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.
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