Day 52---Time to head back to Berkeley?, Dickinson ND

I slept better last night, better than I had the last few nights, but after 9 hours of sleep, I still felt completely spent.  I had some numbers I had to get back to the office in SF this morning, so I had breakfast around 7, and what a lovely breakfast it was!  Lots of fresh fruit, bagels, cream cheese, cheese, four kinds of juice, herbal teas, and biscuits and gravy.  The nicest motel breakfast this side of California (turns out the owners are from Modesto), and I was actually hungry enough to enjoy it.

I got my work done, feeling super tired, and after much agonizing over the heavy headwind forecast, I decided  I was going to take the day off, which meant that I’d have to fly back to SF from Bismarck, rather than Fargo. This was going to put me seriously behind ‘schedule’ in terms of meeting friends and family in Michigan, and would mean that for the next 1000 miles I’d have no company.  A sobering thought, but I couldn’t muster the energy to be on the road again today.

I went back to sleep for a bit, then did some research on flights out of Bismarck.  Turned out I could get back via Denver, as well as Minneapolis, so there were plenty of options.  So I showered (a rare morning treat on these bike tours) and headed over to the Ukrainian Cultural Institute.  I met the new office manager, Shannon, whose husband was Ukrainian-American.  She had grown up on a farm outside Kenmare, which is where my great Uncle Ed Verbitsky farmed (grandmother Mabel’s youngest brother).  She was too young to know any of my family, but for people in North Dakota, having relatives from your town is usually something to talk about. J  She was new to the Institute, but told me that they had just had their annual festival in mid-July.  The Ukrainians around Dickinson were all either orthodox or catholic, not the protestant sects that settled around Kief and Butte, where my dad’s family is from. 

While I was there, Teresa showed up, who is one of the board members.  She’s three years older than I, and was a huge source of information about ND Ukrainians.  Apparently until the mid-90s, she took her kids up to Butte for Ukrainian dancing, and she knew quite a few of the families from around Butte and Kief, some of whom were cousins.  In fact, she showed me that they had copies of the Kief Centennial book from 2008, and she was excited to go through it with me to see pictures of various of my family members that she might have met over the years.

A cool experience for sure, and a bit of what I had been hoping to do with my family when we first planned to have my dad meet me and my siblings here in North Dakota.   I had really been looking forward to hearing about all this stuff from my dad and other relatives.

After my visit, I headed for Bogey’s Diner, which everyone had assured me was a great little diner downtown.  I was served a dried out hamburger, on a stale roll, with onion rings that had clearly defrosted before being put in the fryer, and arrived so grease laden as to be almost inedible.  I soldiered through lunch, because I was hungry.  After lunch I went to the local market, Dan’s, which had the same poor choices of food I’d seen for days and days.  The produce was a tad better, but the baked goods were the usual donuts and sad looking breakfast pastries, which I’ve learned are mostly sugar and very little flavor.  I picked out a poppyseed muffin, and a couple of peaches, which I thought I could eat in the middle of the night if I woke up hungry.

I wandered back to the motel via the Dickinson State University campus, which had a couple of nice old buildings.  I was super depressed about my trip, the meal at Bogey’s was kind of the last straw, and really felt like I just couldn’t continue on for another thousand miles alone.  When I got back to the motel, I checked the United website and found that I could easily get a flight home tomorrow, via Denver.  It was now 5 PM and I found the local bike shop (which is called Steffan Saw and Bike, as they are the chain saw dealer too), and called to ask if they had any bike boxes.  They did, and would be open again tomorrow at 8:30.

I made a couple of calls to friends and family to talk about bailing, and everyone was the same, “if it’s not fun, and you’re not enjoying yourself, why continue?”  I decided to go home a few days early, eat well, rest, and feel rested and prepared for the Board retreat next weekend.  I started to catch up on my blog from the last three days, and had an early night, wanting to get some more sleep.

Day 51---Mind and body in full rebellion, Beach to Dickinson

62.3 miles, 5:55, 10.5 mph

I didn't take a single picture today.

I didn’t sleep well again last night, and only dozed fitfully after about 4 AM.  I had the same stomach issues, which must be anxiety related, and couldn’t eat more than a banana at first this morning.  I made 4 slices of peanut butter toast, which I took back to my room, and tried to eat them a little at a time while I alternately packed, and laid back in bed. 

Today was supposed to a cool day of cycling, with a very mild sidewind, through the North Dakota badlands, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  Teddy came out to North Dakota after the death of his young wife and his mother in quick succession in the 1880s, and this was where he regained his mojo.  All I could think was that I was losing mine here.

I thought that maybe the long day yesterday, fueled by endorphins and the wind, and the companionship at dinner, were part of the reason I just didn’t want to get on my bike----ever again.  I’ve never encountered such a low moment in my cycle touring years, and struggled to understand what is going on.

So I made a bargain with myself, get to Medora, 24 miles away, check out the National Park, have a hot meal, and then decide if you want to go further.  That worked, and I got out finally by around 8 AM, again many hours after being up.  It was back on the freeway, the only paved route, and it was a lot of climbing and descending as I headed into the badlands.  A nice descent into Medora, which is a lovely little town (like Wibaux MT, also started by a French nobleman) and I headed for the Cowboy Café, which I’d read was a local institution.  By now I was feeling a bit hungry, and had the sausage and pancake breakfast. I couldn’t eat it all, as my stomach was still bugging me (anxiety or a bug?, probably the former, as there was no evidence of the latter).  I went over to the visitor center, used my parks pass, and the ranger asked me if I planned to cycle around the loop road.

I thought, oh, how nice it would be to just dump my stuff at a motel, and do a bit of the loop road today.  And then, I thought about how nasty the headwinds were forecast for tomorrow, and how I didn’t want to cycle the 45 miles into Dickinson in heavy headwinds.  Once again, making progress, scheduling and the weather were driving my decision.

I did spend some time in the visitor center, which was full of interesting exhibits and information.  I heard two guys making plans with a ranger for an overnight backpacking trip, and it was nice to be in a place again where people were doing fun things, rather than just being in dreary town after dreary town.  North Dakota really seems to have more life going on so far.

Too soon, I was back on the road, and the big climb up from the Little Missouri River.  About three miles into the climb out, it started to get a bit warm, and I cursed myself for not having a nice tour around the park, and staying in Medora.

I got to the little town of Belfied, about 15 miles later, to find it completely overwhelmed with oil boom truck traffic.  The motel had rooms, so I had a sandwich and juice at---Cenex----and watched the constant stream of tired looking, sweaty oil workers come into the place.  Almost all white, and all male, and mostly out of shape, you could see that these were the Bush/Romney crowd, men who didn’t care that they were destroying our planet, one well at a time.  They reminded me of a couple of guys I’d heard at the bar in Circle, going on and on about Obama, and how we really need that Keystone XL pipeline.  I decided after a bit, that no matter how tired and bad I felt, I wasn’t going to stay in a motel full of oil workers, next to an ugly freeway interchange tonight.

So I headed to old US 10, the quiet, 20 mile route along the Heart River valley to Dickinson.  Other bloggers had sung its praises, and I was looking forward to it.  Wrong.  It had just been chip sealed and was covered in new gravel for 20 miles.  Sigh.  Just what I wanted, 20 miles of gravel.  I turned around, went back up the hill and got back on the freeway shoulder.

The shoulder was wide, but there was a huge amount of truck traffic between Belfield, which is on US 85, the major north/south route through the Bakken oil formation, and Dickinson, which is the major oil service center for the southern part of the oil fields.  I was starting to get a headwind, so in some ways the trucks were a blessing, as they passed far enough to my left for me to feel safe, but then broke the wind.

Unfortunately the freeway headed straight over the rolling prairie, so it was a lot of up and down, and I was getting more and more tired.  I could see old US 10 winding along the river valley in the distance, missing most of the hills, but then when it got close to the freeway, I could see the trucks clearly violating the 35 mph speed limit and spraying gravel everywhere.  I counted my blessings, and trudged onward.

As I got into Dickinson, it looked just like the ugly suburbs north of Dallas or outside Oklahoma City.  No surprise, given the roots of the people calling the oil shots here, but confronted with it out here on the northern prairie, it was quite jarring.  Boomtown USA.   The road into town had just been paved, and it was a nice smooth ride past many construction sites and hundreds of loose nails that had been jarred loose from someone’s vehicle.

I had called the Oasis Motel from Belfield, to see if they had a room.  They had good TripAdvisor reviews, and their rooms were only $100. The big chains with rooms at that price were full, and most of the others were in the $150-200 range, so I felt lucky that they had rooms.  I was greeted at the motel by another lovely older woman, Doris, who is the manager.  We chatted a bit about the boom, and the sorry state of the exterior of the hotel (apparently it’s hard to get painters and the hotel was being renovated, quite nicely I might add).  She also clued me into a local restaurant known for its Ukrainian style borscht.

I cleaned up, headed out, super tired, and went to Jacks, which looked like any other of the tens of family style restaurants I’ve been at over the last two months.  Same smell too.  However, you could get borscht with your fried chicken dinner, so I did.  It was yummy, not quite as good as Grandma Mabel’s, but deeply satisfying.  The chicken and ubiquitous french fries were not so satisfying, and again I couldn’t eat all my dinner, so I packed up the chicken breast to take back to the hotel.

The owner was the cashier and he asked how I liked the meal.  I told him the borscht was almost as good as my North Dakota grandmother’s and he beamed, and said, ‘we want it to be almost as good as grandmother’s because no one’s is ever as good as grandmother’s.’  A wise man indeed!

As I walked back to the motel, I passed the Ukrainian Cultural Institute, which had been closed when I cycled by earlier.  The sign said they opened at 9, and I thought I’d check it out before cycling on tomorrow.  I peered in the windows, and could see a lot of books, pictures and handicrafts, so I was excited to hear more about the history of my father’s people in this part of North Dakota.

Back at the hotel, I phoned into a Shanti conference call, with Skype performing quite poorly here in Dickinson, which was surprising.  But it wasn’t as bad as my ATT phone which only connected sporadically and dropped every time I made a call.  I guess the telecom infrastructure here is overloaded too.  I also did some bills and a little work, before getting ready for bed.  Since I’d been waking up hungry and with stomach cramps in the middle of the night, I ate the chicken breast and a banana before going to bed.

Day 50----Barely able to get going today, Circle MT to Beach ND

90.8 miles, 7:06, 12.8 mph

I slept very fitfully last night, waking up at least three or four times, and looking at the clock.  I was also very hungry, and ate a banana around 4 am.  In these parts of the eastern end of the Mountain Time Zone it starts to get light around 5, even this late in the summer, and as it got light, I had a hard time sleeping.

I felt hungry but nauseous, and finally got out of bed around 6:00.  I tried to eat the white cake with peach sauce, but it just made my stomach feel sicker.  I sadly tossed it, and tried to eat a bit of the homemade cinnamon roll I bought at the nice little café yesterday afternoon.  Sadly, it was bland, too sweet, and I couldn’t eat much of it either.  I really felt like I was starting to lose it, stuck in a seedy, run down motel, in the middle of nowhere Montana.  I was tired, and hadn’t really recovered from yesterday’s hilly ride.

I had a long conversation with myself about going on, that Glendive was only  50 miles of easy riding away, and it was on I-94, which was a possible escape route, at least with a bus.  The forecast was also for a tailwind today, so I threw that into my bargaining with myself about riding today.  Finally I left around 7:50, after essentially being awake since 4 AM.  It was a slow start, and lot of climbing to get out of Circle.  Then the road rolled for a bit, before finally going over a summit.  The road rejoined the rail spur shortly after the summit, and my speed picked up, along with the tailwind.  I rode quickly, and skipped the closed up town of Lindsay, and cruised along, feeling pretty good, but also tired.  The railroad spur to Circle was right next to the road, and for at least 5 or 6 miles, was solidly packed with empty grain cars, awaiting the harvest.

 Over the past couple of days, I’ve been fussing with my right cleat, which lost a screw in Glacier, and I haven’t been able to get it quite right.  As a result, I’ve had some IT band tightness and pain in my right leg, but mostly when I’m walking or sometimes sleeping at night.  I’ve been doing lots of stretches, massage etc, but it’s still bothering me, and today it’s bothering me a little on the bike too.

This felt like returning to civilization

 

I got to Glendive around 1230, after only 3 hours and 45 minutes on the bike, and had a nice picnic lunch in the park with the swimming pool.  Glendive has seen some prosperity also from the oil boom, and the downtown, which centers on the railroad station, had some life in it too.  Sadly the little public park by the historic depot had no public bathrooms, so I found the pool park, which was much shadier.

It was still pretty early, and I had a discussion with myself about going on today.  I still had a great westerly, only the third one in the last ten days, and there were two towns along the route, one Wibaux, about 30 miles away, and the other, Beach, the first town in North Dakota, 40 miles away.  Both had motels and grocery stores, and I called each of the motels and they had plenty of rooms (I was finding that the oil boom wasn’t having as much of an impact this summer as previous years, due to lots of new rooms being built closer to the drilling action).  The road was a bit up and down across the prairie, but the grades on the freeway (no old US 10 to bicycle here) were smooth, if a bit long.  So I decided to be done with Montana once and for all, and get to at least Wibaux, on the border, and to Beach if I felt ok when I got to Wibaux.

More prairie

Usually after about the 4^th hour of riding, my endorphins kick in, and push my body along when it’s tired.  And today was no exception.  It took me a little more than two hours of gently rolling riding to get to Wibaux, which turned out to be a charming historic little town.  Lots of little shops for this part of the world, a couple nice new renovations with more going on, and a sparkling clean and tidy small supermarket, where the owner was also the butcher.  I had a nice chat with the cashier, a local young woman, in her early 20s, from Beach, and she told me about how the oil boom has made it possible for young folks like her and her boyfriend to have jobs and stay near home.  She, her boyfriend, and their young child live with her mom, and are able to have a pretty good middle class life at a young age.  Quite a contrast to earlier generations in these parts which had to leave in order to make their way in the world.

After some juice and a snack, I headed out to check out the town.  It had a nice little park where you could camp, but it was right next to the busy Great Northern Railroad line, which from here was the historic Portland-St. Paul line, and lots of thriving little businesses, including a brew pub!  If only the lodging were in town, rather than in a faceless tacky suburban building out by the freeway.

Lovely little Wibaux

 

I headed out of town on the old US 10, which takes you to the Montana Visitor Center, and an exhibit of the history of the area.  Interestingly, Wibaux was named for a Frenchman who came to start a big cattle business in Montana in the 1880s, and the town and the county were named after him.  The woman at the visitor center had been the town postmaster, and was full of information and local history.  Wibaux was a nice town, the first nice little town in a long, long while.

I’ve been feeling some pressure the last few days to get to an airport, so I can fly back for the Shanti board retreat, and the pressure, along with the endorphin high, kicked in, and sent me on my way to the North Dakota border.  And to be honest, I was ready to be done with the 896 miles I’d pedaled across Montana.

 

50 minutes later, a mile into North Dakota, I pulled off the freeway to see the typical ugly freeway interchange gas stations and motel.  Disappointed again by the locale, and the lack of anything local, it was a bit discouraging.  I had noticed there was another motel in town, about half a mile away, but it was the same price and didn’t include breakfast.  In any event  I had made a reservation at the Buckboard Inn (nothing quaint other than the name)  and I reckoned I was on the hook.

Lovely little Beach ND

Happily the clerk was the retired manager of the place, a delightful friendly woman, who asked if I knew the other cyclist who had just checked in.  Ah, I thought, another solitary traveler!  As I was getting ready to wheel my bike to the door by my room, another cyclist pulled up!  A whole cycling convention was shaping up, and I was hoping that I had would have a dinner companion.  Dewayne, who had just arrived, on his way from the Twin Cities to Kalispell, was interested, and we invited the other cyclist, Scott, to come with us.  Scott was tired and didn’t want to bike into town, so after cleaning up Dewayne and I headed into town to the Mexican restaurant, La Playa.  Clever name for a restaurant in Beach ND, so maybe things were looking up.

Turns out the food was pretty good.  The restaurant is owned by a couple, she from Utah, and he from Mexico, and our waiter was their going-into-10^th- grade son, who had just returned from an international music camp in Bottineau, ND. It was his first time away from home by himself, and he was clearly eager for more of the world outside Beach.  His family had moved from Las Vegas, before the oil boom, and were Mormons too, and regularly go to the nearest church in Glendive---only in America!  Another surprising example of how the Mormon population seems to be increasing here on the northern plains.

It was really nice to have an intelligent, engaging conversation, and later I realized that it had been a long time, since I was back in Dodson, that I’d had any kind of conversation over a meal.  We lingered for a long while, and I heard about Dewayne’s first ride, from the Twin Cities to Aspen, in 1980, when he was only 17, and some of his subsequent rides.  He was on a short trip now to see friends in Kalispell, and I really envied him the shortness, and the forecast for winds in his direction, not mine, over the next few days.  We lingered at the table, talking, before we both realized it was getting late (for cyclists up early) and he had had a tough day of headwinds.  We cycled back to the motel, and I fell asleep before 930.

Day 49---morning meltdown, Wolf Point to Circle MT

54.9 miles, 5:13, 10.5 mph

The rain woke me up at 4 am, as the gutters on the hotel leaked and the rain poured over the edge of the roof, making a lot of noise outside the door to my room.  Today's stretch of highway to Circle is hilly, and very desolate, so rain is a bad omen.  I had a hard time getting back to sleep as the rain continued, even with earplugs.  Over the last three or four days, I've been pretty anxious in the mornings, and my two weather days in Glasgow weren't at all restful.  I've been sleeping poorly, and feeling pretty blah in the mornings.  I think some of it is endorphin withdrawal, maybe my endorphin levels are plunging during the night?

I dozed fitfully, and around 7 went to the breakfast room to eat.  My stomach was tight and I was a little nauseous, but manage to get some toast and peanut butter down.  It was still raining hard, so Iwent back to my room, and checked the radar.  It looked like the last line of thunderstorms would be through Wolf Point soon, so I started pack.

While packing I felt awful, and really didn't want to go on with my trip.  I spent 30 minutes or so checking escape routes, via train, rental car, and plane.  The long, hard days alone on the road are really starting to affect my mental attitude, and for a while I just lay in bed trying to meditate and calm myself down.  I've never felt this way on a bicycle tour before, and it's a new situation for me to handle.

Wolf Point has seen better days, Hart Schaffner and Marx no more

The depressed downtown

A possible escape?

Finally I could hear that the rain had stopped, and I decided I could push on to Circle today, and it turned out to be a really rough day of cycling. The first few miles along the Missouri River valley were pleasant, then after crossing the river at an historic bridge,I finally managed to eat some food.

The endless up and down hills went on for 20 miles, and I took it slowly, still feeling pretty burned out, until I reached the only town along the way.  At the little closed up town of Vida I sat and ate my lunch on the bench in front of the post office, which was closed, like the bar and grill and everything else except the  Cenex gas and garage.  Once again the guys at the local Cenex came through with water, but they gave me a bit of a hard time about being a cyclist.   Kind of that country macho thing that I've gotten a few times before.  A local medical delivery guy who stopped by the Cenex told me that there were two cyclists headed north, and to watch out for them.

Abandoned school

An abandoned church

Endless prairie

 

About ten miles out of town, over more hills, I ran into the two cyclists, MJ and Kory, two recent college grads who were riding to promote sustainability.  Their blog, Spokes of Green, is here http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1&doc_id=12434&v=1a.  We chatted a bit about the rigors of the road and what was coming up on both our routes.  It was nice to chat, but after they left, I sure felt lonely.  Since Ben has gone back to Berkeley, it's been really lonely day after day, and there aren't many people in the towns I visit to make connections with.

The hills went on and on, and I finally got to Circle, which is another declining Montana prairie town, but with a little more life than most of the others I've seen.  It's clearly getting a little bit of spillover work and money from the oil boom, which is about 50 miles to the east.  The motel was at the edge of town, and boy did it look sad and decrepit.  Rather than check in right away, I rode into town to take a look around, and examine the food options.  I picked up some snacks and breakfast food at the local supermarket, which had the usual collection of processed foods, but I scored a 'white cake with peach sauce' that looked pretty good. 

 

 

Circle MT outskirts

One of 6 or 7 meth billboards I saw today

I looked around town at the dining options and spied a new looking place, and thought I'd go there for dinner.  I went back to the motel and sadly the motel has not made any new investment, despite having more business from the oil boom.  While it was clean, it had old musty carpet, and old fixtures.  My friend Lani messaged me that she had stayed there, and thankfully I didn't get her room with the inch of light under the door!

I went to the new fancy place in town for dinner, but when I got there, I found mostly the same old Montana meat and fried food menu, but I did have a 'Cobb' sandwich, which was a grilled chicken breast with bacon and avocado.  It was tasty, but I'm really quite sick of eating french fries.  It's off to bed early tonight, as I'm hoping that I can muster the energy to have a longer day, and finally get out of Montana.

Day 48---back on the road again, with a tailwind! Glasgow to Wolf Point

50 miles, 3:49, 13.1 mph

I got up early today, but last night's thunderstorms were still rolling through town, so I didn't get started until 8:45.  I packed like it was going to rain, and put the covers on the panniers, and took off with the wind!  The first 40 miles went really fast, then the wind shifted to the NNE and as I was headed ENE for the last 10 miles, I slowed down to about 11 mph.  At one point my average had been up over 14!  What a relief after so many awful days of headwinds.

Water towers are almost as big here as grain elevators

Not much to see on the prairie, and almost nothing in the towns either.  Happy it went by so fast today.

As I rolled into town, I saw this sign.....a little something for everyone.  I had dinner there, and should have gone to McDonalds.

I did have a fun time at the local museum, which is run by a nice retired couple, she from Orland, CA (she saw my Chico Velo t-shirt and was full of questions) and he from Carson City, NV.  He had worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs here, and retired in 2009.  She doesn't like it here much, for many of the same reasons I don't like it, run down towns, lack of civic pride and engagement, insular culture and miserable winters.  He likes it more, but I sense that they are headed somewhere else soon...

The museum is full of the cool homesteading stories that I've encountered in all the museums here on the Hi-Line and some compelling stories about the local Indians and how they were largely wiped out by smallpox in the early 19th century.

When I visit these museums I'm really struck by how that can-do, communitarian, pioneer spirit, so exemplified in Wolf Willow, Wallace Stegner's account of homesteading just over the border in Saskatchewan, has so completely evaporated from these parts.  Unlike the desert valleys of the intermountain west, which have also been severely depopulated, there's a sense of loss here that you encounter in each and every mile. This seems to have entered the collective unconscious here, and become part of the culture. I have passed hundreds and hundreds of abandoned buildings, just left to weather away, no part of them appearing to be recycled.  I'll be very happy to get out of this part of Montana over the next day or two.

Day 47---a dull day in Glasgow, heavy winds and thunder and lightning

I got up at 6, checked the radar and the wind, and the radar showed a very big thunderstorm about to hit Glasgow, but the wind was calm in advance of the storm.  The storm moved through over a 2 hour period, dumped a little rain, and then the wind started to howl, from the east again! I checked to see if I could keep my room another night, and the owner said she was all booked up, so I packed up, covered myself in poison, and was prepared to head out of town.

All packed up, I opened the door to find more lightning, and I thought that maybe I had just packed up to find a vacancy at another motel in town.  I went to turn in my key, and voila, serendipity----the owner told me that a woman had checked out early, and if I wanted to stay another night, I could.

The view from my room

Deal done.

I stripped off my poisoned clothes and showered, waited for the storm to blow through, and then thought I'd go check out the local pool, and do some laps.  Turned out that the pool was hosting the Northeast Montana kids swimming tournament.  No laps for me.  It was interesting to see the swim teams from all these tiny, dilapidated towns though.  Some good swimmers, and some not so good swimmers, it seems like everyone got a chance to compete.  Good thing too, because in chatting with some of the folks, the swim season here is only two months long!  The pools open in mid June and close in mid to late August...the only indoor pool I've seen on the east side of Montana was in Havre.

It was a lovely late morning, but the wind was blowing 20+ mph

Surprisingly, you could only buy unhealthy junk food at the swim meet, and I saw swimmers eating stuff you'd NEVER see at a swim meet in California.  I did splurge on a cherry sno-cone, but ended up going to Albertson's to get some veggies and other stuff for lunch.  On Sundays almost everything is closed in Glasgow, including restaurants and cafes.  I found myself thinking once again, 'no wonder everyone goes to Billings' and the local merchants complain about the loss of business!

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and napping, and generally having a good Sunday.

Day 46----gales from the east kep me in Glasgow and a route change

It was windy today.  Really windy.  Imagine the wind blowing straight in your face, at 20-30 mph for 53 miles, that's what I skipped today. 

Tomorrow will be headwinds 9-15 mph, like yesterday, so I figure I can do the 53 miles then, but I'll be tired and it'll take me 6+ hours.  I'm tired of headwinds on the prairie, the weather systems this summer are really screwed up, and it's been exhausting.  First record heat, now unusual winds, it would be nice to have some normal weather, and just enjoy pedaling along!

I saw the Vancouver gang again in town tonight.  They didn't ride today either, even though they've been doing a lot of drafting, and they're in their 20s!

After much discussion with family and friends, I'm altering my route to avoid the Williston to Minot leg of my trip.  There is just too much truck traffic, and my family in Minot was very concerned about me arriving there safely.  If my dad had been able to make it, and my brother, we could have set up some kind of shuttle, but that's not possible now, so I'll be heading south from Wolf Point, to Glendive, along the new Adventure Cycling route.  It seems much safer, but I'll miss the chance to cycle to my father's family farms and towns.  Ah well, next year we'll meet up in North Dakota, and maybe I'll fly with my bicycle and do a little tour around then.

Day 45---and the wind is endless as well---Saco to Glasgow

45.3 miles, 5:15, 86. mph

Today was tough.  I got up at 5 to find that there was a major thunderstorm rolling in from Calgary, and that it was just a few miles west of me.  Oddly there was no wind, and I contemplated, dressing in full rain gear and heading out.  Then I read about the hail....oh, and the lightning.  Being out on the prairie, with no shelter, in hail and lightning, bad idea Phil.  Back to bed, checked the radar at 6, and the storm was even closer.  Finally got up at 7, and it was dark and threatening, and I went next door to the café to have breakfast.

Interesting spot, lots of local gossip going on, none of it particularly interesting, except that the town of Saco (population 100 or so) was about to finally enforce laws making people clean up there property.  Given that the whole town looks like a giant trash dump, none too soon I say!  Sadly, Saco seems to have fallen so far that I'm not sure any strategy could revive it.  Too bad, as the folks who live there are pretty nice, friendly, and gracious, but lacking any economic development strategy, or investment in some tourism infrastructure, the town is destined to fade away, like so many of the other towns I've passed through.

There school is down to 45 kids, K-12, and I heard in Hinsdale, the next town over (and a charmer by the way) that Saco has some natural gas wells that allow them to keep the school open.  Between Hinsdale and Saco though there are only 120 kids K-12, so it's hard to see how they can keep both schools open.

I found out from the owner of the café, who was a young 33 year old (I'm always surprised when I see people in these towns who are under 60), that quite a few of families in town have men working east in the oil fields, leaving the women and children for a couple of weeks at a time.  This provides good incomes for the families, and allows them to live in really cheap housing ($100,000 is an expensive house in these parts, $200,000 is almost a mansion, and $300,000 is a number I haven't seen).

I dawdled as the storm ended up passing to the southeast of my route, and headed out into the 15-20 mile an hour winds around 8:40.  I looked around for the Vancouver bunch, but I didn't see them camped in the park, so I figured they had gotten an early start.

The wind

Almost two hours later, I'd made 14 miles to Hinsdale, which I'd been hearing good things about from the westbound cyclists.  Shortly after leaving Saco, I met Max, a student from University of Wisconsin, who had started out at his parents' house in La Crosse.  He was heading to Seattle on a road bike with a trailer, and was young and full of enthusiasm for his trip (he'd also had tailwinds for the last few days).  He had stopped in Hinsdale and camped overnight, and had breakfast at this place I kept hearing about.

So I rolled the one block off the highway into Hinsdale, and was surprised by what a clean and tidy town it was.  Sweet Memories, the café and ice cream shop was on the right, and parked my bike in the park next door.  The café was a vision....no place since Bigfork was so nice and clean and welcoming.  All done up in white, with cool 50s retro plastic and chrome kitchen tables, like my grandmother Mabel had (hers was yellow, but they had the red version as well), and lots of fresh baked goods.

There were some locals there, and they invited me to sit at one of the tables, and the owner, Leona, was cheery and gracious.  She asks all the cyclists to sign a guest book, so she can track where they're from, and was full of questions.  No wonder all the long distance cyclists love Hinsdale.  Turns out the whole town supports having cyclists camp in the local park, and if the mosquitoes are too bad, or the weather is threatening, then they put people up in the Lutheran Church.  I was feeling a little bad that I hadn't pushed on from Saco yesterday to spend a night in Hinsdale.  But then I thought about the mosquitoes....

So I ordered the fresh baked blueberry and strawberry pie, and learned a bit about the town.  Leona had grown up in Kalispell, but her husband was from eastern Montana.  When her daughter took a job as a teacher at the Hinsdale school, Leona and her husband had moved over to the 'east side' as she called it.  She had a hard time adjusting to the cold, but likes how sunny the winters are, compared to the cloudy ones in the west, and three years ago opened her business.  She's clearly single handedly improved the overall vibe of the town, and is a great asset.  Nice to see some entrepreneurial spirit in one of these towns.

After a few minutes, a couple came in who had retired from the Bay Area!  He wore an NRA hat, and went on about California this and that, and how expensive it was.  I've decided to ask these white flight Californians where their parents were from, and am finding that they are seldom natives:  in his case, they were from Oklahoma and Montana, and were clearly post-Depression economic refugees who came to California.  Given what I've heard on my travels, I wish I'd thought of asking the family origin question earlier, as I think it might provide a little more insight.

Anyway, I got the sense that people here make the best of the winters, although a very large number go away for a long stretch.  The average daily low hits freezing here from October through April, with freezing temperatures common in September and May, so there's really only three months that isn't wintry most years.  No wonder there are so many bars!

I did a couple of internet favors for Leona, sending an email to Adventure Cycling to tell them to list her business on their maps (surprisingly after three years she's still not there, but boy, does she have awesome word of mouth!)  I also created a Facebook check in, and she will have her daughter post some pictures there.

I headed back out into the miserable wind for the next 29 miles into Glasgow.  Happily there was a rest around about halfway, where I stopped to eat a sandwich and take a break.  A woman from Iowa, whose mother was born on the Devils Lake reservation in North Dakota, was very curious about my trip, and we chatted quite a bit.  Apparently her mother had just died and she and her husband were investigating three of the pieces of land she'd inherited, one in ND, and two in Montana, all on reservations.

Like so many of the women I meet, they are super curious, and their husbands impatient, and not interested.  Her husband got in the car, turned it on, and moved out the parking spot.  She apologized, as so many of the women I've met do, and said good bye.  It's so surprising to experience this kind of gender difference as I travel.

For the last 15 miles into Glasgow, it was time to curse the highway engineers, who had taken US 2 out of the lovely Milk River Valley onto the plains, where there was no shelter or trees.  Big sweeping curves and long gentle grades right into the wind.  I wondered what they do in the winter to keep the road open, then the winds blow down from Canada.

Finally the road rejoined the river about 4 miles out of town, and it was a windy, but pleasant ride, as houses and businesses reappeared.  No stringing out of towns on the prairie; people here want to be in the protective cocoon of town and trees.

These appeared inexplicably on the way into town

Checked into the motel, and went to do laundry and get haircut.  The barber is in the Montana Bar, and he was almost 80!  A nice guy, whose family moved here in the depression to work in one of the dam towns that sprung up when 10,000 workers built the Fort Peck dam.  Glasgow's population grew in the 30s, 40s and 50s, with the dam and an Air Force Base (SAC, aimed at the Soviet Union), but since the base closed in 1969, the town has lost more than half its population.

It still has a nice vibe though, and the tourism generated by Fort Peck, 15 miles from here clearly contributes to the local economy.  I talked to some nice people who hang out at the local café downtown, which is owned by one of the high school teachers, and run by her son and his partner.  They recommended Sam's Supper Club for the Friday prime rib, and I wasn't disappointed!  Sadly the café doesn't serve hot meals, even though it's open in the evening.

After dinner I made a run to the local Albertson's (no bagels at the locally owned market) and ran into the Vancouver crowd, Ken, Amy and Matt.  It was nice to see them, and we commiserated about how awful the wind was today.  They did about 9.4 mph today, with the advantage of drafting.  Turns out they had tucked their tents behind a building where I couldn't see them this morning.  They repeated one of the constant problems I've heard from the camping cyclists, which is that it's impossible to get a good night's sleep with all the trains that roll through all night.  Some nights I even get woken up in the motel, so I can only imagine what it's like sleeping out nearer the tracks.

They plan to spend the night in Wolf Point tomorrow as well, so it'll be nice to run into them again.

The wind has died down a bit tonight, so I'm planning an early start to see if I can beat some of the wind that way.

Day 44---The Great Plains are endless….Dodson to Saco

51.8 windy miles, 5:02, 10.2 mph

It cooled off nicely last night, and it was great to sleep in a real bed in a real bedroom in a real house, my first time since Sun Valley.  Made me a bit homesick actually.  Dawn is getting earlier as I travel east in the Mountain Time Zone, and as I had fallen asleep at 9, by 5 AM is was getting light and I just dozed until I could smell the bacon cooking for breakfast down stairs.  Sandy is a great host, and was up and getting breakfast ready for me and Steve.

A great big ranch breakfast, eggs, bacon, potatoes and pancakes, with home made wild cherry syrup, yum!  I was off by 720, and planned to do just 50 miles today into the headwind.  The cold front had come through, and it was cool and cloudy, a real joy, despite the headwind.  After the last few days of convection oven temps and headwinds, it was nice to just pedal along, albeit more slowly than I would have liked.

A little under two hours and I found myself in Malta, another of the improbably named towns along the Hi Line route.  It bears no resemblance to its namesake, nor can any of the its namesake’s foods be found here, even in the Albertson’s.  This Albertson’s has no deli, sparse fresh fruit and vegetables, but very helpful staff.

Got buns and lunchmeat, and bananas (bananas are ubiquitous so far, something to be grateful for), and cash back, and headed out side.  I took a little tour around town, and Malta’s best days, like almost all the towns up here, are well past.  Typical aging population, lots of abandoned houses, most retail places closed up, streets and sidewalks unmaintained, looking a lot like you might imagine a town had been depopulated by some disease, like people just left in a hurry.

Then it was back onto the plains, the endless plains.  I was a bit excited to be riding on an old decommissioned stretch of US 2 for a few miles, as it passed the Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge.  I went past some of the first nicely maintained farm houses I’ve seen on this side of the Rockies, and followed the road until…..oh no, bad gravel ahead, just as I found the entrance to the refuge.

I went to the Visitor Center, which was improbably lovely and new (clearly Max Baucus has been bringing home the federal bacon) and much nicer than any refuge I’ve seen in California.  Turns out this refuge is on an old piece of the Missouri River that was abandoned when the last ice sheet pushed the river 50 miles south, and directed it away from Hudson Bay, where it used to head.

I talked to one of the refuge officers, and it turns out that many east bound cyclists show up at the refuge, because the Adventure Cycling Association map apparently says this is a good alternate route.  It’s not, so beware!  The only reasonable way out was to back track two miles and ride two miles of gravel back to US 2.   The gravel was quite loose so it was slow going, but all in all it was a bit of a nice diversion from the endless headwind and pedaling along the highway.

As I crested a long, gentle climb, the views opened up, and I spied a cyclist a mile or so ahead on the other side of the road.  As you do, we stopped to chat.  John is a retired physician from near Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, living on St Joseph’s Island.  He’d been on the road a month or so, and been as frustrated by the mosquitos as I have.  He also has given up on camping, as none of the campgrounds along this route have any indoor place to hide from the bugs, and the only alternative is to be a prisoner of your tent.

It felt good to commiserate with another solo cyclist, and we were reluctant to part, but off we went, John to the west (and his terminus, Calgary) and me to the east, and the promise of a motel in Saco, another 15 miles distant.

After last night’s epiphany concerning surviving the plains, I spun along, looking at the plants, smelling the smells, and admiring the profusion of growth in this country that experiences almost 9 months of below freezing temperatures.

Today when I stopped to take pictures, the cool temps and the wind kept the bugs at bay, and I got off some good shots.

After another hour and a bit, I finally spied the elevators that signal the next town, and Saco appeared on the horizon.  It’s another of the sad, blow away towns out here, with a nice little park next to their National Historic Monument 30s gas station.  The Saco Motel has seen better days, but it’s clean, tidy and cheap! ($40/night for one person and the internet works great).  The owner was out, but the lady who owns the café next door checked me in, and after looking at some emails, eating a sandwich, and taking a shower, I fell fast asleep. 

The nap was a good antidote for the feeling of hopelessness that this part of my trip would ever end.  I’m still chafing at the idea of only making 50 miles a day across the plains, because I had counted on a tailwind to power me across here.  And my delayed entry into Williston to a week night is making it very iffy that I will find a hotel room.  Happily, I’ve been in contact with a couple who are on Warm Showers and they’ve offered me a shower and tent camping in their backyard.  Ah, life’s lessons, things never turn out just the way you expect.

I’m writing this up in the local bar, which turns out to be quite nice, with a pressed tin ceiling and a lovely wooden bar that dates to the 1920s, which was probably the last time there was any real prosperity here.  Sadly, they don’t offer much in the way of food options, just frozen stuff microwaved, or a cooked burger (my choice).  The bartender is lovely, recently moved here from Klamath Falls, Oregon.  It seems that eastern Montana beckons to the folks of interior Oregon and Idaho.

There are four local guys here, one other woman, and me.  I’m guessing the usual number for a Thursday night, although the bartender tells me that she usually closes up around 2 am, then drives 42 miles home to Glasgow, which is tomorrow’s destination.

And just to add a little more atmosphere, another 100 car train is racing through town, with hundreds of containers, no doubt headed for the Port of Seattle.

Just as I left the bar, three young cyclists, Ken and Amy from Vancouver, and their friend Matt from England, appeared, looking pretty worn out.  They’d done 70+ miles in the wind at an average of around 12 mph.  Between their youth and being able to draft, they’d done quite a bit better than my 10.2!  It seems they’ve taken to yelling at the prairie too, and they are also sick of the unexpected headwinds.

I wanted to linger and chat, but I also feel like I really need to write tonight, so I bid them goodnight as they headed into the bar.  I envied them their camaraderie a bit, as suffering is so much sweeter when you can suffer with someone!  Perhaps I’ll see them at breakfast in the morning before heading out.  They also plan to hit Glasgow tomorrow night, so I might run into them there. 

Day 43---back on the plains, in a hot headwind---Havre to Dodson

72.7 flat windy miles, 6:39 miserable hours, 10.9 mph

I really struggled with myself this morning about getting back on the road, due to the headwinds and heat today.  Finally I made a deal with myself that I would quit in Chinook, 23 miles away, if I didn’t feel better by then.  The next lodging would be in Dodson, at a B&B, but it was full on Thursday night, so I’d have to camp, but at least it would be civilization.

After my new routine of dousing both myself and my clothes in 98% DEET, I went off into the relentless sun, which is totally unusual for this part of the plains.  The big high pressure ridge that has barely budged this summer from the intermountain west has disturbed the weather patterns up here too, with day after day of temps 10-15 degrees above normal.  However, today’s forecast discussion promises that a big pacific trough coming from Alaska will push through next week, after we get a big of relief tomorrow from a big Hudson Bay front moving east (highly unusual and the source of the persistent easterly winds).

It was a pretty busy road between Havre and Chinook, as Chinook has become a bedroom community for Havre (houses are even cheaper, if you can believe that’s possible in these parts), with lots of service trucks headed for Chinook.  However, the traffic was polite, and the local people seem to be used to seeing a lot of cyclists on their roads in the summer season.

I pulled into Chinook after a couple of hours of pedaling into the wind, and it turned out to be a cute little town.  I went to the Blaine County Museum, which is serving as the interim visitor center for the new Chief Joseph battlefield monument.  The executive director was the only staff person there, and Jude was a local who had grown up in Chinook.  She was full of interesting information, and the museum is really well done, with a lot of good interpretation, which is rare at the little museums in these parts.

We had a chat about the ‘blueness’ of this part of Montana (Blaine County is a blue companion to neighboring Hill County), and it turns out her daughter works for the new Democratic Governor.  Like most people my age in these parts, the kids live far away, as there isn’t any work for them here.  She told me that there isn’t even an electrician in Chinook any more (a town of about 1000) and that electricians from Havre are reluctant to make the trip.  I commiserated with her, but pointed out that if there was enough work, someone would set up business.  This is a common refrain in the under 1000 person towns out here, that no one wants to provide services, but the economist in me wonders how you would ever make a living trying to service such small towns, given the costs of gas, supplies, helpers, etc.  Once an area starts into a death spiral, with people driving 200 miles to the nearest Costco, I’m not sure there’s any stopping it.

My visit to the last grocery store in town was instructive.  I bought some food for lunch and asked for cash back on my ATM card.  “Oh I’m sorry we can’t do that here,” was the response.  In this day and age, it’s easy and frictionless for them to do so, but the owner clearly sees no need.  No wonder the locals shop at the nice, new IGA in Havre on their way home, reducing the local spend on groceries even more.

The business people who’ve hung on here through the years and years of decline are clearly not the great American entrepreneurial class that the GOP touts as job creators.  Instead they are survivors who complain and whine about government regulation while the world passes them by.  They are truly resentful, and while it’s understandable, given the way things have gone here, it’s a recipe for continued decline.  Not sure what the solution could be, but the endgame is clearly a continuing shrinking economy and population.  In another generation, most of these towns will be ghost towns.

After my experiences in Chinook, I decided that I had enough to go on another 50 miles to Dodson, and headed off into the heat and wind.  After 20 miles the improbably named Harlem appeared (after Zurich and just before Savoy and Coburg), where I spent a half an hour in a convenience store getting rehydrated, and regretting my decision to push on in the heat and wind.  I still had 30 more miles to go, so I pushed on all afternoon, making just over 10 mph in the wind.

A mile short of Dodson, I picked up a piece of glass on the road, and the back tire punctured with a whoosh, and in the heat, and with an approaching thunderstorm, I rushed to fix the tire.  I had to stop at the local convenience store to find some dinner, and my options were frozen sandwiches, sigh.

A quick ride to the Stage Road B&B, and Sandra was there to greet me.  She was worried as I was later than I had told her (due to the flat and the heat) and immediately offered me watermelon!  She was going over to some friends for dinner, and I rehydrated with watermelon, and just relaxed, then showered.  By the time I was all ready for dinner, she was back, and offered me some yummy home grown lettuce for a salad too.  Made my Deli Express microwave sandwich taste much better!

Just as I was finishing dinner, another cyclist called, and a few minutes later Steve showed up, looking much worse for the wear than I had when I’d arrived.  Turned out he’d done a crazy 110 miles in the heat, and he’s at least my age.  It was the 5^th day that he’d done 100+ miles a day, and boy was he tired out.  The store had closed, so Sandy offered him my other sandwich, which I hadn’t needed due to the watermelon and salad.  We chatted a bit, and Steve was a retired horticulture instructor from Plymouth NH, who lives not far from my friend Faith in Orford.  He said that my route will take me right through his town, so I’m looking forward to catching up with him there.

After dinner, I took a very careful look at the map, and lodging options, and realized that things are so far apart here that my original plan to blast through here at 70+ miles a day wasn’t going to work with the forecast headwinds.  Also, hearing and seeing Steve made me realize that I don’t have to set a crazy pace, and that I should enjoy what I’m doing, rather than make it a competition or death march.

So I’ve mapped myself out for around 50 miles each day until I get to Williston, which means I’ll get there two or three days later than I’d planned.  I think I can tackle the endless monotony and the awful headwinds by taking it easier, and moving a bit more slowly, trying to limit my bicycle time to around 5 hours a day. 

I was very tired and was grateful for the earlier sunsets on this end of the time zone, and got myself in bed at 9.

Day 42, end of the 6th week, rest in Havre

More to come.

Day 41, slogging into the wind on the plains, Chester to Havre

62.7 miles, 5:54, 10.6

More to come.

Day 40, out onto the Great Plains with a vengeance, Cut Bank to Chester

72 miles, 5:28, 13.1 mph

I woke up today at 5:30, thinking I should get an early start to beat the heat, and I immediately checked the current conditions and forecast.  It was a cool 56 degrees, with a high forecast of 82, and brisk WNW winds of 10-15 mph----a perfect tailwind.  Since I was still really tired from yesterday and the day before, and the early starts, I went back to sleep until 730. 

I had breakfast, packed and headed out by 840, into a cool, lovely tailwind.  The first 4 miles or so were gentle climbing, before a long gentle downhill for a few miles.  The way was quite desolate, with a scattered farm here and there.  In these parts, many farmers farm 15-20,000 acres (but only half of that each year, as they rest the land every other year in order to preserve moisture and keep the soil from blowing away), a far cry from their grandparents’ 320 acres of homestead.

Shortly before arriving in Shelby, I started to be attacked by huge swarms of mosquitos.  It was warm already, and windy, and I was traveling often at 15-16 mph, and yet I was getting bitten, often through my cycling shorts.  When I stopped, I was immediately covered by mosquitos, and received many bites while slathering DEET all over my body and clothes.  It was really annoying, and I hadn’t anticipated having to use DEET in the middle of the day.  According to the locals though, June was especially wet, and the mosquitos were really bad this year.  Great for the crops, but lousy for the people.  The Albertson’s in Shelby was completely sold out of mosquito repellant!

I was in Shelby just after 10, got some supplies at the supermarket, checked out the really nice little downtown.  Even though Shelby is on I 15, for some reason, there was very little development out by the freeway, and the center of town still held most of the local businesses much like Cut Bank.  I’m really starting to warm up to the folks of the Great Plains, they seem to have a better handle so far on sustaining their communities.   Perhaps it’s because they lost so much of their population in the 20s and 30s, and haven’t grown much since.

I headed out to the fairgrounds, where it was the last day of the Marias area fair.   Sadly, it was being packed up, although the 4-H exhibits were still up, and there was a nice 4-H horse handling competition going on.  The big rodeo had been last night, and I thought that if I’d known, I might have braved the heat and 24 more miles to get to Shelby last night.  Ah well….maybe one more chance next weekend to find a rodeo.

At 11:20, I headed out of the fairgrounds towards Chester, which was the next food, water and lodging possibility, 44 miles away.  I cycled through a lot of emptiness, with fields of wheat, barley, canola and alfalfa lining the road.  Most of the farmsteads were at least a mile from the road, and the Great Northern Railroad line (now the Burlington Northern Santa Fe) ran along the road for most the trip.

I passed a half dozen former towns along the way, most of them marked only by a grain elevator and a couple of buildings.  During the homestead period from 1910-1920, most of these towns had hundreds of residents, and many businesses.  But it turned out that the plains were not good farmland for small family farms, and by 1930, this part of the plains had already had been depopulated.  Looking at the census data, most of the towns peaked in population in 1920, and had declined precipitously thereafter.  Now they are ghost towns, without even the buildings that once gave them shape and substance.

I kept hoping to find a tree to stop under for a break of water and food, but there are no trees anywhere near the road, and finally I just stopped at a junction to eat some lunch and drink.  Unfortunately, I must have sweated off a bit too much DEET, and I was immediately swarmed again by mosquitos.   I think I have at least 30 bites from today’s travel.

I continued on as fast as I could, and started feeling a bit dehydrated, as the temperature had really warmed up by now.  I was regretting sleeping in at this point, and the last 15 miles or so into Chester were really a slog.  At about mile 63, the town, and its grain elevators came into view, and sight of the trees really perked me up.  The last 5 miles passed a bit too slowly, but I was glad when I pulled into the MX Motel and got a room.  $64 and it smells like wet dog, alas.  But it has great air conditioning, and it otherwise quite clean and tidy.