92.8 miles. The day got harder as the wind turned against us.

I’m writing this on June 22 as we sit in our hotel in Wolf Point. Our previous days’ riding were long and hard and we were too tired to add to the blog. We left Havre still buoyed by our wind aided ride the day before. We had contacted our Warm Showers host in Malta and told him we would be to town early in the afternoon. Oops!  The fickle wind turned and we had a small head wind for a while that grew stronger as the day grew longer and our energies grew weaker.

We stop at almost every historical marker. They usually give an unvarnished view of how the US treated Native Peoples.  This one describes the final defeat of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce.

The towns along Route 2 (called the “Hi Line”) were built originally by the railroad companies to serve the grain producers. According to legend, the railroad magnate(s) spun a globe and wherever their finger landed became the name of the next town – Harlem, Glasgow, Nashua, Malta, etc. At one point we were low on water but there was a town just ahead and we knew from other bloggers that there was a bar/cafe there where we could fill up. Surprise!  The bar was boarded up!

Lunch table provided by the shuttered cafe

We had lunch at one of their outside tables and moved on down the road to the next town of Dodson where there should have been a convenience store. That too was closed and may have opened in two hours or so! There was a three man crew digging a huge trench next door with a back hoe and they gladly pulled two bottles of water out of their ice chest for us. They told us that under a nearby house the town’s water main  was broken and that house was basically a swamp. They were searching for the main so they could cap it off but could not find it. This region of Montana is covered with about two feet of topsoil and below that is sand so once the crew hit sand (the foreman called it “quicksand”) the trench collapsed. Frustrated, they were calling it a day and offered us more ice cold water!

You’ll have to look closely to read the lettering on the grain elevator. It says “Howdy Pardner. Welcome to friendly Chinook.” The reality is that Chinook almost doesn’t exist anymore.

Our maps indicated an alternate route on a few BIA roads that got us off busy and narrow shouldered Rte. 2.  It added a mile or two but the road was completely empty. It ran more or less parallel to the sinuously flowing Milk River (eons ago the Missouri River followed this course but it was diverted by a huge ice dam to its present course. The Milk eventually took over the old Missouri channel and many centuries later Lewis and Clark named the Milk for its color.

The road outside of Malta. Note the narrow shoulder as well as the marker on the other side of the road with 7 crosses.

Finally after all the struggles with wind and lack of water we made it to Malta. We had agreed with our host, Craig, that we would supply the chicken for dinner and he would do the veggies so we stopped at the town Alberstson’s and then made it to Craig’s house.  He graduated from Nebraska a few years ago and had just moved to Malta within the last few months to work for the Bureau of Land Management. He welcomed us in and we sat and talked about Montana, biking and Warm Showers. He started the BBQ and his friend Kelsey joined us for dinner – she supplied a bottle of currant and honey wine from Canada. Craig also provided a delicious taco dip, eggplant and asparagus.

Over dinner, Kelsey asked where we were headed to next and said she knew a couple in Glasgow that did Warm Showers hosting and what great people they were.  We had contacted them but thought they (John and Mary) were unavailable. (More on this story in tomorrow’s blog).

We also heard from Craig and Kelsey that the storm we had avoided by sleeping in a motel in Shelby on Saturday had blown over a standing train in Malta.  We had seen the crushed cars being transported on truck beds on our ride.  Our warm weather hosts in Glasgow (details to follow in upcoming post) showed us the impact of the hail on their alfalfa.  We were lucky we were inside that night rather than in a tent.

Finally settling to bed – we were to sleep in Craig’s spare bedroom on the floor on our camping pads.  Maja discovered that she had apparently left her pad somewhere between Glacier and Malta! Craig, being the super nice person he is, offered her his pad not only for the night but to take with us to be mailed back to him once Maja got a new one.  She got on the phone to REI and they are shipping a new pad to our hosts in Bismark, ND!

Thanks to Fred Prozillo for recommending Gorilla Tape for our tool kit, the tape is holding my pannier together until we pick up the new one at General Delivery in Dickinson, ND.  Thanks also to Jean and Barry Bingham for their gift of miscellaneous items for out trip – some of the twist ties are employed to insure my pannier stays on the bike  and the anti saddle sore cream has been a life saver!

The weather is warming so Maja dons her sun sleeves.

6:1

Today was a biking day made in heaven!  It wasn’t too hot or cold, nor too sunny or cloudy and we had heavy winds (gusting up to 35 mph) at our backs!  Hills that normally would have beem the source of trepidation or despair were easy with a friendly windy push and we rode for miles at a time on flats or slight negative grades without pedaling.  We averaged 16.67 miles per hour on the bikes.  Normally we’re happy to average 10.  Hurray!  The wind also made what could have been a slightly monotonous landscape into an emerald sea.  At times it looked as though there were schools of silvery fish swimming just under the surface.  I kept expecting some to break the surface.  It was gorgeous!  And the tawny and rust colored grasses on the side of the road often looked like a lion shaking his mane.  Thanks Mother Nature.

The only downside of our windy day was that our bikes fell over at one point when I was taking photos and one of our pannier clips broke making it impossible to attach the pannier to the bike.

One of the photo culprits at the root of the pannier fiasco.

Luckily, our man Charles was ready with a zip tie and was able to save the day.  Semper paratus.

Charles fixing the pannier

At the next town we arrived in (Chester) I called REI and arranged for a new set of front panniers to be sent General Delivery to a post office in North Dakota where we plan to be on Friday.  So we’ll be good as new.

It was a fantastic day and I’m sure the fastest we will ever bike 104 miles in our lives.

Grain storage. We passed one farm with 40 of these.

We stopped last night because of the storm and saw that today was forecast to be very windy with blowing from the West. Perfect, we thought, and it was a prescient decision. For us, the road (Rte. 2) runs due east so we profited all day long from tailwinds.  I wish we had a spinnaker! There were times we coasted at 24 miles an hour propelled only by the wind at our backs. A greater biking century can not be imagined.

Many of the small towns on our route are on hard times with businesses closed and some buildings abandoned but we were prepared with PB&J sandwiches. At one point we were stopped by a Montana Highway Patrolman and advised to stay on the shoulder. The problem for most of the day was that the shoulder was narrow and, in some places, white line to grass rumble strips but we complied!

We passed through Dunkirk, Devon, Inverness and Kremlin then rolled into Havre, the home of Montana State University Northern and found a hotel room and Pizza Hut. Tomorrow we’re off to Malta with not as much wind in the forecast.

Lots of wheat fields. In the wind the waves were mesmerizing.

Catholic Church in Gildford

60 miles today.  The landscape is rolling and the road good (for a long way there was a very wide shoulder to ride on) so we made good time.

Storm clouds gathering along the “High Line” tracks we are following across Montana.

As we pulled into Shelby for lunch we checked the local weather (our intent was to move on to Chester – another 40 miles or so) and found there was a weather advisory for thunderstorms and hail. So, given that and the fatigue from yesterday, we decided to stop here and checked into the Comfort Inn – inexpensive, great and free wi fi (our crutch and hotel decider), guest laundry … The works. The maw of the stom appears to have missed Shelby but there is rain and thunder rolling around.

We followed a bit of the Lewis and Clark trail (Highway 2) and passed the town of Meriweather and the Lewis High School. The first part of the ride was through the Blackfeet Reservation then Rte. 2 just slides on due East. It is great to make mileage heading east after all the north and south squiggles we’ve been making since we left Washington.

A little roadside color along Rte. 2

About yesterday’s ride on the Road to the Sun:  As I may have mentioned in the short post about it, the ride from Lake McDonald to Logan pass is the equivalent of a category 1 climb in the Tour de France (the guide book said it’s the equivalent of the stage up Les Deux-Alpes. (I repeated a description I heard that the climb to Logan pass was equal to L’Alpe d’Huez but that climb is in fact Hors Categorie – even harder). Yesterday there were a lot of drivers taking advantage of the pass’s opening so the last few miles were a little busy – there’s no shoulder on the windy two lane road but the road surface appears to be new.

As we climbed higher we were in and out of clouds, some so dense you couldn’t see the road ahead.

Winding ever upward, the road truly is, as our Warm Showers host Chuck said, the most beautiful bike ride we’ve ever seen – dense forest gives way to rocky vistas of 8 and 9 thousand feet peaks some still with snow. As we reached the top the wind picked up and it got quite cold but we had been aiming for the Visitors’ Center to warm up and prepare for the long downhill.  Of course, the center was not yet open and I guess we looked pitiful enough because a very nice couple (Mike and Barb from Seattle – also cyclists) invited us into their camper for some much needed heat and some hot cider. Again, the kindness of strangers – a lesson to us all.

The hard climb done, we now head downhill toward the Mississippi

The downhill was indeed freezing – I stuffed a tee shirt under my jacket just to insulate my core – and we made quite a few stops just to keep from shivering. As I mentioned yesterday our route to Browning was taxing and on a day when we needed a lot of TLC at the end of the day, our hotel let us down by not offering the wi fi offered in their sign nor having hot enough water for showers, plus the room was freezing when we got there and took a while to warm up. Our dinner was a gourmand’s treat at Chez Subway and we quickly walked back and jumped right into bed.

We did get a free breakfast out of the deal and made PB and Nutella sandwiches for later.

Still plenty of snow up there. We saw some people with skis and a snowboard.

By the way, if you click on any of the small photos you can see it in large size.

82 miles up and over the Continental Divide. We got up very early and found that the power was out at the lodge so we got dressed and packed in the dark. We climbed the 21 miles to the top of Logan Pass and it was COLD, and even colder going downhill on the East side. Once at the East entrance to the park we decided on an alternate route that ended up being hard climbing through a pretty monotonous landscape but at least there was not much traffic to contend with.

We ended up in Browning on the Blackfeet Reservation and checked into the first motel we could find and that was a mistake. We will post more details when we have a wi-fi connection and will also post stunning photos from around Logan Pass and the snowy mountains.

40 miles on nice roads and no “confusion.”

Our fantastic hosts, Rita and Chuck, started us off with a hot breakfast and coffee this morning (other Warm Showers hosts take notes!). Tom, who also shared in their hospitality, took off early hoping to get 100 miles to the Canadian border on his Great Divide Race today – from the Mexican border with New Mexico all the way to Banff, Alberta, solo, on Park Service roads.

We casually embarked on a very pleasant, short, touring type ride today to Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier National Park.

We like this message and we guess others do too because litter is a lot less in Montana.

The road was mostly clear with the added benefit that drivers around Whitefish are used to dealing with bikes so the fear factor was lessened quite a bit. We did have an unpleasant 2.5 mile stretch through the forest on a rough gravel road where our speed was minimal but after that we sailed into the Park with smiles on our faces.

Our first views of Lake McDonald.  It doesn’t get better than this!

We planned on taking a rest day tomorrow but now there is uncertainty when Logan Pass over the Continental Divide will be open so at the moment it is unclear when we will leave. There is an alternate route but it’s on the shoulder of Route 2, not something we are excited about. Time, weather, road crews will all tell in then end.

In the meantime, we are happy and very comfortable here in the Lodge.

One of many roadside crosses–there are way too many of these on the roads. Maybe an indication that a 70 mph speed limit on two lane roads is a bit too high.

Our view of Lake McDonald from the Lodge

Our home away from home. Tenting at our “warm showers” hosts in Whitefish