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.

Day 39, on the road together, then on my own again, St Mary to Cut Bank

68.2 miles, 6:03, 11.2 mph

A good day of riding, more to come later.

Day 38--Going to the Sun, an awesome day, Avalanche Creek to St Mary

35.6 miles, 4:57, 7.1 mph, 3500+ feet of climbing

An awesome day, details and pics to come.

Day 37---into Glacier, boat ride and hike, West Glacier to Avalanche Creek

20.4 miles, 2:01, 10.2 mph

To be written

Day 36---rest and thunderstorms, West Glacier

This will be filled in later.

Day 35---up to Glacier National Park, Bigfork to West Glacier

46.7 miles, 4:39, 10.0 mph

After yesterday's mild heat exhaustion, and today's forecast for temperatures in the low 90s, even at elevation, I was determined to make an early start.  Ben needed a new tire, and new tubes, and the bike shop in Bigfork wouldn't open until 10, and we weren't sure if they would have what he needed, so he decided to go 15 miles out of the way to Kalispell.  Kalispell has many bike shops, so he'd be able to find what he needed.  So we decided to travel separately today, and I headed off well before 7, while it was lovely and cool.  We also booked a room in West Glacier for a second night, as the weather forecast was for some pretty heavy, dangerous thunderstorms, and we didn't want to get caught camping in the park in that kind of bad weather.

I took some photos of Bigfork, then headed up the big hill out of town, which was just fine in the morning cool.  The views were great, and the riding easy for the first few miles, although there was an annoying northeasterly headwind from time to time, as I rounded corners of the Mission Range.

I stopped around 10 for a hot dog, and a retired medevac helicopter pilot was very curious about my trip.  Turns out he was from North Dakota, and after the military drafted him during Vietnam, he moved to Kalispell.  We chatted about how the area had changed, and his perception that a lot of nut cases had moved into the area in recent years.  It was also cool to learn how they used to fly almost everyone who was really sick out to Spokane, but that now with the growth of western Montana, there's less need for medical evacuations.

I bid him farewell, even though he clearly would have wanted to chat all morning, and headed up Montana 206, the most harrowing ten miles of the trip so far.  Narrow, full of idiot Montana drivers who don't slow down when encountering something in front of them---despite all the signs about the high Montana road death rate (highest in the country, by a decent margin) and the constant parade of white crosses on the side of the road, Montana drivers persist in driving too fast, and seem a bit out of control most of the time.  The road rolled and twisted, and frankly, I was scared for the first time on my trip. 

Happily it was only 50 minutes or so of cycling before I got to US 2!!!!   My highway companion for over 1000 miles, until the eastern Upper Peninsula, with a few detours off and on.  I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment of having reached an important milestone on my trip, and it helped me to shake off the tired feeling from yesterday's heat problems.

I turned east up US 2, to head along the canyon of the Flathead River.  I passed a lot of tacky tourist shops and displays before the road suddenly narrowed into the first part of the canyon.  Another super frightening stretch of road, but with more tourists than Montanans, people actually slowed down before passing me.  There was also very little truck traffic, so it felt a lot safer.  After a few miles, the canyon widened out, and so did the road, and my sense of well-being!

The road began to climb, and the sun was hot.  The fuel temperature was already over 100, and it wasn't noon, and I was starting to flag.  I watered up, ate some more, and just slogged along, and slogged along, until finally, the mountains of Glacier National Park came into view.  I was almost there, and the last half mile was a bit of a coast into the Vista Motel, which true to promise, had a full view of the central range of Glacier.

They were still cleaning rooms, and our little cabin wasn't ready yet, so I checked my email, and ended up chatting with the owner.  Turns out she had hung out a lot in Montana in the 70s, then moved to the Bay Area, where she had lived for more than 20 years before retiring.  Montana had maintained its pull and she decided to buy a rather rundown motel, and renovate it.  It sounded like the pull of Montana had waned for her, and she also felt that western Montana had a lot more right wing people than before.  Her husband still lives and works in the Bay Area, and she spends part of the year in West Glacier.  The motel isn't weatherized so the season is only about 4 months long.  She's done a great job of fixing it up, and it was nice to sleep on real cotton sheets!

While I was still in my cycling clothes, I cycled to the park headquarters to get some information, and was assured that all the front country campsites had bear lockers.  This was a relief, as the website was quite unclear about bear lockers, and we would be bringing a couple days of food with us into the park.  I rambled around the visitor center to learn more about the park, and then headed back to the motel for a well deserved swim!

There was a lovely Canadian family at the pool, and we chatted for a bit.  They were from Red Deer, which is between Calgary and Edmonton (so WAY up there) and both had grown up on a farm.  The husband worked as a heavy equipment mechanic, mostly oil field related, and the wife was a teacher's aide.  I was struck by how well read and aware of the world they were, so unlike their American working class counterparts.  To be honest they reminded me of New Zealanders----why is the American working class so stubbornly ignorant compared to its counterparts in other immigrant cultures?

Turns out the husband had recently been down to Tehachapi with his boss, to look into buying some used windmills.  Apparently, the province of Alberta, in order to shine up its Texas-sized reputation for environmental destruction, is subsidizing the installation of wind farms!  They'll sure have to put up a lot of them to make up for the Tar Sands.....  Anyway, he was quite knowledgeable about the industry, and as I headed back to my cabin, he asked me if I knew who he should approach for financing!  (I had mentioned that I had worked on some windmill deals back in the 80s, the summer I worked at Coudert and he figured I might know someone).  I told him I didn't know anyone in Canada, and that generally the manufacturers help arrange the financing.  But since they were looking at used windmills, I told him to approach one of the big Canadian banks in his town, and find out who did alternative energy finance.  Let's hope we struck a blow for the environment in Alberta.

By now it was 5 PM and still no Ben.  I was starting to get a bit worried since he had texted me that he'd left Kalispell hours ago.  Around 530 I got a text picture of the Hungry Horse Dam, and it turns out that Ben had done a 5 mile climb in the heat to get to the dam.  Crazy man!  Anyway, he arrived not too much later, and we headed off for a nice dinner, and the knowledge that we could sleep in tomorrow morning!

Day 34---the lovely Flathead valley and more heat---Ronan to Bigfork

48.8 miles, 4:37, 10.5 mph

Quote of the day:  On the back of a pick up truck, parked at a display of ammo and munitions: "Caution:  this vehicle disperses Prius repellent."

After last night's dreadful Mexican a la Montana dinner, we were looking forward to this morning's Mennonite breakfast extravaganza.  I substituted a cinnamon roll for the toast with my eggs and toast breakfast, and the roll itself was enough for a whole breakfast!  The roll arrived warmed up, slathered in butter and full of nuts. Ben helped eat through it, but we still left about a third of it.

Back to the Starlite Motel, and packing up, and some more bike adjustments for Ben.  We headed out on old US 93, through some lovely irrigated wheat and alfalfa fields, with the Mission Mountains always on our right.  This glaciated landscape is very deceptive, because the scale is so large, and often it looks like you're descending when you're really going flat or up a bit, because the gentleness of the next climb tricks your eye.

More of the old road took us through little Pablo, which is the home of the Flathead headquarters.  We stopped at the museum, but it wasn't open yet, and I was a little disappointed not to learn more about the Salish, who had been deported from the Bitterroot Valley.  Thus far, I had been very impressed with how prosperous the reservation looked, and how many new tribal and non-tribal businesses there were.  Despite the allotment process and Anglo inholdings, this reservation seemed to be able to thrive.  It was quite a contrast to what I remembered from 1978.

At Pablo, a bike lane appeared, and it followed an old railroad grade, all the way to Polson, which is the first town on the shores of lovely Flathead Lake, which turns out to be the largest lake west of the Mississippi.

The town itself is not much more than a strip of tourist business along the lake front and a small downtown that has seen better days.  However, I spotted a sign for Flathead Lake Cheese, and we went to find out what that was about.

We were greeted by the first solar powered cheesery!  It's run by the owners, Joe and Wendi, and we got tastes of their cheese (mostly in the Gouda style) and a grand tour.  Joe is from Wisconsin, and Wendi from Arizona (but a North Dakota native) and they decided to set their business up here on Flathead Lake.  Apparently, there used to be many dairies in the area, and in Ronan there was an old cheesery that had closed.  Hopefully Joe and Wendi are the harbinger of the rebirth of the Flathead Lake cheese industry.  It's certainly a lovely spot, and marketing should be easy!

We climbed back out of Polson along the railroad grade, and headed for the east shore of Flathead Lake.  We'd been hearing that the road was narrow and carried a fair bit of traffic as it rolled along the shore.  Yes, it was narrow, and despite the signs that said trucks not recommended, there was a steady stream of fuel tanker trucks taking a 'short cut' along the lake.  I vowed not to ever go to a Town Pump gas station/convenience store after being passed by 15+ of their trucks headed north!

It was just the beginning of cherry picking season, for which Flathead Lake is known.  The lake doesn't freeze over the in the winter, so the east shore enjoys a mild climate, similar to that of the Traverse City area in Michigan.  Mild means super cloudy in the winter though, and at this latitude, I could only imagine how gray and grim the winters were. 

The first cherry stand was selling cherries from Washington, so we passed.  Just a bit further along, we saw a homier stand, with a mother and daughter selling cherries they had picked that morning.  Tunrs out they were from Amarillo Texas, and spent the summers at Flathead Lake.  The husband is a school teacher, so they starting escaping the hot southern plains, and ended up buying an old orchard.  However, with the big western heat wave this year, she said it had been hotter up in Montana this year than back home in Amarillo!

I learned a little about the industry around the lake.  Most the cherries are picked by Mexican migrant workers, but for some reason they hadn't shown up yet this year. (Not surprising given all the racist comments I'd heard here in western Montana.)  So she and her daughter had picked cherries in the morning to get the stand going, and she said she was lucky to pick 20 pounds in an hour.  The experienced pickers will pick 60-80 30 pound boxes in a day!  At $5.50 a box, that's a big payday for the pickers.  I can pick about 4 pounds of cherries off my tree in an hour, so clearly I need some training.

Shortly after buying some delicious cherries, we passed the ammo and munitions exhibit, which was run by a guy who looked very similar to the Unabomber.  Needless to say, if he was that hostile to the Prius, we didn't want to find out what he thought of cyclists!

Around 1, we stopped at a nice state park picnic location, but it wasn't the place for jumping into the lake for a swim, as it was full of kids.  I was surprised by how little public land there was around the lake, compared to Lake Tahoe, and how little public access there was.  Even when the road was right on the shore, there were "No Trespassing" signs everywhere.  After lunch it got really hot, and the fuel temperature was over 100.  I thought I could nail the last 13 miles easily, but a series of short, steep climbs really took it out of me, and about 6 miles short of Bigfork, I really started feeling sick from the heat.  In retrospect, I should have just ignored the signs and gone swimming.

We rolled into Bigfork around 4, and the hotel had great air conditioning and a pool.  I didn't recover for a couple of hours, and had an upset stomach from the heat for quite some time.  I'm really getting to hate the heat of the afternoons on this hot, hot days, and really feeling like the heat spoils so many days of my trip.

At dinner time, we wandered into the town of Bigfork, which turned out to be a really pleasant surprise.  Lots of nice little restaurants, shops, and a good vibe.  It was clearly an affluent enclave, and everyone was really nice.  We ate outside on the deck at the historic Bigfork Inn, which had good food, great service and friendly staff.  We met the owner, who was around my age, and had owned the place with her husband for 30+ years, and our waiter was a Montanan who had lived for many years in Maui, but returned with her husband a few years ago with their kids.  Turns out they had bicycled up the Going to the Sun Road with her family a few days earlier!  It was their first time, and she was full of enthusiasm for our riding.  Later we met her husband, who makes beautiful handmade wooden canoes, www.morleycanoes.com.  They look really awesome!

Sated from a great dinner, we headed back in the setting sun (sunset is maddeningly late here when you want an early start, 9:30 or later) for bed and an early start to beat the heat on the climb to West Glacier.

Day 33---Riding with a buddy, and the heat returns, Missoula to Ronan

57.7 miles, 5:17, 10.9 mph

It was Sunday morning in Missoula, and the first half marathon runners were returning the hotel as we got ready.  Ben had a lot of bicycle adjustments to make, so we didn't really get started til after 8:30.  But it was a really nice cool morning for a change, and some runners from Havre took our picture before we headed out.

We left town via old US 10, West Broadway in Missoula, and Woodward Avenue in my home town of Detroit.  After crossing US 12 on Friday, which goes by Ann Arbor, the familiar highway numbers of my youth made me feel like I was really in the far north now.

As we rode along I was thinking about all the right wing billboards I'd been seeing, and we passed many more storefront Christian churches, mostly in tilt up warehouse complexes.  There weren't quite as many as there were in the Bitterroot Valley, but a surprising number given Missoula's liberal reputation.  Just near the airport we came upon the Vigilante Storage lockers, which gave me some pause!

As we reached the end of the long developed strip, near Frenchtown, I realized that the noxious odor from the pulp mill that had dominated Missoula the other times I had visited, was no longer there. A quick look and it turns out that it was closed in 2009, after many years of the locals fighting the pollution.  Of course the closure eliminated hundreds of well paid union jobs, and in the middle of the recession, I'm sure that many were still unemployed (or headed to North Dakota).

The first climb out of the Clark Fork valley took us into cool, damp forest and it wasn't too strenuous, although I was back on the loathsome US 93, with it's debris laden shoulder and cars and trucks whizzing by at 75 mph.  Since it was Sunday, it was a lot of local folks headed to Flathead Lake for the day, along with their boats on trailers.  I did see this very cool railroad bridge, right out of a Hollywood western on the way though.

Just after the first summit, we entered the Flathead Indian Reservation.

After seeing the Flathead Reservation, I was surprised it was so lovely, given that the Indians usually got the short end.  Well as it turns out.....in 1910, after the US Government decided the Indians weren't 'using' the land properly, they gave them all allotments, and then opened the rest to homesteaders....once again dishonoring a treaty.

We stopped to have lunch at the cute Bison Café, which had a No Hate sticker on the window.  Definitely a nice vibe, a little hippy, a little Indian, and Ben had delicious huckleberry pancakes....

Unfortunately after lunch the heat was turned up with a vengeance, just as we were to do the steepest climb of the day into the Flathead Lake basin.  I don't do well in the heat climbing, but with a couple of stops and lots of water, made it to the top, where the view of the Mission Range was stunning.

I want to figure out if you can climb the amazing crack in the middle of the cirque.

 

Mission Mountains

 

We hopped off the US 93 hellway, and took old US 93 into the lovely little town of St. Ignatius, which was founded by the same Jesuit missionaries that started the mission in the Bitterroot.  The grounds and church were lovely (and still owned by the church, so no donation from me this time).  They had a really great collection of old photographs of the local Indians and missionaries from the 19th and early 20th century, and it was really interesting to see how the traditional dress continued for so many years.

After a bit longer on old US 93, it was back onto the freeway which narrowed as it went through the wildlife refuge.  Virtually no shoulder and lots of traffic whizzing past.  Happily it was Sunday so there weren't many trucks.

A beautiful scene reflected in one of the ponds on the wildlife refuge

After a few more miles we ended up in Ronan, which has very little to recommend it as a town.  It was already 90 degrees though, and after 57 miles we called it a day.

We walked about a mile to the Mexican restaurant, and when I saw that both of the employees were blond, blue eyed young high school types, I thought that perhaps we should have gone to the McDonalds after all....and it was the very worst Mexican food I'd ever eaten.  The Dairy Queen was out of chocolate, so we ended up topping the evening off with vanilla cones dipped in chocolate, again a bit of a disappointment.

I went to bed really looking forward to the Mennonite restaurant for breakfast!

Day 32---no rest in Missoula

I did about 9 miles on the bicycle today running around town doing errands.  First stop was the laundromat, which was on the other side of the river from downtown, near the University of Montana. (Another issue with the hotel was that the washing machine was broken, and they hadn't gotten around to replacing it). On the way there I cycled through downtown Missoula, which is nicely turned out, with many lovely old buildings, lots of restaurants and shops.  As I crossed the river it was super busy with the marathoners wandering around town and I could see the Farmers Market stalls along the riverfront promenade.  It had a great vibe, and the day was sunny and cool (normal cool I might add!). I stopped at Bernice's Bakery on the way there, which is a bit reminiscent of Nabolom in Berkeley, with nice big gooey pastries.

Sparkle Laundry is a cool spot, with a soda fountain, wifi and the New York Review of Books. It's run on Saturdays by a recently retired philosophy major who moved to Missoula in the 70s. I enjoyed talking to him, and I was reminded of my first time through Missoula in 1978, when I'd hitched there to visit a friend I'd made in Jackson Hole that summer.  Missoula was nowhere then, with a pulp mill that belched noxious fumes, and temperature inversions that made you choke.  But it was full of dropouts and hippies and pot smokers, and it was nice to see that spirit still alive, if a bit long in the tooth!

While I was waiting for the laundry, I called around to find a new rear tire, that would be heftier than the Panaracer Paselas that I've been using.  They are really too lightweight for heat and chip seal, and I'd worn a new rear tire out just coming from Alturas. It was hard to find 26 x 1.50 touring tires in Missoula, but a great local bike shop had some really bomber Bontragers with Kevlar tread.  When I got to the Open Road shop, and saw the tire, I knew it was the one!  They were super helpful, and within 20 minutes I had a new tire on the rear, a spare to take with me, and cleaned up drive train and derailleur adjustment.  If you're ever in Missoula, check them out!

By the time I was finished with my errands, I'd missed the weekly Farmers Market, but I did get to stop in at Adventure Cycling and chat with the two staff who work there on Saturdays.  One was the long time cartographer, so we talked maps and roads, which was fun.  I think Adventure Cycling does a great job for the sport, but for me, I'd rather plan my own adventure, rather than follow a preplanned one.  But you know me, why not take the road less traveled!  We also talked about the awful southern approach into Missoula, and apparently there's some political gridlock involved.

Then it was off to the hotel where the manager had finally returned my call, and found a room that had at least some wifi service (but still too slow to upload pics or documents).  After waiting for an hour or so, and being cheated of a much needed nap, I was off to REI for a couple of items, and a stop at Costco (across the street) for a big supply of Clif Bars for me and Ben. As I continued to pedal around town, it seemed like there was an awful lot of road rage in such a small city, with lots of people screeching around corners in a hurry.  I have to say I was starting to get concerned about riding around town....

A quick stop at Safeway, then back to the hotel to pay bills, write emails, and get ready for Ben's arrival.  No time for a rest at all....

Ben's plane was on time and when he got to the hotel we went and had bison burgers for dinner, then back to the hotel where he worked on getting his bike ready for our first day of riding tomorrow.  I think I fell asleep in about 2 minutes.  All in all, too busy a day!

Day 31---From bears to freeway in a day, Conner to Missoula

92.2 miles, 7:32, 12.2 mph

Quote of the day, "I took my kids to Disneyland in 2006, and you know, there were 10 of them for 2 of us."

The day dawned clear, with a few high clouds, high up in the Bitterroot Valley.  It was lovely and cool, and after yesterday's climb, I was well rested, having been the only person staying at Rocky Knob.  I had some granola and fruit, and planned to get a real breakfast in Darby, about 15 miles down the valley.

The fire zone from 2000

It was a lovely cool ride through Conner and I finally exited the year 2000 fire zone into a wide agricultural valley, with many log and trophy homes (and some log trophy homes!).  The landscape is much gentler here in Montana than in Idaho, and the houses seem more architecturally consonant with the landscape; so although there are just as many houses, they don't look so out of place.  I also passed at least 5 establishments that make log homes, and I can only guess that they ship them premade around the country, because this little valley surely can't support that many builders.

I rolled into Darby around 930 and went to Deb's Restaurant, a classic little breakfast and lunch place.  Had a great breakfast, and enjoyed eavesdropping on all the conversations around me (I'm becoming quite expert at listening without reacting, and people say the darnedest things).  The upper Bitterroot Valley is white working class flight from southern California territory, and many of the people I've talked to have had something to say about 'them,' which I'm pretty sure means Latinos (I'd be afraid to ask actually, it would be like not being white enough or something like that). 

I heard similar conversations and comments in the bar and restaurant last night, and also at the Sacajewea Center in Salmon.  Interesting, and now that the economy is bad, they're all headed for North Dakota.....

I finished my breakfast, catching up on a few emails on my phone, and then continued down the valley to Hamilton.  Hamilton looks like Hemet in the Montana mountains.....highway lined with strip malls and tacky suburban development.  Could be anywhere, and it's a shame really.  However, the lady at AAA told me that the bicycle path starts there, and goes all the way to Lolo, 40 miles down the valley, and I was grateful to get off the loathsome multi lane US 93, which has a wide shoulder full of debris and rumble strips next to the white line.

US 93 is covered with billboards, many of them for guns and ammo, unfortunately on a bike you don't get to just look at the scenery

The bike path had good pavement and was pretty clean, but it basically runs along side a freeway for 40 miles, with nothing but traffic noise.  So far I was very unimpressed with the 'famous' Bitterroot.  While it's pretty, it's also urbanized in a really cheap and ugly way (think Inland Empire), and wasn't really enjoyable cycling.

What you get to see is quite beautiful, when you don't have to look at the road

When I got to the little town of Stevensville, the first town in Montana, I detoured off the highway, and found a lovely little village with the St. Ignatius Mission right on the edge of the hayfields. The Jesuits arrived here in the early 1840s at the request of the local tribes, who had traveled all the way to Saint Louis to make their request.  The mission was occupied on and off until the 20th century, and the museum and log cabin-style chapel were delightful.  The volunteer docents were great, with a lot of clearly accurate knowledge, and happily the mission is not run by the Catholic Church, but a local nonprofit. 

My docent joked that she was even a Protestant!  There were many interesting photographs from the 19th century, and a good history of how the mission and local Indians interacted until they were deported in 1905.  The current museum works very closely with the Salish tribe, and there is an annual pilgrimage from their current home, the Flathead Reservation, to the mission every year.  Father Ravalli, a Jesuit from Italy who ran the mission for many years, was well respected by the local Indians, and has both a county and a town named after him in Montana.  It was interesting to learn how important the Jesuits had been to the local tribes.

The mission chapel

 

Father Ravalli's cabin

The locals in Stevensville warned me off the narrow road that runs on the other side of the valley from US 93, so it was back to the bike path, where I got caught in a thunderstorm.  While sitting under the eaves of a warehouse building, I watched a woman in a giant pick up truck miss her turn at 40 mph, and take out both the stop sign and the directional sign at the intersection nearby.  She then drove out of the ditch, back onto the road, and sped off like nothing had happened. 

This was to be the first of numerous scary driver incidents I would witness today.

At Lolo, the bike path ends, and you are forced onto a narrow four lane freeway through the Bitterroot Canyon where it cuts through the terminal moraine.  It was one of the most harrowing entrances to a city I've ever experienced.  The speed limit is 70 mph, despite the tight curves, narrow shoulders and non existent median.  The roadside is littered with the white crosses that Montana maintains to remind people of road deaths.  For the vaunted bicycle city of Missoula, it is a shocking way to enter the city, and one that they sorely need to address, given the volume of cycle tourists.  After traversing this almost ten mile stretch, I now understood why the cycle tourists I'd met coming up the valley were so pleased with the cycleway, despite is poor aesthetics.

Once into Missoula, the "Bike Route" which follows the old US 93, appeared, disappeared and reappeared, with seemingly no rhyme or reason.  Another thunderstorm found me under the canopy of  a Jiffy Lube until the rain stopped.  Heading into the downtown the bike path was basically in the gutter, which was filled with water from the storm. 

It was not a happy entry into Missoula to be sure, and that was exacerbated by the non-working wireless at the hotel. I did a little tour around town to see if I could find another room, but since the Missoula Marathon was on Sunday morning, the only places with rooms were the drug and prostitution motels, so after another ten miles of riding around, I settled in for the night, found a nice restaurant with good wifi and then went back and crashed.

Day 30, Montana! And the two Nancys…

64 miles, 6:41, 9.6 mph

As I was noodling along today, it struck me that soon I would be a state with a Democratic Governor, and two Democratic Senators.  Not a ‘blue’ state, but close.  And as I thought further, after Montana is North Dakota, with its state bank, good education system and prairie socialism.  Then good ol’ Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.  No more red state nonsense, although I will be passing through a lot of ‘red’ areas.  However, as I found in Oregon, and have experienced in California and other places, rural areas in blue states just have a better vibe, because the poor and down and out are better taken care of.

Somehow Frank Zappa  got into my head to his morning “Going to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon,” and from time to time, I just sang it out loud!

I had a super hard time getting started this morning, and really didn’t want to face today’s 3200 feet of climbing.  I’d done 200 miles in 3 days, and after a mellow afternoon and evening in Salmon,  I just wanted to chill today.  So I promised myself that I would do the first 20 miles, and if I still felt crappy, I would stay at the River Forks Lodge.  I had spoken with the owner about staying there the night before, but it was too hot when I got to Salmon to push on yesterday.  She was super accommodating, and I thought from the website it looked great, so that was my plan B for today.

Following the brave and courageous folk today

 

The day dawned cloudy and cool and it was about 60 when I finally headed out around 9 o’clock.  The ride down the Salmon Valley went quickly, although the suburbanization went on and on.  At around mile 8, I spied something fluorescent pink on the other side of the road.  Could it be a cyclist I thought?  After  few minutes, it clearly was, and we stopped by the side of the road for a chat.

Her name was Nancy, and her blog is ride4restoration.blogspot.com.  She used to work for the National Park Service at Haleakala, so we had a chat about my trip around the Big Island in January.  Turns out she works for a cool environmental  education program up near Kalispell, and having just finished teaching one program, she was going to follow the Lewis and Clark trail to St. Louis!  She’s taking a leisurely 3 months to do it.   After a 15 or 20 minute chat we bid each other good bye. 

An osprey nest

Tahoe anyone?

Something about meeting another solitary cyclist of a similar age on a big adventure really gave me a boost, and I happily rolled along the next 10 or 11 miles.  About  2 miles from my ‘bail’ point, a car with California plates whizzed by, then pulled into a really nice little rest stop that had a lovely stone wall and a stream coming off the hillside.  I thought, oh what a nice place to stop.  As I approached the pullout, I could tell the driver wanted to talk to me, and when I got up to the car, it was my dear friend Nancy Kerrebrock!  We had talked last week about meeting up in Missoula, and here she was! 

We chatted for a couple minutes, and I told her we could hang out at my ‘bail’ point, which was only a couple miles ahead.  She headed there, and 7-8 minutes later I got there as well.

The owner, who had been full last night with firefighters, was super busy cleaning, but told us to enjoy ourselves and just hang out.  So we went down to the river at a picnic table, and I ate my first lunch, while we caught up.

Our original plan had been to meet up in Glacier, but between my delayed departure from Berkeley, and Nancy’s need to be home by July 24,  meeting up in Glacier wasn’t going to work sadly.  Nancy was planning to do the five hour drive to Glacier today, so we weren’t going to be able to hang there. It was super fun to hang out though, hear about her hiking and mountain biking adventures.  She said that as she drove over part of my route in eastern Oregon and thought of me going over all those hills in the heat, she was feeling really bad for me!  She was worried that she was going to feel the same way about today’s climb, but I told her not to, since I had a cool and cloudy day.  As we were leaving I got her son Lance’s number in Ann Arbor, where I will be in late August, and where he is already a junior! at my alma mater.

Heading out after meeting up with Nancy K.

 

Thus energized I began the 25 miles of climbing to Lost Trail Pass, following the path of Lewis and Clark.  As I went north and gained elevation, the vegetation became much denser and it felt like there was way more precipitation than in other Idaho mountains.  I saw cedar, douglas fir, spruce, alders, and lots of wetter mountain trees as I rolled along.

 

After 11 miles of steady, but gentle climbing, I reached the Broken Arrow cabins, my second ‘bail’ point.  I was looking forward to some Mexican food at their restaurant, but it was only open for dinner today!  While I was bummed, I had a nice chat with a woman who works there, around my age, who grew up in Hailey, near Sun Valley.  She had lived in the Salmon area since high school, and I quizzed her about the area, and why there were hundreds of “For Sale” signs along the 33 miles from Salmon.  Turns out the recession has really hit hard here, with lots of folks moving to North Dakota (for the oil boom).  She was the fourth or fifth person to tell me about locals moving to North Dakota, and I even have a bartender to look up in Williston so far!

The other thing that’s driving the market is that all those southern Californians have been heading out, because at the end of the day it’s 3+ hour trip for shopping, and medical care is far away.  If you ever wanted to live in this part of Idaho, now’s the time!

I started the last 14 miles of climbing, still feeling good, but after another 3 miles or so, it was time for second lunch.  Powered up, I continued climbing, and with about 6 miles to go, I came upon some houses in a meadow and in the woods on the other side of the North Fork.  They appeared to be ‘off the grid’ with no lines going to them, so I was curious.  Then I saw a big solar panel installation, and was really curious.  After about a mile of climbing I came to the office for Moose Creek Estates, and thought I should stop in and see what was up. http://www.kokopelli-e.com/

 

I met John there, who is the manager who lives in the house at the entrance to the development.  He is a native of Salmon, and used to own the lumber yard.  He sold it and retired a bit early, and the Texan who put the development together has hired him to run things.  John lives in a really cool off the grid house, that uses a propane generator, an inverter and batteries to run the house.  He has satellite internet, and a special antenna to pick up a cell phone signal (Verizon, ATT doesn’t work at all in these parts).  It was an interesting tour, and I learned a lot about the area.   It turns out that the canyon of the North Fork is one of the wettest mountain environments in Idaho, and the wettest in central Idaho, getting over 36 inches of precipitation a year.  In the winter there is usually 5-7 feet of snow on the ground at 6000 feet, but just over the border in Montana, there would be only a foot or so.  All in all, a pretty cool place to cycle through.

I headed back out for the last 5 miles, which turned out to be a pretty steady 4-5% grade, and I stayed in my middle chain ring the whole way, which was quite a surprise.  At Lost Trail Pass, there is a lovely looking ski resort, that might bear checking out, given the amount of snow the area gets.

You can see Montana from here, really :)

 

Finally in Montana!  And boy is the change obvious when you cross the Montana border.  The road widens, the speed limit goes up, and there are environmental  interpretation signs on the side of the road (the most interesting of which was about the recovery of bighorn sheep). 

 

I couldn't help but wonder if the most invasive species of all was included

After really nice non technical 7 mile descent, you enter the Bitterroot Valley, which was devastated in 2000 by fire.  It looks surprisingly recent, and as I rolled along, I thought it had been in the last couple of years.

Sadly the restaurant at the cabins in Sula was closed, so I had to pedal on, and just after leaving Sula, a bear bounded across the highway.  Very cool, but I got to thinking that camping wouldn’t be such a good idea unless the campground had bear boxes, and it didn’t.  After hearing Nancy K’s story of a bear trying to break into her car a few nights ago near Stanley, I decided camping was not an option, and was resigned to the 18+ miles into Darby.  A thunderstorm was brewing, and the headwind was quite strong going down canyon and it was going to be one of those awful evenings…

Then what should appear but the Rocky Knob Lodge!  An old timey motel and restaurant.  I had seen a listing for it on Google, but couldn’t find any other information and thought it might be closed.  Turns out they are open Thursday to Sunday, and rented rooms!  $40 bucks a night, and I was in.  A quick shower, then to the busy dining room, where I had great home smoked ribs for dinner.  I was finally getting to have my mountain lodge/cabin experience!  No phone service, no internet, no TV, so this won’t get posted until tomorrow.

 

 

 

After dinner some folks who had just left, came back in and asked if anyone had binoculars.  They had seen a bear scramble up the hill across the road and wanted a closer look.  The few remaining in the dining room, including me, went out to take a look, and sure enough there was the bear just hanging out on the hillside, foraging for something.  Two bears in one night…..and then a double rainbow over the lodge.   A magic Montana evening for sure!

 

After the bear viewing, we all congregated at the bar, and of the 7 people left, only one was born in Montana.  Everyone was my age or older, and of the ones my age, a few had come to Montana in their 20s.  The rest were retirees who moved here or spent the summers here.  Everyone was curious about my trip, and the retired electrician from the Bronx had served in the Air Force in Newfoundland, and was eager to share with me his experiences there.  Interestingly, his ‘amor’ was a woman from Bogota that he met on the internet three years ago!

The one Montanan was from Flathead Lake, but had worked in Billings at the big coal-fired power plant for 39 years.  He said they’ll be closing the plant next year (the huge increase in natural gas supplies has rendered many coal plants uneconomic) and that they have laid off a huge number of coal miners in Montana and Wyoming.   A good thing for the environment, but the coal boom in the Powder River basin is over.  Apparently they are still shipping some coal to Seattle for export to Asia (Powder River basin coal is low sulfur, which is what drove the boom there starting in the 70s) but domestic demand has plummeted.

North Dakota came up again in conversation here, as the chef’s daughter and her boyfriend had recently moved there, and apparently times are quite tough here in the Bitterroot Valley as well, with many local people moving to eastern Montana and North Dakota.