Pits and Pinnacles: Bike Trip Accommodations

© Ken Bingenheimer / RumBum.com

We ran the gamut in terms of lodging on the just-ended OFMC summer motorcycle trip this year. Considering that we spent about $340 per person for nine nights, what is actually surprising is how nice some of these places were. What is not surprising is how bad some of the others were.

The highlight of the trip had to be the Grand Hotel in Big Timber, MT. Big Timber is a little town you’ve probably never heard of, located in the center of the state about equidistant between Bozeman and Billings. The downtown area, such as it is, looks like it hasn’t changed much in 50 or 100 years, and as is characteristic of towns of this sort, there is one grand old hotel. In this case that’s what they named it.

Either the Grand Hotel has been well-maintained or else they’ve done a great (or grand!) renovation in recent years. While the larger suites have their own baths, the singles use a collective grouping of showers and facilities in the middle of the building. It’s the way hotels used to be built, and I’ve never seen it done as nicely as here.

On the first floor they have a lounge and a restaurant and the place was packed on the Wednesday night we were there. A glance at the menu explained why, with dishes you would expect to see in a fancy restaurant in a big city. I’d guess this must be the best restaurant for at least 50 miles in any direction.

One bonus is that the Grand is operated as a bed & breakfast, so our breakfast the next morning was the best of the trip, and a darn good one.

We probably reached the other extreme the next night. Our route took us east on I-90 and then off the interstate at U.S. 212, which happens to be the site of the Little Big Horn Battlefield. After a stop there we continued east on 212 to Broadus, MT, which is essentially a wide spot in the road. Broadus has three motels, all operated jointly, so when I called to make reservations they split our group of 10 into two parties in two of the motels. I don’t remember why but it seemed to make sense at the time, though it didn’t when we checked in and found ourselves practically the only ones in a motel that could have accommodated us all with room to spare.

Coming into town we passed a pink, concrete-block building and Randy said later that when he saw it he prayed that that would not be where he would be spending the night. It was, for him and five others. The other four of us were in the bigger motel I mentioned before.

Neither of these places was an absolute dump, but if your tastes require finer accommodations you would never be happy anywhere in Broadus. This is a place you stay because you have to sleep somewhere. And hey, the sheets were clean and the beds weren’t lumpy. What more do you really need?

Randy seems to have drawn the short straw on this trip, however, because he also got the bad room in Ashton, ID, a couple nights earlier. This place was actually a fairly new, modern, nice place, and for most of us there were no complaints. Except in the room that Randy shared with Johnathon.

“Our walls were covered with spiders!” he told us the next morning. “That’s the worst dump I’ve ever been in!”

OK, I can sympathize. Have I ever told you about the place where Bill and John and I stayed one year in Gallup, NM?