This week's photos
Week 4 journal
Week 6 journal
July 7
"Glorious!
Today all the elements conspired to make the day's ride one
of the best of the trip, if not my life! The scenery was stunning, the
air was cool and dry the sun was not constant, as large puffy clouds kept
it in check. Traffic was effectively non-existent for more than half the
distance. The road surface was smooth and the terrain was gradually
uphill, but rolling and winding enough to keep it interesting. For
instance, I was unaware that North Dakota had any forests to speak of,
until we rounded a bend and there it was, complete with deer out in a
field of yellow-flowering plantings. By the way, what is that yellow
stuff, anyway? It almost looks like a crop of goldenrod. The name
sorghum popped into my head, but I'm sure that I'm wrong... probably just
a result of some random synaptic connection made, linking my memory to
something that I had to learn about our country's agricultural economy in
High School. In any case, the blue-white of the sky, and the yellow-green
of the fields, with the waters of Devil's Lake in the background compelled
Steve and me both to stop and fish out our cameras. Devil's Lake, by the
way, was one of the reasons that there was so little traffic. It seems
that as a lake, it has been growing steadily for the last 8 years, having
risen a whopping 25 feet in that time. The net result is that towns are
scrambling to redo their infrastructures, especially the roads, so as not
to go under... figuratively and literally. The town of Minnewauken for
example, 8 years ago was 10 miles away from Devil's Lake. Today it is a
lakefront community! I have two copies of a North Dakota government map,
one from 1995, and the other from this year, and the difference in the
size of the lake depicted on the two maps is astounding. As a benefit,
Minnewauken is heavily visited by tourists interested in fishing... but
whole farms and communities have been wiped out as well. Our biking today
benefited from the fact that one of our roads was closed to traffic
because of some hasty bridge enhancement going on 13 miles out of town.
Knowing that we could walk our bikes over the bridge, we took the road in
spite of its closure. What we traveled on thereafter reminded me of the
Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel drive (without the tunnel). The lake
surrounded the road which, flat as it was, remained about 6 feet above the
surface of the water for the whole 13 miles and more beyond the bridge.
In all honesty, I can't claim the day was perfect. The last thirty miles
of the ride was to the west, into a growing wind. We decided to push
things a bit today, because we never know what weaher conditions (wind)
will be like tomorrow. We started out of Tolna before 5:30am and managed
to avoid any serious wind for the most part as a result. The total
distance traveled was 111 miles , putting us (for the moment) a day ahead
of our planned arrival in Minot. We spend tonight in Rugby, ND... which,
for the geographically challenged, has been designated as the geographic
center of North America. The town didn't make this claim... someone who
knows geography did. Look it up on any map! I would like to know how one
calculates the geographical center of anything... I'm sure Calculus is
involved ;)
In any event, Rugby is the most honky-tonk community we've yet
encountered... a definite tourist trap! I feel sorry for smaller towns
such as Binford, Pekin and Tolna. So near, and yet so far from winning
the geographic lottery! On our way into town, we saw a huge stone mansion
with what looked like an attached private golf course. No doubt the
rewards to the farmer who owned the land under the center point...:) So it
goes..." --ez
July 8
"Today was a short ride (65 miles) into Minot, where we'll take a day off
tomorrow, before we begin the next segment of the journey. We got a taste
of what's in store by riding almost the whole day on route 2... which,
although traffic was light, nevertheless got pretty boring. Route 2 is
the principal path for us from Williston, ND to Cut Bank, MT. It's a
divided four lane highway that parallels a railroad track. Occasionally a
train would go past, either in one direction or the other. Once an Amtrak
passenger train passed us on its way west. We also passed an
"experimental forest" near the town of Denbigh. It made me wonder what
kind of experimentation goes on there... Steve made the comment that it
sounded like Jurassic Park :) Dinosaurs in North Dakota is not so
far-fetched... I believe many dinosaur fossil discoveries have been made
in this state. Speaking of science fiction movies... I was reminded of
the opening scene from "Men In Black" today. If you recall the opening
sequence, shot from a dragonfly's perspective as it buzzed down a country
road until the inevitable windshield showed up. At one point today along
the road beside a wildlife preserve, hundreds of dragonflies were swarming
along the road. Fortunately for us, bikes are relatively slow, and
dragonflies are very nimble. Not once did we get within 3 feet of being
hit... however, I'm not so sure the cars and campers whizzing by us at 65
mph were so lucky. The wind decided to show up in the middle of the day's
ride and it made its prescence felt all the way into Minot. The heat
kicked in as well, without clouds to give us relief... so it felt great
to make it into our motel, home sweet home for the next two nights. We're
doing a laundry right now, and later we're going in search of a one hour
photo developer so that we can send out our latest batch of pictures,
appearing soon at a web site near you. So it goes..." --ez
July 9
"It's good to be indoors with the temperature ouside in the 90s, with not
a cloud in the sky. Steve and I rode our bikes across town today to get
to the retail district where there was a mall, WalMart and bike shop to
get some errands done. On the way back, we stopped at the post office,
both to mail out the photos from last week, and also to pick up Steve's CD
player and CDs. He had been reconsidering his decision not to bring them
along from the first, and finally gave in and asked his mommy to mail them
"general delivery" to Minot... hopefully the spirit boost his music
provides will more than compensate for the extra weight he will have to
haul as we cross the Rockies! However, he just realized his favorite CD
is in his car... Doh!
Minot is a town that has been built into a bowl. The exact center of
town, the intersection of Broadway and Center, is at the very bottom of
the bowl. Our motel is on the north rim of the bowl, and the retail
district is on the south rim... so we decided to get over there as early
as possible this morning to avoid the heat as best we could. It was not
possible to avoid an uphill climb in both directions! To get a souvenir
for someone, I stopped in at the local Boy Scout shop in order to buy a
council patch. I was amazed to find that the local council, the North
Star Council, comprises the states of Minnesota, North Dakota, South
Dakota and Montana... At least those states are indicated on the patch.
I've heard of "lone scouts", namely a boy who wants to participate in
Scouting, but has no troop nearby to join... I suppose that there may be
many such Scouts scattered over such a large, sparsely populated area. I
spoke with an adult Scout leader in the bike shop and he says they
organize "High Adventure" trips to the Kalispell area near where we're
heading... Hiking, rock climbing, white water... sounds like fun! In
fact the one constant we've heard that encourages us is the universal
opinion that Glacier National Park will be a place we want to take at
least a week to explore. If we still need to kill some time, I guess I'd
rather do it there than here! We estimate, based purely on reasonable
stopping points along the way, that it will take 8 days of riding for us
to get from Minot to Cut Bank... Then the fun begins! So it goes..."
--ez
July 10
"Yeeee Haaaa!
Today we felt the hand of God... in the form of a 20
MPH wind directly out of the east, right at our backs! When all was said
and done, we had traveled over 125 miles averaging over 16 mph! We had
planned to split the distance from Minot to Williston over two days...
yet here we are comfortably relaxing after dinner in Williston, having
gained a day of travel that we didn't expect. I know that we still have
the unusual problem of moving too soon to the ride's completion, but when
a gift like today's weather was delivered, as it were, on a silver
platter, it would have only been rude of us to have turned it down! More
than one person wrote to comment on the fact that I have mentioned the
wind as a riding factor many times. Why didn't I choose to go with the
prevailing winds, instead of against them? Today's experience proves that
exceptions are inevitable, and I'd rather be pleasantly surprised going
east to west by an "exceptional" wind, than feel that Murphy was out to
get me by experiencing that same wind going west to east! We saw a few
riders going in the other direction today. One of them yelled as we
passed, "YOU'RE going in the right direction!" Another that we met taking
a break spoke to us of his own journey, three weeks since leaving the west
coast, and made the comment, "What happened to the prevailing winds? It's
been blowing hard out of the east ever since I entered North Dakota! ...
I can't wait to get off my bike and have this ride over and done with!"...
attitude is everything...
Some more surprising sights today... I was reminded of Clint Eastwood's
movie, "High Plains Drifter". At one point after a long climb we surfaced
at what seemed like the top of the world! Nothing but grass as far as the
eye could see. The wind caused the grass to ripple like waves on the sea.
Flat it was, like the top of a New Mexico Mesa. Not a house or telephone
pole to be seen... just the road stretching out before us so far in the
distance that it seemed to lose its width at the horizon. We even went
under a bridge today... What makes this unusual is the fact that I really
believe it is the first bridge we have gone under in all of North Dakota.
Bridges must be at a premium here... saved only for crossing water or
train tracks... or perhaps for the Interstate highways, that bikes can't
use. I happened to notice that several of a particular kind of bird...
(Swallow?) that uses mud to build its nest in the leeward side of cliffs
had built a series of nests in the girder of the eastern side of the
bridge. (Cliffs are also at a premium here!). They all shot out of their
nests as we passed under the bridge. We rode through about an inch of
dried guano directly beneath the nests.
Tomrrow is a momentous day. We cross into the Mountain State, and out of
the Central time zone. I'm sure that both Steve and I will be quite
excited when sometime over the next few days we spot the Rockies out in
the distance! So it goes..." --ez
July 11
"Today we crossed into Montana... getting a late start because it was
still raining. Last night the sky dumped 1.6 inches of rain on the
eastern Montana/western North Dakota region. We still had the wind in our
favor, from the east at 10 mph, so we felt that a later start wasn't going
to hurt our progress that much. We took the first break in the rain after
7am and hit the road wearing our rain jackets. That lasted all of 5
minutes, because of the high humidity, we just could not continue wearing
the jackets. As soon as we had gotten out of the rain gear, the skies
opened up again. We just shrugged and continued riding expecting to get
soaked... however, we lucked out, and the cloudburst was over as soon as
it started. Except for catching the tail end of a large rain cell (that
we could see 5 miles away before reaching it), that was the last
precipitation we'd see for the rest of the day.
We met up with another father-son pair of recumbent cyclists who were also
heading out west! They left from Washington, DC on Father's day, (a week
after we left the Cape), and were hoping to be done in another 3 weeks! I
believe the son was a recent high school graduate. They were both riding
Vision recumbents with underseat steering, pulling BOB trailers. I
thought it was interesting that all their wheels were of the composite,
spokeless sort. I suppose that such a choice of wheels guarantees that
you won't break spokes, as Steve has done... but I think it seriously
limits the choice of tires. Both bikes had very narrow, treadless tires,
built for speed... but not my choice for durability on a long distance
tour! The pair were camping exclusively, and had gotten soaked the night
before while camping in a rest stop area on one of the highways in eastern
Montana. We met up with them at a roadside restaurant. While we were all
enjoying a breakfast of biscuits and gravy with pancakes, a local resident
came up and tried to convince us that it was too difficult to bike in
Montana with all the hills. We politely listened, thanked him for his
advice, and went back to our breakfasts, convinced that people who don't
bike have no notion of what is and is not possible to be done by seasoned
bike tourists!
Some new sights: a herd of bison, rather hilly terrain for the first 20
miles or so into Montana, and sage! I recall gathering bunches of sage
while backpacking in New Mexico. We were told then that if you let the
sage dry and then roll it into a tight cigar-like tube... you can light
it and let it burn, releasing its pleasant scent. At that time, I never
did want to try this type of "western incense", and instead, gave my
bundles of sage over to the college kid who told us of its aromatic
properties. However, I may just try it this time... It would be easy to
let it dry by strapping it onto my gear as I ride.
We were planning on stopping in the town of Poplar for the night, but
because of the favorable wind, we decided to head further and stop at
Wolf's Point, instead... after having traveled over 98 miles on the day.
We found ourselves riding through the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. What
I noticed about this route was the large number of mini-casinos we found
along the way. In fact, it is not uncommon for convenience stores,
motels, saloons, etc. to have a casino room, where slots, poker and keno
as well as bingo can be played. I wonder at the social cost all this
gambling. Police and troopers were very much in evidence as we traveled
between Poplar and Wolf Point. Also, the Convenience store/Casino in
Poplar, at which we stopped had every single opening covered with heavy
guage steel mesh, presumably to discourage breakin and theft. So it
goes..."--ez
July 12
"4 for 2" is a slogan we've been seeing as we bike along in this state.
It took a very little while to figure it out, but the clues were there...
2 means US route 2 that we're traveling along, and 4 must mean four
lanes. My guess is that there is an initiative to expand the route to a
four lane divided highway for a part, if not most or all of its length.
It seems that as a two lane highway, route 2 is as dangerous as
Connecticut's "Suicide 6"... perhaps even more so. Although the road is
very straight for the most part, and as a result, visibility is very good,
the speed limit is 70mph. A lot of camper trailers and RVs ply the route,
which means that there are a lot of impatient pickup and SUV driver out
there itching to pass. Ever since we entered Montana we've seen dozens of
small white iron crosses along the road. Most have flowers or beads, or
woven bracelets hanging from them. Each marks the location of a traffic
fatality along highway 2. In many cases more than one cross is planted in
a group... (obviously multiple fatalities). In one case two crosses were
welded together and mounted from a single post... (mother and unborn
child?). The disconcerting thing about the crosses is their random
distribution. There has not been a mile along the road that we haven't
seen a cross. It doesn't appear as though they are concentrated in one
type of place, such as an intersection, more than any other place.
Certainly intersections and curves have their share... in one case three
crosses right next to a railroad crossing leaves me speculating grisly
thoughts. The bottom line is, something needs to be done, and the people
who live here are searching for a solution.
How does all this relate to cyclists and cycle touring in Montana? The
jury is still out on that one. Most all drivers give us a wide berth,
when they can. We try to hug the extreme right edge of the shoulder
whenever traffic approaches from behind, whether or not there is oncoming
traffic. Problems sometime arise when the shoulder is nonexistent
(seldom) or traffic in both directions converge as it passes us (also
seldom). There have been instances of drivers leaning on their horns as
they pass us, and an occasional tractor trailer that refuses to pull into
the passing lane, even when it's safe to do so. All in all, I consider
the road to be safe for alert cyclists, so I think that few if any of
those crosses represent bikers.
We had a very short ride today, of about 49 miles. We are spending the
night in Glasgow, MT. We still had the wind at our backs... (how long
can this go on?) We could have gone further, but the spacing of towns
viable for spending the night is awkward here. The next town that we
could find suitable for a stopover past Glasgow was Malta... a little too
far for us, especially with my achilles tendon getting increasingly sore.
I hope the extended rest today will do it some good. We saw several
cyclists today... most going west to east, (into the wind). We spoke
with a group of cyclists who were riding from San Francisco to Boston, and
were hoping to finish in four weeks! I wish them luck, especially since
they were asking us about possible route choices! Oh, we saw another
movie today, "The Fast and The Furious"... a lot of car action, something
I can't hope to duplicate pulling my trailer :) So it goes..."
--ez
July 13
"Last night, I'm told that large hailstones fell on cyclists camping where
Steve and I will tent tonight. In fact, one person... probably
exaggerating... said that there was enough hail on the ground to run a
snowmobile. Unlike yesterday, when it was hazy and soupy, the air was
clear and dry for today's ride. Unlike yesterday, there was no wind at
our backs... but good news!... there was no wind in any direction, to
speak of. So we made fairly good time to our destination of Malta,
Montana. We covered about 72 miles in an easy day, distance-wise. It's
about 2:30 pm, and things are starting to get hot. I think I will check
out the indoor pool that this campground has to offer... be back
later!
Ahhh, the pool was so refreshing, and out of the sun... so I took one of
the available tubes and had a nap while drifting in the deep end. Steve
is over there now, using their free weights. He also finally made the
decision to shave his head, so that explains where he was and what he was
doing for the last hour. We are camped right on the banks of the Milk
River... so named because one of the early explorers said it had the
color of coffee into which milk had been added. traveling along with us
in the river valley is the BNSF railroad line... which is also about a
stone's throw away. I am really looking forward to the trains rumbling by
as we try to sleep tonight ;) In fact, just outide of Saco on our way to
Malta, we challenged the train to a race. It was going in our direction,
and had to slow down to take the turn in Saco... so for a while there,
Steve and I were charging after the engine, to try to catch it before it
split off from the road again. Steve is faster than I, so he almost made
it... coming just about four cars shy of the engine before it gathered
enough speed to put him away.
Speaking of Saco, we met up with another pair of cyclists heading east to
Bar Harbor. They were high school friends, having both gone to HS in
Simsbury, CT. It's a small world! In their early twenties, one lives in
Oregon, going to school there, and his friend still lives in New England.
We also saw several other pairs of cyclists... all going in the opposite
direction to us. It's after 5 now, and we'll be going off in search of
dinner soon. A number of RVs share the campground with us, but no
cyclists yet. One friendly RV owner and his wife stopped by to chat. He
asked us all the required questions about our bikes and our journey. He
also explained that he and his wife were on their way to a BMW motorcycle
convention in Redmond, Oregon. It seems his son got him hooked on
motorcycles when he was 50 and he has been at it since then, for the past
21 years. 50... Hmmm... maybe there's another two-wheeled passion in me
yet. So it goes..." --ez
This week's photos
Week 4 journal
Week 6 journal
