Medora, North Dakota was situated in incredible beauty, if you like the badlands, which I do. Rolling green hills covered in trees are beautiful but there is something truly magic about seeing the layers of rock underneath those hills - a history to be unraveled if you only look at it.

Leaving Medora behind, we took back roads, mostly dirt.  Joe explained about clearing out the carburetor jet clogged due to dirt.

Joe up under the car doing his magic.

Most of the dirt roads we took today looked like the one below.

I thought you might like to see one of the dirt roads we took.  This was, according to the map, a frontage road along the interstate.

The frontage road looked a little rough, but we figured it was better than some of the dirt and mud filled roads we had been on so we drove on.

The flowers along and in the road were beautiful, but the pavement part was getting smaller. On we went.   We could see the freeway right beside this road, so how could we go wrong.  We knew we were headed in the right direction.

This is what was at the end of the road - a barbed wire fence and ahead we could see a creek that we could probably ford with the road continuing out the other side of the creek.  Since the gate was closed, we decided to just backtrack down the frontage road to the freeway.   We hated to give up but a closed gate means private property, so turn back we must.

Since there was no alternative, we entered the freeway for about 10 miles but encountered very little traffic and no problems.  We rode the shoulder part of the way.

One of many deserted homesteads we saw in eastern Montana.  This area is mostly agricultural and crops seem to do well here.  The pioneer homesteaders were a hardy and dedicated bunch of people.

We garnered many a strange look as we motored along and we passed many people cycling along the same roads.  This group was taking a break along the side of the road.  We felt very fortunate to be traveling along at the amazing speed of 35-40 mph under the shade of our canvas top whenever we encountered these poor souls struggling up a hill under pedal power and in the hot sun.  I'll take comfort any day!