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.