All of us are Patriot Guard Rider members and it so happened that the Montana Patriot Guard Riders would be leading the parade. The parade was organized as a fund raiser for the Montana Honor Flights. These take veterans to Washington DC to see the memorials. Right now they are organizing flights for the WWII vets and then will make their way to the other war veterans. They will take a veteran who is terminal so that they all can get a chance.
We left Billings at 1:00 pm and arrived in Red Lodge a little after 2:00 pm. Wandered the streets of Red Lodge, checked out the vendors and people watched. The main street of Red Lodge was nothing but wall to wall bikes. We heard that there were 10,000 bikes in and out of Red Lodge for the weekend.
Got to the staging area for the parade at 4:30 pm, the parade started at 6:00 pm. The Budweiser Clydesdale horses were behind us. We were able to watch them get the horses ready and hitched to the wagon. The horses would pose for photos and were not shy at all around people. Pretty impressive to watch all that goes on to getting these horses parade ready. The Budweiser dalmation was running around and posing for photos with the children.
There were sure a lot of people out on the street to watch the parade, right after the parade we all left for Billings. We wanted to leave before the deer came out and also with the traffic.
We had a fun night in Billings, Gary & I stayed at the Butterfield hotel. We stayed up visiting and drinking until around 1:00 am. Let me tell you, crown royal whiskey and club soda is a very refreshing drink for summer and they go down smooth. Needless to say that I was not in any condition to do anything.
We woke up bright and early on Sunday morning to head back to Red Lodge. Sunday was a chapter event, we hosted the Belgrade chapter for a lunch. We had to be in Red Lodge by 11:00, left Billings at 9:30 for a very nice ride to Red Lodge. The Belgrade chapter arrived and we all had a nice lunch of pizza at the Red Lodge dealership. A fun time. Belgrade hosted us a lunch back in June.
It was too early to go home, so the Davis's and us rode over the Bear Tooth Pass and Chief Joseph Highway, heard that there was road construction so Gary wanted to check it out before we meet with the Australians next week.
There is road construction by Long Lake, but you are only delayed for at the most 30 minutes and it is a mile long with hard packed dirt. We stopped at the Top Of The World store for a bit. I saw people looking across the highway and then I spotted the black bear with her two cubs. Glad I brought my big Nikon camera with my zoom lens. I got a few shots of the bears. A nice treat, hope they will be here next weekend.
It was cold on top of the mountain, but as we made our way down it got hot again. It was 65 degrees on the top and warmed up to 95 on the bottom. It was a very fun weekend, now we get a bit of a rest and back at it next weekend.
Here are some photos of the weekend.
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| posing from the trailer |
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| Black bears at Top of the World |
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| Chip the Budweiser dog |
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| Looking pretty for the parade. |
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