Day 6 - Malta, MT to Choteau, MT

We woke up to bright sunshine and warmer temperatures! After walking over to the Great Northern Hotel for breakfast, we headed southwest on US191 to enjoy some of the Montana scenery.

I wasn’t too sure as to what we were going to find along US191 on our way to Roy, so we decided to fuel up in Malta. It was a good thing we did, because we really didn’t find a gas station again until we stopped in Denton, which was 245 kms away.

The landscape in this part of Montana changes quite a bit, with lots of buttes and the industry seems to go towards cattle and horse ranches for miles and miles. It wasn’t until we got to the final leg of our journey that we really found any kind of populated areas.

After a rest stop in beautiful downtown Roy, we picked up SR81 for some gentle rolling hills and long sweeping curves with some elevation changes – at a couple of points, the “chain up” pullouts were there for the truckers in winter – and saw some wildlife, some deer and what I also believe to have been some antelope. At one point, we were flagged down and asked to pull off to the side of the road – a wide load, 2 actually, were about to come our way and they needed the entire 2 lanes to get by. As we were waiting, we got talking to the pilot car driver and he was telling us that this was the first 2 of 23 or 24 loads that were being delivered to a gas plant on

the Montana/Wyoming border. Those things were huge! (if you don’t believe me, have a look at the pictures/video!).

After fueling up in Denton, we stopped into the Shade Tree Café in town for some really good cinnamon buns and a coffee. With our bellies full, we continued westward and picked up SR80 towards Fort Benton, right along the Missouri River. We took a brief historic tour of the town, picked up some supplies for this evening – top on the list was some Fireball for my honey – and then hopped onto SR87 for the drive down to Great Falls and the local Harley dealer there, Big Sky HD (we had been there on our trip of 2017).

From there, it was a quick ride over to Choteau and yet another place that we’ve stayed out before – the Stage Stop Inn. It was an early stop to the day, but it served two purposes – the Stage Stop Inn has laundry facilities which we needed to use, and the Livery Saloon on the premises also has a very good happy hour! Our plans had to change a wee bit – the town of Choteau was out of water since a construction crew had hit a water main while placing fibre optic cable. After a walk down the block to grab an ice cream cone, we stopped in to the site of the damage and got to speak with the town mayor!!!

All in all, it was a really good day of riding – albeit a tad windy at times – and we covered a total of 519 kms on the say, bringing the total on the trip to 3633 kms. Tomorrow, we head north back into Canada!