Shamrock Tour®

Billings, Montana Shamrock Tour®: Exploring Montana’s Trailhead

Cameron Muilenburg

11 min read

A field of flowers, a forest, and a backdrop of a mountain pass—this is a great example of the diverse and beautiful landscapes all throughout these routes.

"Is your bike running and in gear?” I said nervously to Luke, one hand on my camera and one hand on the clutch lever. We watched the grizzly make its way toward us, just a few feet away at this point. This was one of the many moments on this trip that we could have never anticipated as we packed our bags at home in Chattanooga, TN.

Luke and I have traveled all over the country together over the last decade—in fact, this is our third trip to Montana together. Most of our journeys have been on motorcycles, although we’ve now done a handful of trips on bicycles too. We really just love two wheels.

This was the first outing where we had the joy of mixing it up a bit and splitting our time between the two.

The Sunlight Creek Bridge carries Chief Joseph Scenic Byway over the 285-foot Sunlight Gorge. We passed through at noon, but the bridge is breathtaking at all hours.

New Rides

When we arrived at our home base in Billings, MT, we immediately started asking locals about the weather and roads west of town. Our first stop of the trip was going to be Yellowstone by way of the Beartooth Pass, but it had just snowed recently. To play it safe, we decided to pivot to the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway, which would give the snow a bit more time to clear up on Beartooth before we took it on the way back.

Motorcycles & Gear

2024 KTM Super Adventure Rs

Helmet: Schuberth C4 and Klim TK1200
Jacket: REV’IT! Airwave 4
Pants: REV’IT!
Boots: Tourmaster
Gloves: Highway 21 Louie
Luggage: KTM and Mosko Moto Alpine Duffle

This decision was mostly thanks to the advice of our new friends we made at Hi-Tech Motorsports. They got us all sorted on our 2024 KTM 1290 Super Adventure Rs, which Luke and I were excited to ride and compare to our beloved 890s we’d ridden in the past.

Within the first half day, we knew these bikes were perfect for this trip. The distances between Montana towns and the long stretches of delightful, straight highway roads were just begging for bikes like the 1290s. With the number of big trucks pulling horse trailers we were passing, we were so thankful for the power these bikes brought, and they still had all the agility we needed for the twisties through the passes.

It wouldn’t be a trip out west without passing some traces of fires. This gravel road on Mount Holmes was about as rough as the roads got on our trip.

We dropped our luggage off at the beautiful and historical Northern Hotel in the heart of downtown Billings and were on our way. This was my second time to ride Chief Joseph Highway, and it was exactly as I remembered.

There are a few incredibly unique and massive rock formations, an awesome bridge over a deep gorge, and some super fun twisties throughout. It didn’t hurt that we scored some perfect blue-sky weather.

As we rolled into the park, we were immediately in for an expectedly fantastic Yellowstone day. We saw a ton of bison, deer, and a mama black bear with her cubs.

It was idyllic. We were smiling ear to ear, sneaking past cars when we could and stopping at the different thermal hotspots and waterfalls while our excitement to see Old Faithful built up.

Due to our busy schedule of shooting photos and video, we ended up overnighting in Gardiner, but if you’re not stopping as much as we were for photos and video, you can make it back to Billings for the night.