Makoshika, the Badlands

Tonight, we are camping at Makoshika State Park, in Glendive, Montana ... officially one third of the way between Astoria and NYC. We have traveled 1200 miles, and ended up in the Badlands. That is what "Makoshika" means in the Lakota language.

We left Circle this morning, after spending a night in the motel there. Circle is a town that is in decline since the price of oil fell to its current prices. We went for dinner to the bowling alley, except the bowling alley has been ripped out and turned into a foosball arcade, to the delight of the three boys. People in town are trying desperately to keep things going, but the only thriving business in town appears to be John Deere.

After dinner, we ran into Chaim and Tom, our Israeli bicyclist friends, having dinner at the Wooden Nickle, the other place in town to eat. We recommended the Traveler's Inn, where we were staying, and they checked in just for a night in bed and a hot shower. Their routine is to get up at first light, ride until 8:00 am, then have a roadside breakfast. We left Circle at around 7:30, and caught up to them about 25 miles into today's ride, and probably waved goodbye to them for the last time.

We had Ryan back on the bike today ... he spoke to his doctor about his wrist, and the doctor assured him that any numbness in his hand was not due to the surgery he had during basketball season, and Ryan was getting so bored, he decided to ride. After tomorrow, we have another rest day in Medora, North Dakota, so he will continue to use a wrist brace at night, do a squeeze ball when he's not otherwise occupied, and hope for the best. It works better with four people on the road because we can pair up if someone is lagging.

This morning, we rode in a tight bunch, pulling into Glendive at around 11:00 am, and biked across the Yellowstone River. We rode directly to City Hall, where the Mayor, Jimmy Jimison, met us and introduced us to the head of the Bike and Walkways program, then took us out to lunch. A couple of other city staffers lunched with us, including one who is an avid bicyclist, and had many tips and suggestions for places to ride, as did the city's finance minister, who advised us on routes to follow going to Medora. It will be a hotter day tomorrow, and hopefully we will get a tail wind as we breeze into North Dakota, our fourth State.

More pictures later. For now, got to go looking for a new triceratops skeleton ... this was their homeland before it was the Lakota homeland, and before the town of Glendive had even been imagined. Besides, the ranger station will be closing soon, and it has the only WiFi anywhere near where we're camping!

Van Gogh and the Dinosaurs

The picture I attached to yesterday’s blog post made eastern Montana look rather bleak and desolate. Today, let me paint a different picture. I couldn’t capture it with a camera, but I’ll let your imagination paint it. A big sky. Of course. It’s Montana. And around us, fields of wheat and barley beginning to ripen. On the verge of the road, mustard, clover, thistle blossoms, and a plant I used to call “stink weed” as a kid, with small purple flowers. Scattered cumulus clouds create a quiltwork of sunshadows and wind ripples across the green and yellow fields. And in front of us, that “ribbon of highway” rolling toward the horizon in never-ending waves, up and down. It was gorgeous. It makes you understand what Vincent Van Gogh was seeing as he painted his beautiful country landscapes.

Pat took this beautiful picture, which amply demonstrates that the area is not desolate. We really do have neighbors as we cycle across the plains. It’s just that – sometimes – you really can’t get there from here. She missed the bottom of the sign, which pointed to Van Gogh’s wheat field, described in the first paragraph. 

And that sign reminds me. Pat has been telling us for the past week that she keeps meeting or passing a couple of Israeli cyclists. I was starting to think she was seeing ghosts, because they were apparently always off the road and taking a break when we passed. And the story kept changing. First it was an older man and his son, who runs a bike touring business in Israel. Then it was a grandson. Well, today we finally overtook them on the road, and invited them to have a bite of lunch with us! Meet Chaim and his grandson Tom. Chaim is cycling across the United States to celebrate his upcoming 70th birthday, which is August 13 ... one day after mine! So here are the three of us, ready to tackle a few more miles of highway.

Tom is a couple of months younger than Jonathan, the youngest of our three riders, and will be in the eleventh grade when he returns to Israel, as soon as he's accompanied his grandfather for 1000 miles. Then they will meet up with the rest of Chaim's family in St. Louis, and they will all ride together to York, Virginia. Everybody you pass on the road has a fascinating story. Glad we were able to share a bit of time with these fellow travelers.

And before you get the wrong impression, the "dinosaurs" in the title of today's blog post are not the two young gentlemen shown on the right in the picture above. Where we are standing just happens to be ground zero for dinosaur hunters. According to a sign nearby, nearly half of the total of 30 T-Rex skeletons have been found around here. The town of Circle has taken better advantage of that fact than has Jordan, where we were last night. Circle has concrete dinosaurs everywhere ... the dinosaur capital of America, if you happen to find your way through the Van Gogh wheat fields of eastern Montana. I may be a bit stiff, and I may be in Circle, Montana, but I'm not THAT old. I'm just a donosaur. Vincent Van Don.

The Ten Lined June Beetle and Other Tales

It’s a “no services” kind of day. We were supposed to stay at a town called Mosby, Montana, but Mosby no longer exists. Fortunately, we found a Rest Area nearby, so we pitched a tent for the boys, Pat is sleeping in the car, and I’m sleeping under a picnic table, since the 30% rain chance turned into 100% before we even had dinner on the table.

Mosby is about 60 miles east of Lewistown. That 60 miles includes perhaps six houses, lots of hay bales, lots of cows, lots of sage brush, and at least six deer who were startled to see a handful of bicyclists wearing bright yellow wind breakers. That’s right…we had to dress warmly, and had to pull out all of our cold weather gear after an arctic front blew through Montana overnight. Instead of 100 degree days, we are hoping the thermometer stays above 50 tonight. Tomorrow’s ride is a short 53 miles, so we can get away from the rest area and get to a real town by around noon tomorrow. 

“Real town” means Jordan, Montana, which has about 350 people, a café / lounge, and a gas station / general store. In other words, we are heading across some fairly desolate countryside for a few days.

I mentioned our breakfast menu in another blog post. Although we occasionally eat out, we try to do as many of our meals as we can by ourselves. For lunch, we usually have bread, bagels or tortillas, filled with veggies, turkey or ham slices, cheeses, etc., some fruit, and snacks of various kinds. Then for dinner, we have a salad and pasta of some variety, or couscous … basically anything that can cooked as a one-pot meal. During the day, while we are riding, we drink Gatorade or water and energy fizz powders, and we eat fruit, granola bars, Cliff bars, GU or Hammer Gel … it depends on each individual. Pat drives our support vehicle, leapfrogging us and stopping as often as she thinks we might need a break. This morning, when it was fairly cool outside, we breezed past her 15 mile intervals, opting for breaks about every 30 miles instead. We use hand signals when she passes us … thumbs up means we’re good to go and don’t need a break yet. A hand on the head means stop at a good breaking point, we need support.

Regardless, I seem to have lost a few pounds on the road. It’s cold enough to need jeans tonight, and I found out that my trusty jeans don’t work without a good belt … otherwise, they go straight down to my knees. My love handles have disappeared. Guess I’ll just have to learn to eat more! Trouble is, I have to be quick … I’m competing for food against three hungry boys.

Monday, July 6 … Jordan, Montana

Somebody asked a question this morning … how far have we gotten into our trip so far. The answer: 1083.1 miles out of 3521.3. That means that we are nearly 1/3 of the way there already, after 2 and half weeks on the road.

I mentioned the trouble we had finding Mosby. This afternoon I went to the Jordan museum – 13 out of the 27 Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons found were from around Jordan, according to one local. I mentioned Mosby to the docent (the dinosaurs are in the Senior Center … is that appropriate?) and she said she had lived around here for 75 years, and there never was more than a Post Office at Mosby, but that garnered it a dot on the map. So we live and learn. There is no more Post Office, so will somebody please tell the cartographers to get out their erasers? Anyway, we slept at the rest stop, then gladly got on the road early, and rolled over hill and dale into Jordan. Over lots of hills, and about half as many dales. It’s not supposed to work that way, is it?

Pat saw some antelope, I saw a bull on the wrong side of the fence trying to figure out how to get back across the cattle guard so he could visit his lady friends, and I saw about my 10^th squished rattlesnake, along with a stuffed triceratops and another dino skeleton. Other than that, Pat’s picture, taken from somewhere along today’s route, pretty much sums up the countryside. And the Ten Lined June Beetle, new to all of us, taught Pat how to fly … she went about 10 feet vertical when she found this on her shoulder. 

A Floating World

We had a wonderful day off for the 4th of July! We stayed at a ranch with Warmshowers hosts Mel and Becky Jackson a few miles outside Lewistown, Montana. Mel was out on the tractor putting up hay most of the day, running their 1500 ranch, 50 cow/calf pairs, collecting eggs, and letting their two 150 pound dogs roam (a Bernese and a Leonberger). We will miss the wonderful "restful" time we had here.

"Restful" is in quotes because we were kept very busy. 4th of July Parade, tubing down Spring Creek, going to Becky's brother's ranch and touring his hangar plane collection, motorcycle collection, a house with an amazing secret passage, a Model T flatbed truck and much much more, everything beautifully restored. While hosting us, two more bicycle tourists showed up ... two girls who had just graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, and were on their way west to their homes near San Francisco.

We are now fully rested, and ready for our journey across the dry flatlands to the east.

Shown below, a before and after picture of our float trip, during which we exchanged our skinny tires for very fat tires.

Lewiston/ Lewistown... What's the Difference?

In answer to the question above, the obvious answer is, 500 miles. We started a nine-day stretch in Walla Walla, Washington, riding over the grade to Lewiston, Idaho ... our first century ride of the trip, by one tenth of a mile. And today, we rode from Stanford, Montana to Lewistown, Montana. That makes for nearly 500 miles on the road, and the bulk of the climbing for our trip already out of the way. We crossed the Continental Divide, and now begin the long gradual descent to the Mississippi River, then along Lake Erie to Niagra Falls, and at the end, New York City.

How do we fuel all that riding? Well, for starters, here's our breakfast from this morning:

A bowl of hot Samurai Cereal, topped with a variety of nuts, fruit, yogurt, etc., and a mug of hot coffee (for me, not for the boys). Also, some hard boiled eggs, fruit juice, energy drinks, energy goo, and still it's hard not to loose a bit of weight. By the way, the Samurai was donated to us by Janice Tower, an endurance athlete and coach from Alaska, who fortunately happens to be a friend of Pat's. 

After breakfast (or after dinner, or on the road, or whenever the fancy his them), the boys have decided that they need to do more than just ride a bike from the Pacific to the Atlantic in order to stay awake. So Pat and I sit back in our lounge chairs and enjoy lifting an occasional adult beverage while the boys go through their fitness routine.

This was during an overnight stay at the Judith Basin County Fairgrounds in Stanford. Shortly after this, we were on the road. And Bryce, you've got to learn to keep your back straight. No sagging...that's my job! Or Pat's.

Here I am riding through a bit of road construction near Belt, Montana. You can tell it's me because who else would be wearing a rainbow sherbert hued Hawaii Bicycling League jersey out in the middle of Montana?

My own camera is broken, so I've been using pictures taken by others on our trip. But I can still take good pictures if I add in some special effects! Here's one last picture for today, showing an impressionistic view of Jonathan about to go down the last of the big hills before we hit the wide open prairies stretching out in front of us!

Back to Where I Started

Okay, so the title is just a teaser to get you to read the blog. As it happens, I was born in the Palo Alto Hospital, which happens to be on Stanford University. And this afternoon, we rolled into Stanford, Montana. So, in a sense, I'm back to where I started. Stanford is a lively small town with a deliciously air conditioned public library, and to the delight of the boys, a public swimming pool! So while the kids are playing, the adults are in the library!

I just posted another blog post because we had Internet problems last night, so if you want to catch up, you'll have to read two posts today.

Only three of us rode today ... Bryce, Jonathan, and I. Ryan is taking a couple of days off on doctor's orders to rest his hand, which he broke playing basketball last winter. If a squeezer for exercise and a brace for sleeping help end the numbness in his hand, then he can rejoin us. In the meantime, Pat is enjoying having an assistant in the support wagon. Ryan takes pictures, adds his opinion on the grocery shopping, carries the heavy stuff, and even had our tents all set up by the time we rolled into the fairgrounds in Stanford for our one night stand.

The bike riding had its moments. It could have been an easy, quick day, since we were scheduled for "just" 59 miles. It was 59 miles, but that included about 5 miles of bone-rattling highway construction, where it was everything we could do to avoid destroying our bikes, much less our wrists, knees, teeth ....  And once we got on the regular highway, we had to contend with rumble strips in the bike lane (seems that every county decides how to implement rumble strips, and most of them involve placing them in such a way that they cause maximum inconvenience to bicyclists). Then we came to a traffic advisory near the top of a long hill warning about a crash on the other side of the hill. A pickup truck or a wagoneer of some sort had been hauling a house trailer behind, and either jackknifed or caught a gust of wind, and ended upside down in the ditch beside the road. It looked like everyone got out okay, but it's certainly going to ruin someone's vacation.

In spite of delays, we made it to our destination in time for lunch. And tomorrow is also a reasonably short day, followed by a day off -- at last.

Continental Divide!!!!

A big event happened today. We crossed the Continental Divide. For cyclists, that means that if you are one side, you roll down the hill to the Pacific Ocean, or if you are going in the other direction, you roll downhill to the Mississippi River, and across, eventually to Atlantic Ocean, if you are so inclined. And we are so inclined. But what they don’t tell you is another story.

We spent the night in Lincoln, Montana, famous among other things as the home of Theodore Kazinsky, the Unabomber. He used to come to the library right across the street from where we stayed to work on his manifesto. And when he wanted to mail one of his bombs to someone whose technology he disagreed with, he would catch a bus right by our campsite and post the letter bomb from some other city. But all that is ancient history. So too is the 850 pound grizzly bear that was hit by a semi. The bear is now on display at the Lincoln Forest Ranger cabin.

While in Lincoln, we discovered that our hostess for tonight’s stay Great Falls could no longer host us. So we put the American Legion to work, and they landed us in a Great Falls house owned by a local artist, Alma Winberry. The house is like a gallery … one that has no space left on the walls. Everything becomes an object-d’art.

Anyway, back to the cycling. We crossed Rogers Pass, about 18 miles outside of Lincoln, with minimal effort, and fooled ourselves into thinking the rest of the day would be a breeze. After all, the profile map showed a downhill route all the way. Well, let me tell you—the people who make profile maps are like weathermen and politicians, except you can’t watch their lips to see if they are telling a lie. At least not until you blow the map up to an enormous size (sorry … had Ted Kozinsky excited there, for a moment). From the summit of Rogers Pass, there are about five miles of fast downhill, then you go up about a dozen rolling hills, each one steeper and longer than Rogers Pass, or at least it felt that way. And at about mile 80, we turned onto the frontage road that leads eventually into town only to discover a 30-40 mph side wind that had us riding our bikes at about 45 degree angles to keep from being blown over. For my Hawaii bicycling friends, it was like doing Hanauma Bay on a very windy day, only for about 15-20 miles, and without the ocean scenery to go with it. Not fun.

So tonight, we are exhausted. Tomorrow, Pat will get to have company in the support vehicle because Ryan, who broke his wrist and had surgery a few months before the bike ride, is having numbness issues and needs to rest his hand. The rest of us are just exhausted, so whether anyone else opts out of tomorrow’s 59 mile ride to Stanford, Montana, remains to be seen. One of the local legionnaires, Barney (who looks a bit like Popeye), when asked about the likelihood of a tailwind, said “Idaho blows and North Dakota sucks, so most of the wind blows towards the east.” We’ll find out.

The service area for most cell phone providers sort of fizzles out at various times over the next several hundred miles across eastern Montana and North Dakota, so there may or may not be full-sized blog updates over the next week or so. I’ll try to get some news posted, especially over 4^th of July, when we’ll be in Lewistown, Montana with just the second day off on our bike trip across America.