My plan for the morning was to get up early and install the auxiliary lights on the bike. I took this opportunity of the first time on the trip that I was not on the move to reorganize some of my luggage. What you see here is a quarter of it.

Before the trip I had already completed some of the wiring on bike and lights.

To my delight the self made mounting setup worked just as I hoped and after about an hour I had both lights fastened on the crash bar on either side.

The first flip of the switch gave me 34 blindingly bright Watts.

I would have to wait until the evening to be able to really tell how big the improvement was.

As I kept packing up my stuff my camp neighbor to my right (not the Amish) came up to me and asked me if I needed any tools, water other help. I was still surprised about how welcoming everybody had been in the US so far.

Matty was a US army veteran who even was involved in the “Black Hawk Down” operation in Somalia which many people know because of the movie from 2001 named after it. After retiring from the army he bought a truck camper and a trailer and was now travelling through all US states visiting historic battlefields with his dog Kimber.

We exchanged routes and travel experiences and talked about all sorts of random things.

In his trailer Matty also carried a full sized grill (to his left in the above picture) with which he could even smoke food. He gave me some delicious samples.

It was now noon and although I wanted to keep throwing the ball for Kimber I was worried  the weather would change soon and I didn’t want to risk getting my gear and tent wet before packing it up.

So I said goodbye to the duo and got back onto the road heading east to Lolo Pass, my next goal. I had avoided the rain.

 

Earlier I had noticed that I was low on oil again. I didn’t have the time nor the patience to do a full oil change now so I just poured fresh oil into the engine at the next gas station, knowing that I would soon have to drain it all and do a proper oil change so as to avoid the old oil contaminating the engine.

Just half an hour later the weather caught up with me and out of nowhere suddenly hailstones started pattering from the sky creating a proper world end feeling.

I stopped immediately at the next building ahead of me to see if I could find shelter there. I was just hoping that the owner would understand that I didn’t have much of a choice. Unlike in most European countries most gardens in the US don’t have fences so it’s sometimes difficult to tell what is public land and what isn’t.

The roofs of most houses don’t reach far beyond their walls and often they don’t have roof gutters. So like a waterfall the flow from the roof was thoroughly cleaning the bike and my cloths.

The biggest hail stones were a centimeter wide and within minutes the tarmac was completely covered in white.

As quickly as everything had started everything was over again. I still decided to put on my rain cloths since I didn’t want to take any risks anymore. Of course it started pouring down just a few minutes later. It was a bit late for the rain cloths and my waterproof gloves could only take so much.

On the other hand I was very happy with the bikes performance on the wet road as I previously had been very worried about the my tires. My old set of tires had been very slippery and felt quite unsafe even in dry conditions. I swapped them before my trip because their tread was already almost completely gone and they were badly out of shape. But new tires do not immediately promise an improvement. In fact they are almost worse. Most tire manufacturers sell their tires with some fancy coating to make them look shiny. Sometimes a shiny coating also comes from a material they use during the manufacturing process sort of like flour in a baking pan to easily remove the tire from the mould. It can take a few hundred kilometers until this layer is off and I really felt the bad performance at the beginning of the trip. However by now this layer had come off and I had fantastic grip on any kind of surface. Even on the wet road it didn’t feel a bit unsafe.

Since I was already wet I decided to keep driving as far as I could without stopping to try and put some distance between me and the bad weather.

It took over an hour but finally the rain stopped. It stopped because the landscape had changed. The flat fields had turned into hills and mountains and soon I was surrounded by rocks and trees again. It was still cold but I didn’t want to put on my last additional layer of clothing from my luggage because I was saving it for the night to have something dry and warm. The sun started setting and the clouds were becoming lighter and the trees were glowing in the orange light of the setting sun.

I had entered Lolo (not Yolo) pass. I didn’t necessarily want to sleep on a mountain pass with wet cloths and rain behind me but looking at the map I would not get across the pass today so I decided to instead look for a camp site right away to at least be able to pitch the tent during daylight for a change and maybe even warm my cloths at a fire. It didn’t take too long to find a campsite and turned out to be the best one so far.

Waterfront property. There was a big creek just a few meters to the left. Once I took off my wet clothes I realized that it hadn’t actually been really cold. Not here anyway. Luckily it wasn’t warm enough for mosquitoes either despite the humidity next to the river. It must have been warm here during the day.

I set up my tent and before I got to start a fire for my food the sun had completely set. It was pitch dark and despite the river right next to me there was complete silence. I found good kindling in moss growing on tree branches hanging down like wisps of hair. Almost like they are put there to be used for this exact purpose. Closer to the stem they were dry enough. All around me everything else was very wet from the humidity. Even my tent was covered in drops just minutes after pitching it. I also used my knife to break off pieces off a rotten tree stump underneath one of the larger trees which seemed to have been protected from the humidity.

Despite using lighter fluid I only got the fire going on the fourth and last possible attempt with a large amount of kindling and purposefully stacked wood. I had used up all the dry wood I could find. Initially I had hoped a good amount of lighter fluid alone would do the job but especially the way the fire wood is stacked can make the difference between fire or no fire. I spent a good three to four hours with the fire and grilling my food. After the flames had died down I warmed my still wet sweater above the glowing embers. I went to bed a little past midnight after carefully making sure I had taken care of all traces of food.