a little while to find.  I found four caches in this little rural county.  Two more were at places along the highway and another was at a little park in Ft. Benton along a trail under a bridge.

This completed the counties so now my priority was getting home.  At Great Falls I took Highway 200 to Missoula and got there in the early afternoon.  Even though this was my longest day I thoroughly enjoyed motoring down the Lochsa as most motorcyclists do.  By the time I got to Lowell it was really hot.  I stopped at Kamiah for gas and a cold Dr. Pepper and visited with another motorcyclist who had stopped there.  I got back to Clarkston between 5:00 and 6:00 having covered 555 miles.  My GPS read 2,155 miles of which 1 or 2 may have been on foot and maybe 400 in Idaho and the rest in Montana.  The rain and heat were not pleasant on this trip but still it was fun overall and I did accomplish my goal.  Montana is a big state and I still have a good portion of the bottom half to cover which hopefully will be next year.  M/W