Bike Across the US - June

Monday June 1, 2009

Miles today – 58.2

Daily ride time – 4 hrs 57 min

Average – 11.9 mph

Daily Climb – 2,097

Total BRAA mileage – 728.6

Weather Start – Clear 49; Weather Finish High clouds 70

Today should have been an easy day for us but two things came into the limelight for us. The first was a 4 1/2 mile climb.

Today’s weather proved to be remarkably better than forecast.  It was a bit chilly riding from Lincoln through Roger’s Pass, but the sun did begin to shine a bit.  Yesterday’s snow storm was visible on the mountains surrounding us as we made our way up, up, up…  When Brian used the “Map My Ride” program on the internet for today’s route, we were only supposed to climb 2,500 feet.  I guess the hills after Roger’s pass and before the town of Simms were not registering on this program.  We climbed several rolling hills after the pass, for about 700 feet of unexpected extra climb of sometimes up to 5-7%.  We did very well, considering. The wildlife in the area from Missoula to Great Falls seems more abundant.  We saw a beaver (or maybe a muskrat?) on our way into Lincoln.  Also saw a bald eagle (and a huge nest near where he was souring), and plenty of blue and bright yellow birds.  Today there was a huge elk up on a hill (too far off in the distance to get a good photo), but we were only riding approximately 9 mph up one of the numerous inclines so there was plenty of time to watch him.  He did have quite a rack!  After the pass there were a half dozen antelopes.  I thought they were deer, and at first Brian thought they were goats, but the locals said they were antelopes.

We stopped in the small town of Fort Shaw at the only Café along the way to have lunch.  It was already 2:30 in the afternoon, but the lady there was still serving lunch.  She brought us each a HUGE tuna sandwich (one can of tuna per sandwich), and amazingly we ate it all.  We visited with Jo Ann, a local who ate lunch with us, and another local couple came in for coffee.  It’s always interesting to hear the stories of the area, and of course our bike is quite a conversation piece.  I have to say I was quite surprised when Brian ordered a cup of coffee.  I’ve never seen him drink coffee in the 16 years we’ve been married!  Guess he was still a bit chilly.

We ended up not leaving the L&C Interpretive Center until high noon so we had to grab lunch before leaving town. We left town at 1:30 which is by far the latest we have ever left town. Our thinking was we only had a little over 50 miles and the weather was predicted to be perfect for riding. What could possibly go wrong??? Some of the Montana license plates have a slogan “Big Sky Country” on them. I have wrote the governor and asked for him to change it to “Big Hill Country”. Even though we only rode for 51 miles and climbed just under 2,000 feet, they were the most painful and steep hills we have encountered. My bike odometer/altimeter was giving me readings of 9 – 11%, much too steep for us to peddle up, soooooo we logged 1.5 miles of bike walking today. And you may as well kick a man when he is down….. today we hit mosquitoes even the Minnesotans would be envious of. Another letter to the governor for the slogan “Big Mosquito Country” will be going out. The bad part was the only time they would be after us was when we were peddling 4 mph up the steep hills, once we crested the hills the head wind plus our forward speed would keep them in check. (not completely but bearable) Having said all that we arrived in Fort Benton just after 6pm. Ft Benton is on the Missouri River and has many historic buildings, four museums, and lots of points of interest pointing out all the history that happened around town. It is a very interesting place and we will be starting late again tomorrow to take it all in. Resting our weary legs,

Brian

Twenty seven miles later as we were peddling into the town of Geraldine for lunch and a rest, we had our third flat tire.  The tire didn’t blow out or flatten immediately (thank you Slime for doing your job).  We were able to peddle into town and make it to the café.  After lunch we changed the tire. (under the shade of a tree and a park bench, yeah!)  So… an hour and forty five minutes later we were back on the road, peddling toward Square Butte. After we crossed the Arrow River, it was one heck of a climb and two dirt road construction areas that we walked the bike through.  We figure the bike walking exercise today was a combined mile and three quarters.  Oh well, we made it!                                                                      You can see the BIG climb for the day below

The animals along this desolate road are fantastic. There are so many antelope. If we are riding 15+mph they just sit there and watch, not flinching. If we are riding slow they start to run when we get close. The highlight was when we had juts been passed by a pick up and two fox were sitting two feet off the edge of the road watching the pickup and did not see or hear us coming until we were four feet from them – then they could not get down into their fox hole fast enough – very cool! The last 17 miles today seemed to take FOREVER since we could see for miles and miles and miles…  We saw the town of Stanford water tower for about two hours (not really, but it seemed like we’d never roll into town).  We finally made it to The Runway Motel at 6:30.  What a nice motel!  It is right next to the end of the runway, and while I showered I could stare out the window at a $3 million dollar airplane parked on the tarmac.  The owner of this motel, the wife (didn’t get her name), is a retired Northwest Airlines 747 flight attendant.  Interesting people. What a surprise when our friend Cheryl Michaels met us here at our motel!  She drove up from Denver Colorado (12+hrs) today to see us, and to see the beautiful state of Montana.  We are going to meet her for breakfast in the morning, and reminisce some more before we roll out of here.  It’s time for me to sign off now as it’s way past 10pm, and we have an early day tomorrow. Ta-Ta for now! PamFriday, June 12, 2009 Miles today – 47.2 Daily ride time – 3 hrs 40 min Average – 12.9 mph Daily Climb – 1,236 feet Total BRAA mileage – 1,109.2 Weather  – big blue skies – temps 48 up to 73 This morning we met Cheryl at ‘the’ restaurant at 7am for breakfast. After a few photos with Cheryl and her getting some video of our bike on the highway, we left Stanford at 8:43. Today was definitely in the top 3 days of bicycling we have ever had. Almost the perfect temperatures, a slight cool crosswind out of the North, and the hills are getting smaller. We actually had about half of our ride today on level ground so it was more like biking around home. Just a very comfortable day. At eleven miles from reaching our destination a couple was pulled off the side of the road (in a car) flagging us down. After pulling over we found out they too were riding a tandem recumbent bike. Dave and Heather had ridden 1,900 miles so far from Ohio with no real plan on where they were going. They were real interested in how we rigged our bike and offered to buy us dinner this evening. They had taken 3 days off of riding and rented a car to drive through Yellowstone park and were heading out biking again tomorrow. More on them after dinner…. We arrived in Lewistown at 1:30 and checked into the hotel, The Sunset Motel. Our two tires that Emaloy had sent to us were waiting for us when we arrived. I changed both tires out. The front tire (tire not tube) had seven holes in it from the bridge coming into Great Falls. The back tire had two holes in it. Yesterday the tube had only one hole in the back. The front tube had three holes in it. That slime is some great stuff!                                           Heather, Dave, and Brian

Stopped for lunch in the tiny town of Grass Range.  Enjoyed an hour of rest there too.  Didn’t see many wild animals along our journey today, just a few cows here and there.  We did see four large cranes today (the first ones that we’ve seen on this trip).  The small motel here in Winnett where we are staying this evening is very cute.  Brian said, “Instead of TV we watch the leaves blow in the wind."  The town itself has a population of 185 according to our map, but it does have a grocery and a couple of cafes.  Hopefully we’ll sleep peacefully tonight as there’s a wedding party staying in the remaining three rooms of the motel.  June is wedding season!

Until next time, PamSunday, June 14, 2009 Miles today – 77.0 Daily ride time – 7 hrs 1 min Average – 11.1 mph Daily Climb – 2,908 feet Total BRAA mileage – 1,245.8 Weather Start –  blue skies temps 43 no wind Weather Finish - 79 winds 13 gusting to 21, with high clouds Today we pushed off at 5:25am. The plan was to make it to the top of our big hill (22 – 26 miles into our ride) before the wind hit. It almost worked. We were half way up our hill when the wind started at 7:10… almost made it…… The ride up to “the” hill and the wind was fantastic. Being early Sunday morning there was very little traffic the first two hours and the animals were out searching for breakfast. Too many antelope to count as well as wild turkey, deer, and various birds everywhere.                          The view we had all day... up the hills! Photo doesn't really do justice. Very peaceful and we were “screaming” (on our Rans Screamer) up and down the hills. The day after 7:10 was a whole different day. Wind makes our life extremely difficult on our bike. Hills that we used to coast down (3%) at 30+mph we now have to peddle down to keep our speed up to 18 mph. Hills that we could peddle up (3%) at 8 – 9 mph we now are peddling up at 4 to 4.5 mph. We also usually travel on level ground at 14 mph and now are only able to go 8 – 10 mph. Add the howling wind noise in your ears all day and now we have a LONG day. Pam started talking about heading back to Arizona.  (What I said was, "We can keep complaining or pack up and head home any time." - Pam) Another item that makes for a long day is no place to rest. We had one restaurant/service station on our map just past our half way point but being Sunday it was closed. They only had one chair sitting outside which we put under ‘the’ tree, but still being out in the wind and not being able to actually rest takes it out of us as well. We arrived in Jordan Montana (population 364) at 2:45 pm. We will stay here until Tuesday and rest up. We have been peddling 6 days straight totaling 386 miles without any rest. The Big Hill and Big Wind state of Montana is taking its toll on our legs. The plan of outrunning the rain storms worked as the whole western half of Montana is getting rained on today. It is also supposed to rain over there for the next few days. Yeah!

Well we have been invited by a local archeology group, from St Louis, to go and spend some time with them this evening as they have been out digging up dinosaur bones – sounds interesting!  More on them later!

Brian

Monday, June 15, 2009

We took the day off to rest the weary bones. We visited the Garfield County Museum.  It turns out from Jordan to the East there are lots of dinosaur digs going on – in fact the first full T-Rex was found outside of town here just after the turn of the century. The museum was fantastic and included dinosaur artifacts and antiques from the area. Very cool stop over town!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

We crossed the North Dakota state line at 9:35 Mountain/10:35 Central time. Montana was a huge state… when we crossed into Montana we started Mountain time and when we vacated the state we left Mountain time. At 11:30 we arrived at the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretive Center a museum highlighting the history of the area where the Missouri River and the Yellowstone River merge. We then went one mile to Fort Buford – an 1860 – 1880 era military fort. We hit the road again at 2:15, now with full sun and the wind in full cross wind for the next hour. We arrived in Williston ND at 4:30 and checked in to the El Rancho hotel. Tonight was a special night as we finally were treated to a Walleye dinner. All this time throughout Montana they kept talking about the Walleye but we could never find a place that served Walleye – but today we finally had that taken care of – Yeah! The fisherman we ran into at Ft Peck said they were there just to fish for Walleye and would throw back any Northern or other types of fish. As it was not the first time we have had Walleye it sure went down good!

Tomorrow will be a day of rest for us so until Sunday….

Brian

Saturday, June 20, 2009

A Day of rest and site seeing. We found the ultimate antique store Hedderich's. This is an old Ben Franklin size store with  a full basement crammed with the most bazaar antiques; toys, games, books, tools, dolls, furniture, etc…Usually the antique stores we have visited specialize in a certain cliental, this place had the widest variety of antiques I have ever seen in one place. We also went to see the movie The Proposal – not too bad!

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Today we awoke to lightning, thunder, and hail – not the best of biking weather. After checking the weather forecast we decide to hole up for another day. We are ahead of schedule a couple of days and we also could not find a hotel in our next town. In fact the four hotels (over 200 rooms total) are full for the whole week. We decide to bike even farther (why not two days of rest – right??) on Monday, we called and got a reservation just in case….

Monday, June 22, 2009

After another thirty seven miles, we stopped for lunch in New Town.  This was supposed to be where we would stay tonight, but the construction crews had rented every room in the four motels in this town.  Looks like they’re working on various road construction and putting in oil derricks all over the hills and farmland.  We passed quite a few of these oil sights along our route today.  What a waste when we saw the natural gas fires just burning away instead of somehow utilizing this natural resource! Only seventeen miles to go!  We climbed our way out of New Town, and climbed all but the last three miles into Parshall.  The legs were burning for sure by the time we arrived at our final destination for today.  As Brian put it, “My legs are burning in more ways than one.”  Both of us ended our ride wearing shorts, with sunscreen of course, but still…  Time to relax for a bit. Pam

Quotes from the road…..

When ordering a sandwich for lunch Pam asks the waitress if she could get some other vegetable other than potatoes and she relied, “Sure we have French fries, mashed potatoes, hash browns, jojo’s (potato wedges), tater tots, scalloped potatoes, or rice pilaf.”

The first half of our ride took us south along highway 1804.  There was very little traffic, so the animals were more abundant today than yesterday’s ride.  Today was pheasant day!  We scared one as we rode by him (he scared me too, sounded like a large trash bag took flight) he was hiding in the tall grass beside the road.  Also saw a few deer near the wooded areas.  No mosquitoes today!  Guess they took the day off. We passed a strange looking lizard on the road and turned around to have a better look.  Once we turned east we had a nice tail wind, so we were sailing along when Brian spotted the lizard.  We took a photo of this iguana, wondering what on earth he was doing in this part of the country.  As we got closer we discovered this was just a rubber kids toy!  We joked about someone hiding in the old abandoned farmhouse taking video of bewildered passers by who stopped for a second look.

We rolled in to Garrison ND (population 1,318) at 11:15, just in time for lunch.  Nice to sit down and relax after our 56 mile ride.

Until tomorrow….. Pam

Soooo….. at 9:45 central time we crossed the Garrison Dam over the Missouri river and crossed back into Mountain time and into Pick City. Subsequently the only restaurant along our route this morning did not open until 9:00 am Mountain time so we had to wait for them to open. While waiting, members of the breakfast club (they call themselves the Breakfast Club) we showing up to storm the restaurant when they opened and we had plenty of entertainment with the silver haired club members until they unlocked the door. The breakfast sandwiches were awesome and the cheapest we have found on our trip.At 10:30 we arrived at the Knife River Indian Interpretive Center. This was “the” site where Sakagewea and her French fur trading husband were living when Lewis and Clark wintered in 1804 at Fort Mandan. After inquiring around Lewis and Clark heard of the Frenchman here at the Knife River site and arranged for him and Sakagewea to help guide them on the their historic voyage. The distinguishing thing about this Indian tribe was that they built “Earth Lodges” which were permanent structures they lived in as opposed to being migratory as all other plains Indians were with their tipis. The tour guide was fantastic in giving the history of the tribe, building construction, and other historic information about the area. A must see if you are in the area. They also told about the other site we were planning on seeing, the Fort Clark Historic site. After finding out there were no buildings on that site nor a visitor center we decide to forgo that stop. We rode two miles into Stanton to eat lunch and when we came out of the café we found the wind they were forecasting. Blowing from the South at 20mph we turned onto the highway heading South for the next 4 miles pedaling a mere 7 mph on level ground. Boooo. As we turned East again we picked up the pace to 10 –12 mph and felt good about that. We arrived into our overnight town of Washburn at 3:30 pm. We will be spending an extra day here as there are several historic sites within 6 miles of the city and it will take all day to explore them tomorrow. We will give a review of them after we see them. Until then! Blue Skies!

Brian

Thursday, June 24, 2009

We returned to Ron’s, and his wife Joyce made a delicious dinner for us.  During dinner we watched their son Tom on TV, he’s one of the evening news anchormen in Bismarck, ND.  We then went out for ice cream.  Yummy!  On the way home it started to rain.  As we were walking into the house, we heard the tornado sirens sounding.  This is definitely a first for me!  The weather radar showed possible tornado activity, and people from the area called in to report seeing a funnel cloud.  The excitement was soon over, no tornado for us.                                    Photo right: Our hosts Ron and Joyce Ron and Joyce have a beautiful home, and made us feel as though we were a part of the family.  We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and the time flew by.  We went to sleep early to prepare for our rigorous ride tomorrow. Pam Saturday, June 27, 2009 Miles today – 88.8 Daily ride time – 6 hrs 36 min Average – 13.5 mph Daily Climb – 3,509 feet Total BRAA mileage – 1,885 Weather Start –  clear sky, temp 58 degrees Weather Finish – sunny, temp 75 wind from the Northwest at 15 – 20 Today we awoke at 3:30 from the best night sleep in a long time. There is something about staying in a house as opposed to a hotel that gives me a better night sleep. We left Ron and Joyce’s house at 4am and figured with such an early start we should find a breakfast place open – and Denny’s was found. The bar crowd from Friday night was still there. We ended up starting the ride at just before 5am into the darkness an hour before sunrise. The forecast was for windy conditions today and we wanted to beat the heat and wind. They also had forecasted wind out of the Northwest to start and gradually turn out of the west later in the day and since our ride was mostly South we wanted to take advantage of the wind if possible. There was a brutal hill to leave Bismark and the chill of the air left our bodies quickly. The sunrise this morning was fantastic, especially being from Arizona. In true hospitality Ron and Joyce arranged to have the Arizona flag sun rays shine for us to make us feel even more at home. Another pleasant surprise was all the pheasant that was out this morning. We saw more pheasant in the first two hours today than we have seen the whole trip!

Today’s route has us following the Missouri River and there was not one town along the whole route. We found two nice break areas, the first a boat launch area that had picnic tables and the second was a newer vacant building that was for sale but had a double porch swing on the front that called out to us when we rode by – so we utilized that for our second break. The hills today were tough. There were a dozen large hills with three of them being almost a mountain status. Just after the last of the humongous hills was the North/South Dakota state line. (12:10pm) From there we only had 9 miles to roll into Pollock South Dakota (pop 369) for the night. Ron and Joyce have a ‘retreat’ there and with Pollock being on the lake (Missouri River) it is a very special little town. We rolled into Pollock around 1pm and found the Fins and Feathers Café for lunch. (We see they have Orange Roughy AND Walleye on the menu for dinner – yum!) We found Ron’s retreat shortly after lunch and feel very privelaged to have such a great place to stay. Ron says he may come down on Sunday to go fishing so we may stay an extra day to catch our own Walleyes….. maybe….

At 3pm it started raining in Pollack. At 4pm it started hailing. I flipped the TV on to see the severe thunderstorm warnings out for our county. Good choice on leaving Bismark early. Hopefully the weather will be good for fishing tomorrow…. Until then!

Brian

At 7:41 we rolled into Mound City for breakfast. The sign on Calicos café was closed but we can see many people inside so we step inside to ask if they were open. “No, but they will open at 8am for food, we are all here just for coffee”, the people said. We sat down at a separate table and a lady gets up to pour us coffee. I asked if she worked there she said no, they all just serve themselves. Pam and I get up and get our own coffee and sit back down. About every 3- 5 minutes a different person would get up (14 people total) and come by to refill everyone’s cups. At 8:05 a lady comes out from the kitchen and asks if we would like some food. We both order eggs, bacon and toast (the only option). When we started to eat you could tell they were farm fresh eggs and fresh bacon. Later the lady asked if we liked the eggs and commented that they were farm fresh eggs. Its kinda funny how you can tell the farm fresh eggs just by taste! Yum!

By the time we finished breakfast the sweats came off and off we went again. It slowly continued to get warmer and around 11am the wind started to blow from the SouthEast. We also ran into some road repaving for a couple of miles which turned out to be very nice as they held back the cars and let us go through the five mile area by ourselves.

The view from our room at Bob's                              .

After our Good Samaritan deed, we took off again toward Pierre (pronounced peer), SD.  Brian informed me that this is the second smallest state capital with less than 14,000 people, the first being Montpelier, VT.  We stopped at the Oahe Dam information center, just six miles north of Pierre.  Two nice ladies shared information with us on what to see in Pierre, first on their list being the capital building.  We will see this and the museum tomorrow as we have one day to explore the town prior to flying home Thursday for 72 hours.  On our way into Pierre, we climbed (and walked the bike about ¼ mile) up another “puke” hill as Ron called the similar hill going into Bismarck.  The only reason we chose this route was to stop at the Super Walmart as we needed vitamins and a couple other items that are hard to find in dinky towns along our route.  By 12:30 we made it to the Days Inn, where we’re using some bonus points for a free night’s stay.  Tomorrow we stay with Tom and Ellen Lee who live here in Pierre, and offered their home and storage for our bike until Sunday. Until next week, Pam

Jump to our JULY page