Wandering George

I could be anywhere. It’s rained all day. I’ve slept, dozed, read, and written. I’ve taken two short walks to the local restaurant. I’ve fired up Netflix to watch something forgettable so I can doze some more.

I talked with Jordan about the road to Bozeman and he was fairly adamant that it wasn’t a good option for a cyclist, with twisting, shoulder-free zones and plenty of others taken up by rumble strips.

OK, I’ve got a better idea. I’ll take a ride tomorrow, in better weather, toward West Yellowstone and loop back to Ennis to push my total, solo mileage over 1500 miles.

Brilliant.

Shaking the dew off the tent and packing up for the day’s ride didn’t take long. By 8 I was enjoying breakfast at Fritts Dream Bean and Cafe, taken care of by the same middle-aged waitress I noticed taking meals into Ruby Valley Brew the night before. When I commented on how hard she’s working, she gave me a lopsided grin and said she’s been working long days for a long time and that five hours sleep sounded really good.

Getting on my ride, I rode up to another cyclist headed east. Jack – lean, light-framed and lightly loaded – he had just graduated from college, was headed to Virginia, and then to start a job in St Louis. He said he was from South Carolina but when I called out his accent as having not a trace of the South in it, he said he’d grown up in Connecticut.

We took off, riding east toward Alder, ten miles distant and up an easy 1% grade. I was able to keep up with him, as in “keep him in sight”, for most of the way.

At a driveway under a big cottonwood, we both pulled over to chat with Wes who was headed west. Movie star handsome with a straight jawline, gray eyes, and a gray-streaked pony tail shoved under his helmet, he’d started in Bar Harbor, Maine and was headed toward Seattle.

Ten minutes of travel tales and we were all ready to get going. I wished Wes “tail winds” and, in parting, he joked about wishing an Aussie rider he’d recently spoken with “tail winds for both of us!” The Aussie, not getting the joke, had yelled back “that’s impossible, mate!” Wes just shook his head.

Disturbed Ground

At Alder, the road turns east and that’s where I lost sight of young-legged Jack. The road grade begins to increase beyond Alder but, after that ten mile warm-up, it was the forty plus year difference in legs that had me lagging.

The road from Alder to Virginia City is both historic and depressing.

Virginia City was a classic gold rush town when that metal was discovered along a small creek in 1863. Thousands of miners flocked to the creek bed to pan by hand, shovel, and sluice. Within just a few years, gold production was staggering and Virginia City become the territorial capital as the largest town in Montana. It became a transportation hub for the region. But by 1870, a new gold strike in Helena, MT drew the multitudes away to leave the Alder Gulch to a more industrial form of placer mining. Huge ponds were made on the small stream for dredge boats to float upon, pull up the rock and dirt, and run water across the ore to settle out the gold.

The result is a miles long, quarter to half mile wide landscape of rock, gravel, and sand piled in yards wide hummocks and hillocks twenty to forty feet high. Trees have grown up in places but with no topsoil the grasses and ferns and the smaller plants that need ready access to water are absent. Like all old and big placer mining sites, it’s a moonscape with trees. Unlike the Nez Perce battlefield, there’s little beauty in the ride to Nevada and Virginia Cities. Even between its banks, the little creek hasn’t found its formerly green and lively face, still stuck and stalled, even after a century, as it meanders through the tailings field.
From the road, the attempts at remediation are confined to a bulldozer’s week of flattening out the tailings field around the larger trees across a few tens of acres and putting up a For Sale sign in front of the ugly result.

The search for gold still lingers in Alder Gulch. I heard the wavering groan of an engine long before I saw the tracked backhoe digging among the tailings, perhaps in hope that deeper down some of that yellow metal still waits for the miner to find.

The road gets a lot steeper after Alder. The grade shifts into the 3%-4% realm. I pedaled my way up, taking increasingly frequent breaks until I reached the “western frontier” style storefronts, all flat fronted and square cornered, of Nevada City with its little bakery, all barn board and charm. A young baker, a Colorado urbanite banished to the tiny tourist town for the sake of his summer job, spun up a berry milk shake to help me cool down, find some energy and clear my strangely fog bound brain. Riding that morning, I’d been wondering why my energy level was so low. Toward the end of the milk shake, just before the straw noises began, I realized that this was the seventh consecutive day I’d ridden and that that was two too many.

Little Nevada City ties itself to Virginia City to get tourists like me to stop. But Virginia City is the much bigger main attraction, with more frontier storefronts, hotels, many shops, churches, and the impressively imposing courthouse.

The entire town leans into the hill. The main street, still Route 278, is on a slope with a 6% and higher grade. At the road bend, at the bottom of the street, that’s where I got off the bike and began what turned out to be a somewhat miserable, tiring three plus hour walk to the pass. The road was just too steep and, even with pushing, I needed frequent rests that gave me time to glance, with increasing concern, at the gray clouds growing tall and thick in the northwest sky.

As a perspective I can live with, pushing a laden bike uphill is like hiking – with a laden bike. It’s better to have fifty pounds of stuff pressing down on the 30 pound bike and its tires than on my 180 pound frame. But it’s a drag, even when it’s all push and roll.

Fatigue, Ambivalence, and Anticipation

About the time the milk shake was wearing off, another fact dawned on me – that my tour was ending within a few days. The two sides of my mental discussion ping ponged as I plodded up hill.
Ping: June 28th, already?! But I’m just getting this thing down. I just learned that seven days riding in a row is stupid. I can do better!
Pong: Well, it’s a little late for that, Bud. I’m tired. And I miss my wife like crazy. Thank god she’s arriving on Sunday. I can’t wait.

Ping: There’s so much to see. Yellowstone isn’t supposed to be as bad for cyclists as some say. Maybe another week? There are so many more people to meet.

Pong: Get a grip, you’ve been on the road for almost seven weeks, you’ve video’d with Nancy a handful of times and that just makes you miss her more. I just checked and you’re really excited to see her on Sunday night.

Ping: Uhm, yeah, you’re right about that. So, you think it’s time to shift gears and bring this solo thing to a close?

Pong: Ya think?!

Ping: OK, Pong. No regrets. But shifting my virtual gears is going to be a little weird.

Pong: Such troubles!

Summit Conversation

Finally, and I really felt the finality of getting to the summit on this stretch of Route 278, I was able to start peddling again along what was more a bench than a peak.

At its beginning, a small CAT bulldozer was cleaning up the ditch work performed by a fiberoptic cable laying team. The bulldozer driver pulled up by me and we talked about the weather, his equipment, and his role as the clean-up unit. The new fiber was for the rural telco serving that area. We would have kept talking longer but he spied his boss speeding our way in a high speed ATV. He fired up the CAT, I yelled a farewell, and the boss rolled in. We all had the same idea of shutting down our respective operations because the possibility of rain was turning into a certain squall.

That wet incentive, and level ground turning to a downhill run, was enough to goad me into a tired hustle because tired and wet were not conditions I wanted to pair again.

The ride down was long, fast, and followed sweeping switchbacks. The broad Madison Valley floor opened up as I descended, edged on the far side by a range of higher, rock-topped mountains some still holding onto snow.

The downhill pitch was steep enough to make me cautious and a heavily loaded semi to pull over to let traffic pass. Gravity and momentum management had me pumping the brakes and that truck driver choosing to crawl down the hill in low gear.

After a final steep downhill pitch, the road straightened through a plain dotted with new, large homes. Ennis, the next town and my target, straddles the Madison River, the lower 48’s most well known trout stream. The River Runs Through It, book, film, and in reality. Hunting in the valleys and mountains is another sportsman draw.

After two more miles on level ground through an increasingly commercial zone, and passing at least one No Vacancy sign (aw-oh), I hooked a left to follow 278 to pull under the portico of the Fan Mountain Motel (no NO flashing) just as the first fat rain drops fell out of the squall that had been growing in the northwest all afternoon. To my relief, Jordan, the motel manager, checked me in for three nights with the proviso I’d have to shift rooms tomorrow. No problem.

I’d decided to stay in Ennis until Sunday when it was time to get to Bozeman to meet Nancy that evening. Carrying the panniers to the second floor room and then the bike was about all I had left. A hot shower and a long doze followed before a hot dinner and cool beer put me down for the night.

Dillon is one of the larger towns on this route. A new hospital, small by any metro standards, and a robust crop of new houses tell of retiree money. But I got the sense the community is still looking for its next role. The old downtown is a mixture of shops, professional offices, the ubiquitous mortgage and title companies, a few banks and empty or failing storefronts. I checked out the downtown’s old hotel last night and, besides a nearly abandoned appearance, was told that it was closed for the day. Perhaps that’s code for functional abandonment.

The ride out of town and into the Beaverhead Valley’s agricultural landscape starts wonderfully. A four to six foot wide shoulder leads you down a -1% to -2% grade. Easy living, ego riding. In just a mile, you are among wide irrigated wheat and hay fields.

After six or eight miles, that sweetness turns sour as the shoulder disappears and the truck traffic roars. I pulled over often to maintain spatial separation.

Further up, the road is pinched between the hills to the east and a ridge that sweeps in from the southwest, its terminus an outcrop of sedimentary rock several hundred feet high that gave the valley its name. The Native Americans called it the Beaver’s Head and the name has remained. The road and the Beaverhead River cross within a quarter mile of the cliff.

The rest of the ride into the town of Twin Bridges is mostly flat, farmland on either hand, cattle grazing on both sides. The river keeps quiet company with a rider during the infrequent moments when it is heard over the sound of traffic.

I’d been told of and even warned about the number of deer along this route and, on schedule, a curious mule deer doe, grazing on the verge, approached my double hooped form when I’d stopped. After taking a few dozen steps in my direction, her nerves overcame her innocence and she fled, leaping with muscled springs over the barbed wire fence.

Lunchtime Conversation

Outside of The Shack restaurant, a trim, tanned man in his early 70s paused to ask me where I’d been and where my next stop was. He’d been in manufactured housing – trailers and double wides – for decades. He’d settled in Twin Bridges for half the year and, with more than a little grumbling about zoning and construction requirements, was hoping to build a house near Myrtle Beach, Georgia come fall.

We found ourselves dancing around politics. He had little good to say about any of the presidents in our recent past. He didn’t like Obama or Clinton, reserving the most opprobrium for the Bushes, especially GWHB. Then we both had a good time lambasting Ryan and McConnell for their obeisance to corporate masters.

We parted with best wishes and a good sandwich, iced tea, along with a milk shake followed. I appreciated the restaurant’s cool because the sky was unremittingly clear, the sun high, the wind light, and the temperature near 90. I had them make me another sandwich in case dinner options down the road were few.

Down to Up

Like so many of the towns I’ve passed through, Twin Bridges straddles a river or stream. I’d followed the Beaverhead River since Dillon and it flows through Twin Bridges. Turning onto Route 287 the road leaves the river and starts to climb gradually, a 1% grade for all of the 10 miles to Sheridan.

Like much of this valley, the fields of hay and wheat are irrigated. The natural flow of river water is replaced by ditches like Sayler-Tash Ditch, Thompson Ditch, Lewis-Jenkins Ditch. Water rights run with the land and water distribution companies maintain the ditches and aquaducts that distribute the precious stuff to the land to which it’s assigned.

Today, even the gradual climb felt hard. With the sun steadily on my back, I ducked under the shade of even a small cottonwood when it presented itself. By the time I reached Sheridan around 3 pm, I was ready to drink more tea and just sit at the town park’s picnic table, right next to the library, to rest in the shade, watch a handful of kids playing on the swings, and wait for a happy, unlooked for meeting with my relatives.

An Unexpected Meeting

Before leaving the motel in Dillon, I checked my email and read, via an email exchange between my sister Carey and first cousin Ander that he was driving with my aunt across country on their way to Ontario. I contacted him, told him my route with the hope that we’d connect on the road.

We did. With my head still swimming a bit from the heat, Ander, mid-50s, and my aunt Jane pulled up in his dark blue sedan. Smiles all around, even from her happy labradoodle who inspected the park and its immediate neighbors for the next 45 minutes.

When old friends and relatives get together after a year or more’s absence, the conversation takes a predictable path and we followed it, enjoying the familiar questions and responses, glad to hear, in this case, that all is mostly well with their side of the family. Once in Ontario, Ander leaves Jane with a couple of his siblings while he catches up with old friends and fellow musicians in Buffalo, NY and along the east coast.

Jane’s always had a wry wit and been a keen observer of character, all completely intact, just slowed by a speech aphasia. Her mustard-laced comments are worth waiting for.

Ander and I talked art, politics, music composition and the merits of various cities large and small. But when you’re on the road and have 1,500 miles to go in their case, time runs out fast. After 45 minutes of family visit, they drove off toward Bozeman for the night.

Past five now, I chose to stop for the day. Enough. So, I stepped into the cool of the library and asked the long-time librarian, a tall, heavy set man, if it would be OK to camp in the town park. A short call to the sheriff assured me it’d be fine unless there was a disturbance of some kind. Given my hell raising proclivities, I wasn’t worried about that.

With thanks to the kind librarian, I pedaled down to the park, checked out the right place to pitch the tent and returned to town having noticed a certain storefront microbrewery called Ruby Valley Brew.

Team Dillon Rules

I don’t want to give the impression that beer is central to my life. I got the nickname Two Beer George in the 90s and nothing’s changed. That said, between the critical role of these breweries to the vitality of many towns, their cultural importance, and the delightful flavors of unique brews, well, what better combination of cultural anthropology and liquid pleasure could I ask for?

Stepping into the crowded room, I found myself at the beginning of a Trivia Night competition. This particular pub was beer-only relying on Fritts Dream Bean and Cafe next door to walk orders over and into the heat of the trivia contest.

With a red IPA in front of me at the bar, I turned to watch the contest, some 8 or 10 teams around tables, writing down answers to trivia questions posed by a young MC doing his best to be heard and to entertain the crowd. For a warm Wednesday night – in a room without AC full of happy folks – he did very well. After each round a tall young woman would take the answer sheets and help the MC tally up the scores.

By the third round, the table next to me noticed me mumbling answers to myself and I was invited by Team Dillon to join them. Dale, Angie, and three other young men (alright, at 65 every male under 40 is a young man) had been coming up to Sheridan for six months to enjoy the beer and competition, I was told, without winning.

We fixed that.

Their expert knowledge of popular culture post 1980 and my collection of arcana (what was the name of the first dog in space? (The Russian dog Laika)) put us in the lead and we kept it through the last round of questions. Then there was the final round, a Jeopardy-esque bet of points on a final question.

Dale yelled out “Go Big or Go Home!” so all points were bet. With everything on the table, Angie answered the existential question “who of the castaways was not mentioned in the original version of the Gilligan’s Island theme song?” and Team Dillon won the night’s big collection of tickets for free beer at the next Trivia Night. Since I’d be long gone, Dale and the Team stood me my two beers and, with laughter, thanks, and high fives all around I left to set up camp before the mosquitoes took their turn to rule the night.

There have been many moments of exhilaration, even joy, on this ride. A particular view, the opening up of yet another valley, the sight of an old bird friend, a sudden bald eagle leaping out of a cottonwood, water rushing over rocks, the unlooked for kindness of a stranger, the tonic blend of breeze, sun, and sound on my body. Most last a minute or two, fading with the need to attend to traffic, exert my leg muscles, or the intrusion of other thoughts not of the moment.

Today wasn’t like that at all. It began with an exhilaration that lasted for miles.

Before hitting the road, I took the time to repack most of my gear while the tent fly and ground cover dried out in the sun after the night’s thunderstorm. The robins were busy feeding fat youngsters on worms from the campsite’s grass. By the sound of it, the flickers were trying to satisfy hungry youngsters, too. A little house wren’s big voice shouted its burbling tune.

And the other tent camper departed, leaving me to enjoy the birds and the site without interruption. A peculiar young woman from Phoenix, she’d spent last evening listening to some self improvement podcast of some kind. I couldn’t make out the words but the earnest harangue went on far too long.

As the sun warmed up the cottonwood grove, the mosquitoes woke up too, this being the southern end of the Big Hole Valley. In haste stimulated by their bites, I loaded up everything, got more water for the day from the yard hydrant at the other campsite, and headed back up Bannack Bench Road toward Route 278, flanked on both sides by miles of sagebrush and grass.

I’d enjoyed a welcome downhill ride from 278 the evening before and was dreading a hard climb to begin the day’s pedaling but it was all gentleness and ease.

A couple of miles up the road, looking west, I saw a small group of pronghorn, does with two little ones, all moving as a watchful buck pushed his charges down a draw and out of my sight.

Further up, a cacophony of moos rose from the hills to the east. I stopped to watch an ATV speed along a track I couldn’t see well below the lip of the hill above that seemed to be the source of the bellowing, the ATV’s bareheaded driver hunched over the steering wheel.

And then the black heads and bodies of the cattle, black Angus perhaps (I’ve only a minuscule knowledge of cattle breeds) came into view. Clearly a roundup of some kind, I watched the herd of a hundred or more move down the hillside, chivied, guided, and pushed by three cowboys on horseback. They may no longer be spending days out on the range but the cowboy and the cutting horse are still a major part of raising cattle. They just get to go home at the end of the day in the pickup and the trailer behind.

I spent at least a half hour watching the men work the animals, keeping them moving at a steady walking pace, swinging wide to move the strays back into line, whooping and yelling to keep the entire herd on the move. The ATV driver was the outrider, sweeping wide to make sure all the animals were accounted for. From a distance of a mile or more, I watched the roundup (bringing binoculars was one of my better ideas), cooled by a light wind that grew into a breeze strong enough to keep the mosquitoes miserable with frustration.

As the sun rose, so did the wind and it was mostly behind me. With a nod to a few incurious horses, I got back on my metal mount and, with words of blessing and gratitude for the beautiful and breezy day, was back to Route 278 in short order.

Then the climb up Badger Pass, and the exhilaration, began.

Provided I am rested and right, pedaling up an incline of a 5% and even a 6% grade is usually doable with the fifty pound load. I can keep going, with regular rests, for a few hours if need be. Today, with that blessed tail wind, I basically had another percentage point and more in hand. Like the rider’s hand that pushed me up the last pitch up McKenzie Pass, the sail surface of my panniers and my own back converted the wind energy into free ergs for me to spend on the climb up hill.

Wind is about far more than the fluid dynamics of moving air. I’ve always been stimulated by strong wind, loving to lean into it to enjoy the press of it against my back and chest. That pressure also generates sound: the rush and sigh as it moves through stiff spruce needles, shakes leaves, makes branches creak, a sail belly with power, or sculpt, over eons, a rock face with a hiss. The louder the roar, the more intoxicating the wind becomes.

That internal stimulant was strong on the ride up Badger Pass. I laughed out loud when a big gust pushed me up the climb or accelerated my pace. Seven and even eight percent grades were within my pedals’ reach, with a more frequent pause to rest as the only cost.

Some climbs don’t produce a change in view. Chief Joseph Pass and the continental divide was hemmed in by tall conifers. Even that ride down, for a few miles, was stingy with brief and distant sight lines.

Not Badger Pass. Every few minutes, when I’d shift my gaze from the next fifty feet ahead, I was rewarded with a growing mountain, a better view back into the Big Hole Valley, an altered angle between hills to prove I’d made progress.

Sight, sound, the feel of the wind, sunshine warming my face and back, light and polite traffic, exertion powered by strengthened legs, the gravitational pull of the pass summit. It felt like flying.

Reaching the summit I got off the bike, spread my arms in the air, and smiled. Reluctant to leave the wind, the view, that particular sun angle, and the pure pleasure of it, I lingered up there, took a picture or two, watched a pair of ground squirrels, and simply stalled before heading down the east side of Badger Pass.

A smooth road, the wind still at my back, and a few fast turns, and I was on a long down grade, pedaling easily to keep my speed up, my legs awake, and to take advantage of the tail wind that continued to follow me.

Eight miles down from the pass, I met Stefan, a handsome Swiss in his early thirties from Basel, who had started his ride in Florida and was headed to San Francisco after visits to Glacier National Park and Seattle. As exhilarating and easy as my ride was, Stefan had a slog ahead with eight more uphill miles into that 15 knot wind and more on the downhill side. He carried even more kit than me using, besides four panniers, a tall black case that rose from just above his front mudguard to well above his handlebars. He had a battering ram to push into that wind.

Not all riders are ready to stop and talk at any length. Sometimes you’re just in the zone – going up or down hill – with bike and body in sync. A stop is an unwelcome loss of rhythm. But, in my happy state, I was more than glad to pull over to his side of the highway and wait for him to reach me while highway workers on ATVs spread green-dyed herbicides on the roadside’s invasive species.

Stefan and I chatted for 15 minutes about our rides, our work, our schedule. After landing our conversation’s arc and exchanging emails, he pedaled off while I watched him work his way up the road.

I heard later he went 80 miles, up Badger Pass, into the wind all the way, not reaching Jackson until eight that night.

With “better you than me” thoughts and gratitude for the continuing downslope and tailwind, I rolled the rest of the way into Dillon where a long call home with Nancy, under the shade of cottonwoods at a town park, brought me to a welcome halt. The temperature was now in the 90s. Food and an excellent berry milkshake at the Milk Pail Cafe across the street applied the parking brake. I rolled my ride, and my full belly, down the street to a motel for an early sleep.

I woke before six to Wisdom wreathed in fog. A rooster and his hens animated the quiet of the town as I walked the main and side streets, taking pictures as I waited for the local cafe to open up for breakfast.

Sitting down to my pancakes, over-easy eggs, and toast, I saw Richard walk in and asked him to join me for a quiet meal and the wait for our choice of caffeine to kick in.

Stocking up with drink and sugar at the market, I got going by 9 and was encouraged in my pedaling by the flocks of Big Hole Valley mosquitoes all too ready to join me whenever I paused to take a picture or adjust an item. I didn’t take many shots along Rt 278 between Wisdom and Jackson but made really good time over the 18 miles between the two.

Jackson is another small town, built on either side of the two lane 278, with a couple of stores, cafes, and more churches. I took lunch at Rosie’s Cantina, chatted a bit with the owners (they made a killer grilled chicken sandwich for me), and started talking with another customer, a burly, bearded guy named Glenn who was happily retired, living in Salmon, MT, and cruising around in his RV with a gorgeous German Shepherd bitch. He’d spent a number of years since retirement ten years ago moving between Montana and New Zealand to follow the warm weather and the trout fishing.

After I’d finished eating, I joined Glenn on the street-facing porch while he ate his salad. He’d spent his career as a pilot and manager, setting up air services in remote places like Sierra Leone and ending as chief pilot for the state of Alaska. Having spent a couple of years serving the business aviation business with online training, I knew just enough to ask good questions and to keep him talking. When I asked him if he’d flown since he left that job, he said, “Nope. After 13,000 hours in the air, much of it in remote places, I figured that was enough.”

The reason he’d been able to accumulate all those hours was prudence at each and every flight. He just applied that same situational awareness to the rest of his life.

We muttered, in alignment, over the current state of politics but saw no profit in lingering over that desultory topic. Fishing was a lot more interesting.

After I’d ridden about five or six miles up a rising road, Glenn passed me and pulled over to wait for me to catch up, wondering if I wanted a ride up the hills. I declined, of course, and we parted. He said he was going to Bannack State Park to check out Grasshopper Creek and wet a line if the water was clear. Glenn told me it was a good campground, a few miles off the highway.

I’m glad he did. After both the temperature and altitude had climbed into uncomfortable realms, a descent into the next valley, a half hour wait for the green light and the “follow me” truck to show up at the road construction site, and a fairly miserable 10 miles on grooved pavement, I was ready for a break.

Bannack is a ghost town in Beaverhead County, Montana. Folks walk through the old collection of weathered wooden buildings, peering into a past of gold mining and a rougher life.

And it’s a popular RV spot with a campground dedicated to hiker/biker/tenters like me. After cruising through it, failing to find Glenn, I settled into a grassy spot in the tenter section, shaded by cottonwoods shedding their glowing white seeds with the wind. In places, the ground was snow-covered with the hopeful germs of future cottonwood seedlings.

A cash-only, $28 fee applied to me, the highest campground rate I’d encountered for not much value. The potable water was in the other campground. No showers. But the staff didn’t seem to mind the next morning when they opened the envelope I’d dropped into the slot with my $20 and my explanation that that was all the cash I had.

Male nighthawks hoover’d their territorial borders, swallows, wrens, a flycatcher or two, red-shafted flickers, and the ubiquitous robin set the evening mood. Later that night, a thunderstorm crept by, flashing and rumbling, and dropped a shower on the tent’s orange and gray fly while I stayed dry and warm. And slept.

The easy climbing along yet another stream bed was over as soon as I got beyond the Indian Trees Campground turnoff. Once back on the highway, the climb began in earnest with the grade a steady 4% – 6%. But after a good night’s sleep and only two days on the road since my long Missoula hiatus, I felt strong and pedaling felt good. Yes, plenty of rest breaks, but some only a minute long, so my pace was decent. A 2200′ vertical climb over 8 miles or so was a challenge. I took a long lunch break, making some ramen soup to ease my way into the second half of the climb, a climb accompanied by RVs, pickups, and semis grinding, like me, their way uphill.

At the first summit, a Visitors Center on the main road gave me a chance to top up my depleted water bottles and chat with a tall BMW motorcycle rider, dressed in high tech armor, who nodded his thanks when I complemented the relative silence of his ride and smiled in agreement when I told him my heuristically developed finding that the likelihood of a motorcyclist waving back to me was inversely proportional to the decibel-level of their machine (and remember that the dB scale is logarithmic).

Turning left onto my route, I finished the ride up Chief Joseph Pass, lingering long enough to take a picture and text it out to family. It felt good to pedal all the way up.

It Got Better

I’ve come to enjoy the long climbs. Not every time because what my body is ready for varies daily based on how many days in a row I’ve been going, what I’ve eaten, how I’ve slept, and variables unknown to me. But I enjoyed that climb up and over the continental divide.

I’d expected that every ride down would be pure relief, pleasure, and even joy. That’s often been the case. But if I’m tired or one of those unknown variables is in charge, the ride down can just make me uneasy. The number in MPH that represents “too much speed” goes up and down, too.

But not today. Today, coming down, the ride was smooth, the air cool, and the landscape changed with the surprising speed that is so typical of the descent from the passes I’ve traversed.

After my high speed (30 MPH and higher) run through large switchbacks, the road straightened out, accompanied by Joseph Creek, a small stream that meanders through alder thickets in oxbow loops. As it descends, the creek grows, fed by small streams every half mile or so, straightens some, and picks up speed.

Given the rain and the riparian flood plain created by the creek, a happily green and soggy sward, I thought it looked just right for moose. Two minutes later, a cow moose appeared next to the road not 50 feet as I halted. She paused long enough for me to take a portrait before she turned, rather primly, on her long spindles of legs to put the appropriate social distance, aided by vegetation, between us.

A mule deer doe, another five minutes up, jived and shimmied in indecision near the creek’s bank, hiding behind a bush before running up the road bank, jumping over the guard rail, and leaping across the road to disappear into the woods beyond.

Change of Character

Every time you float down these declines it is exciting to see the character of the new valley reveal itself. Each is unique. The Big Hole Valley is no exception and it is one of the most beautiful and perhaps my favorite with a single major caveat composed of millions of minor annoyances. Miles wide and tens of miles long it is flanked by mountains, many still holding onto some snowpack despite the rains that have washed some away. Broad valley, a sagebrush edge around the valley floor, mountains, and sky.

A shoulder of hills separates the lush, higher ground of the creek bed and the true valley floor. Ranging from sagebrush to, at the point closest to the mountains, still covered in trees and thick grass, is the Big Hole National Battlefield, a monument to the Nez Perce who died thinking they were beyond the interest and reach of the army and to the soldiers and volunteers who lost their lives in the attack. It’s a beautiful site and yet another monument to the cupidity of the whites and the trials of Indians losing their freedom and their homeland.

Further down, that shoulder broadens into a plain of arid-tolerant grasses and sagebrush, perfect habitat I thought, as I rode toward Wisdom (the town that is), for pronghorn antelope. A minute later, my conjuring thought produced a pronghorn buck standing tall to examine the twin-hooped creature rolling by. When I stopped, he turned and trotted away with the aerial gait, all fours in the air, that belongs to this species. Through the binoculars, I found a half dozen pronghorn beyond.

A mile or two later I stopped to take some pictures, the western light shifting toward warmer yellow as the evening approached. At this stop, the Big Hole Caveat appeared with great vigor and focused attention. Within a second of stopping, a half dozen mosquitoes were on my legs and another group was checking out my head.

George Corn had warned me about the Big Hole Valley, even sending me off with a bottle of 99 proof DEET for defense. I’d thanked him, of course, while thinking “how bad can it be?”

Bad.

As in worse than I’ve ever encountered and I’ve been in some buggy places.

Since lingering anywhere was out of the question, I sped toward Wisdom, an otherwise slow, lifelong, unfinished journey. In thirty minutes I’d reached Wisdom but that had zero impact on the mosquito count. The town was as besieged as the prairie. So, I fled, in full cycling regalia – black shirt, black pants, shoes – into the Antler Saloon. These images will give you an idea of the place.

Oh, Another of These Idiots

I’d noticed the general friendliness and curiosity of the local folk declining as I’d gone farther east. Oregonians are all about asking questions and wishing you a safe journey. Idahoans a lot less and in parts of Montana there was no increase so when I pulled myself up to the bar I was served by the barkeep and observed by its customers with a certain “why’s this dude here and man he looks ridiculous” look on their faces.

So, I drank my beer and ate, occasionally turning to look at the large, multi-generation family having a good time at one table, a man and a woman playing pool at one of the green variety, and a regular stream of customers stepping in, some guys in caps, others wearing cowboy hats, to pick up their pizzas (I had a veggie). The Antler does a good take-out business.

Looking around more, I saw, nailed up on a high wall, were a couple dozen old pistols. Deer, elk, pronghorn, bobcat, and mountain lion mounts were there, too.

A couple of those pizza-picking patrons wore sidearms, small pistols in tooled leather holsters riding on their belts.

Weapons, Hunting, and Stewardship

Other than wishing I wasn’t an object of mild derision, I felt 100% comfortable at the Antler. While pistols have made me uneasy, or worse, when handled by those I knew were armed because of the power such a weapon confers, there was no fear at the Antler, just respect.

These are the people who use guns as they’re intended – to hunt for food (and, yes, there’s an aspect of sport here as hunting well is a hard-earned skill) as well as to protect and, sometimes, kill their own livestock. They know what they are doing with these weapons. For some, protection of their family and property is another use for which they choose to be prepared. You can wonder what such threats might look like but living in an isolated location with no neighbors, valuable equipment like the ATVs so many use (it used to be horses and cattle), the rural meth plague suggests an answer.

As hunters – and that is where my sympathies lie – what they do is necessary to manage wildlife populations. When you become the top predator, having killed off the wolves and forced the bears and mountain lion to the margins, responsibilities come with the job. You keep prey populations healthy by managing their numbers.

You keep entire ecosystems healthy by doing the same, something that way too many suburban residents have forgotten or never known as they watch in frustration and concern too many deer eating their gardens and spreading Lyme’s disease through an all-too healthy tick population. There are suburban forests back East that lack young trees because they’re stripped and eaten by hungry, often very hungry, deer. Talk to a state wildlife manager one on one and you’ll hear frustration over the misguided hunting limitations my area’s towns have enacted.

Even in the West, towns like Rapid City, SD, Butte and Bozeman Montana have wrestled with hiring sharpshooters to cull their urban deer populations.

The riparian ecosystem, many examples of which I passed through, suffers when overgrazed by moose and deer. These often lush and lively places, peopled by beaver and birds, are hugely productive compared to the dry uplands that surround them and suffer when too many ungulates feed on too little browse. The impact is systemic: run-off increases, biodiversity decreases, populations of many individual species decline.

You can fairly argue that we should have stronger wildlife populations. Recent research in NE Washington suggests that higher populations of deer and elk lower predation by mountain lion and wolves on cattle and sheep. Go figure. Abundant ungulates equals happy predators.

It’s true those same animals compete, at the margins, with cattle for resources. You can correctly say that the cattle industry’s lobbyists at the state and national level have too much influence.

But none of these species are endangered. Far from it. Regardless of the politics, the top predator role comes with responsibility. As Steward Brand put it, “we are as gods and might as well get good at it.”

This is about more than wildlife management. It’s about people’s well being, a concern that may not rise above the singular priority of well-fed and militant animal lovers. But folks in Wisdom, and countless small towns across the country, hunt to feed their families, people who would otherwise lack access to quality nutrition. It’s damn hard to make a living in these places. The fat of the land is pretty lean.

There’s (still) Gold in the Hills

As I was halfway into my pizza, a man in his mid-50s, thick across the chest and clearly in good shape, sat down on the stool next to me. He’d seen the bike out front and we started to talk.

Richard is a gold prospector. He’d been out in the hills and mountains, looking for indicator minerals like quartz and magnetite that are often associated with the small gold deposits he searches for and then turns into commercial operations. His specialty is to find the ore, get samples assayed to confirm commercially recoverable gold, estimate the potential size of the claim, and then to put it into operation, using the ancient placer mining technique with the important improvement of recirculated water to sort and reveal the sparkle of gold from the waste of rock and dirt. He even writes the operations manual before selling these up and running, albeit small, operations to investors and other hopefuls.

He likes the search, not the day to day operation.

Richard’s also an engineer. He was brought on to a tunneling project to take warmer water from behind a dam and get it to the hydro plant’s outflow in order to raise the stream’s temperature by two degrees, just enough to support salmon spawning below the dam.

Like the brothers Tom and James I met along the McKenzie River back in Oregon, Richard possesses the multiple skills needed to be successful out here. It’s the intersection of mental skills and the ability to apply them to physical results that matters here. There’s nothing abstract about applying brain power in this rugged corner of the country.

Richard’s spent countless days in the backcountry exercising a perhaps single minded curiosity. He’s a gold guy after all. But backed by study of the real world – something Leonardo excelled at – he’s built a stimulating life that takes him to the realms he loves.

After gobbling down a pretty darn good pizza and talking with Richard for an hour and more, the barkeep thawed out a little, she helped me choose which pie to consume (this is huckleberry country but strawberry rhubarb goes down easily), and, gratefully for me, she called both of the motels in town to find me a room. There was no way I was going back out into that atmosphere of 80% nitrogen, 19% oxygen, and 100% mosquitoes to set up the tent. Room #2 of the Frontier Motel was perfect.

The Corns had to head out to Missoula to be with family first thing in the morning, trusting me to their home and leaving me in solitary splendor to decide whether to risk an iffy forecast of rain ahead.

Given the 20% chance of rain in the forecast and the new target of Bozeman by July 1, I left Hamilton, staging my rain gear at the top of my clothing pannier to prepare for the eventuality of liquid humidity. And it came down as I was eating in a cafe in Darby, hard enough to get me into all my gear for the steady climb to Sula.

Sula’s a tiny town, hardly more than a crossroads. I considered camping there, checking out the little cabins and the already packed grounds but with the continental divide ahead I paused long enough to warm up in a brief sun window and continued up the incline for four or five more miles, ending at the USFS Indian Tree Campground a couple of miles off of the highway.

Good choice. The campground was quiet, with a pair of small streams running through it to soothe the ears, and a friendly camp host couple to inform me of the campsite options. A tall young man, dark-haired with bright, smiling eyes set in a long oval face, nodded and smiled at me as he went to choose his campsite, too.

The campground gets its name from the tall ponderosa pines that were used by the Salish Indians, and others, for food, a surprise to me whose experience of conifers has more to do with sticky than sweet. But in the spring, Indians hacked through the thick bark to reach the cambium layer to harvest a sweet gum. The bark-healed scars at the base of those pines are the only evidence remaining of that practice and the passage of those peoples.

I found my site, complete with picnic table (they are so handy for sorting and folding gear, never mind cooking), and had myself settled with the tent ready in 15 minutes. As I was beginning to cook my dinner, that tall young man came around the corner with a bottle of beer in his hand (an IPA!) and wishes for a pleasant evening. Delighted, even happily stunned, I accepted. Not lingering he simply said, “when my girlfriend saw your bike and all your gear, she said that if the campground was full, that we were going to give you the site and we’d move on.” It was more of a complement born of knowledge than I knew.

After dinner, to wash up, I walked past their campsite and we fell to talking. Canadians from Kamloops, BC, Bob and Erin were out on a short vacation tour. Both outdoor guides, Bob was just back from guiding a two week rafting trip down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. By the time we were done talking a half hour later – he descried being on the river with just a sliver of sky beyond the colorful canyon walls – I was convinced that a trip down the that river would be a great adventure for my adult family.

In my Big Agnes tent by 9 pm, I fell asleep to the stereo sound of the twin streams.

After taking so much time off the road it was a pleasant, easy ride from Missoula to Hamilton, virtually all of it along a paved bike path that parallels US Route 93, a two-lane highway that runs from little Wickenberg, AZ, northeast of Phoenix, all the way to the Canadian border.

There are two acoustic elements to most of my days. The first has been the sound of rushing water as so many of the roads I’ve taken parallel a stream or river. The other, less pleasant, is the sound of tires smacking pavement. Too rarely, it’s just a staccato of noise but along US 93 it’s rare that the road falls silent. The 50 to 100 feet separating the highway from the bike path is no impediment to the general roar of rubber on the road and internal combustion.

This happened to be June 22, my birthday and our anniversary. Given my absence, I figure I might be vying for the Bad Husband Award but N’s assured me I’ve hot a pass this year. After all, this is the 38th time the calendar has spun around since that great day in my life.

I got calls from two of my dear colleagues – Russ and Beth. When Russ called, I was in bright sunshine, next to a huge field (they’re almost all huge out here), with a big red-tailed hawk working it, likely with aspirations toward ground squirrels of which there’s no shortage. Russ had me laughing for almost a half an hour.

When I got into Hamilton, I took advantage of another of Jeremy’s gifts, the invitation from his friends George and Linda Corn to spend the night with them in Hamilton. At the 4th light I took the left as instructed and met George a mile or so up the road as he drove to meet me on the main road.

What a great evening. Beth called me and we had a brief and welcome chat. The Corns then treated me to dinner at the Bitterroot Brewery, educated me on the constraints Montana brewers have to contend with (last call at 8 pm, no more than three beers) thanks to a strong Tavern lobby, and took me on an evening tour to both sides of the valley. We spent time admiring the Blodgett Canyon (massive cliffs) as well as the fields and farms on the valley floor.

George and I talked until 11 pm about his 20 years as the elected county attorney, the power of lobbying, and what makes this part of Montana go.

I appreciate their kindness and friendship. I look forward to coming back with Nancy when we both share the luxury of time.

Sorry for the long hiatus but between being out of range of the internet and busy, well, I’ve written a lot but not posted. Come back by July 9 and there’ll be a bunch more!

Missoula is a cool town. Cyclist friendly, coffee shops, musical instrument stores, hard not to like a lot. A river runs through it. Surfers play on a standing wave. Bicycle shops and mountains in the middle distance.

Adjusting the Plan

My original plan was to ride beyond Rapid City, SD by July 8 or so. That’s not going to happen. I’ve not averaged the 40 miles a day that would have been required to get that far. Since this was never a race and far more an exercise in curiosity – about the landscape, about the people, and about the nature of a cycling tour – I’m not disappointed at all. There are other ways to get to Rapid.

Nancy is done with her work obligations at the end of June so she’s joining me in Bozeman on July 1. While friends hold down the fort, and our dog Benny, at home, we’ll rent a car big enough to hold the bike and our gear and then go wander ourselves for five days or more before heading to Rapid City and the homes of our friends. I can’t wait to see her.

So, I plan to leave Friday morning, spend the night in Hamilton with a kind friend of Jeremy’s and then head east over the Continental Divide.

Getting over the Continental Divide definitely is a goal and point of pride. After that, it’s (mostly) downhill. Well, there are another pair of 7.000′ passes to pedal over.

So, not as far as I’d anticipated but I could care less. I’ve put 1200 miles behind me and still have a few hundred ahead. I’ve learned how much I enjoy cycling and touring. I expect cycling will become a more permanent part of my routine and that this won’t be the last touring trip I take.

Wanderings of the Future

My dear friend Hans has some ideas for the continuation of my wanderings beyond Bozeman. Check them out!

Now, on to the Continental Divide!

Posted on my birthday (65, jeezum crow, how did that happen?!) and our anniversary (38th, thank g-d that happened!)