Whereas yesterday's route ran parallel to the ridgelines, today I was going perpendicular across meant many small hills, which wear you down after awhile. The first ridge I came to was the same one on which the battle of the Little Big Horn was fought, just ten miles to the south. It was interesting musing about what it must have been like back in 1876, wandering along the hills and valleys. There is good cover for an ambush, with lots of small ridgelines. It is also interesting to note that Babcock and Turner rode very near this area only 20 years after the battle. Twenty years before today, the country had just finished celebrating its bicentennial, and I was just preparing to get married. Twenty years doesn't seem all that long.
The other bit of good news about this road I was going to ride on was that there is a cafe 25 miles into the day's ride, and I partook of a large plate of pasta to get me all the way to Forsyth.
This is cattle country, and where there weren't fields dedicated to growing hay, the range was grazing land. A few warnings from my hosts before I left. Don't approach anything that looks like a bull. OK. Don't get between a cow and her calf. That's the bear rule. Look out for rattlesnakes. Hmmmm...this is sounding like a treacherous route.
The way in from the cafe to Forsyth follows a rail spur which is used to ferry coal from a mine back in the hills. It was not until I actually intersected with the Yellowstone River that anything changed. Most of the days ride was in dry, dusty rangeland, low rounded sandstone hills, with a smattering of pine trees on the highest hills. Except for those trees, the only color is light brown. That is the color of the soil, the rock, the grass.
When I was registering in the bar at the Howdy Hotel, I met this burly fellow who was astounded by my trip and the history surrounding it. He introduced me to the gent he was travelling with, an 81 year old Scot with ties to Seattle. He ran a flower shop at 6th and Senaca for 25 years after the war, and he still winters in Seattle, because Minnesota in the winter is not to be believed. He had lots of stories to tell, of his mother who was a nurse in World War I, as was my grandmother. He told me of life on the road with a Big Band in the thirties, for whom he played all the brass instruments.
He now travels back and forth from Seattle to Minnesota, trading in silver dollars which he keeps in a collection in his van. There are many amazing people out here on the road.
Babcock and Turner are having something of a rough time at some of the section houses:
The next night we had another section house experience. Just east of Miles city darkness overtook us, and at the nearest section house we dismounted and fought mosquitoes while negotiating for lodging and breakfast. We found a room with a screen to the window and went to bed, but soon were made aware that mosquitoes are not the only pest. Certain suspicious crawlings over our tired frames caused us to strike a light to investigate. Pillows, sheets and all were covered with bed-bugs. We wouldn't have minded a few dozen, but there were hundreds of the voracious fellows walking up and down that bed searching for food. We considered. Turner sat on a trunk and I on a chair for a full half hour, and tried to determine what to do. To go out of doors meant death from mosquitoes; to sleep on that bed would have destroyed anyone but a miraculously protected Daniel. Ah, Eureka! off came the bed clothes and disclosed the bare woven wire springs below, and with our sweaters for pillows, nothing above us, and only that wire beneath us we passed the night. The next morning our bodies were marked by the springs in an artistic manner, such as would have made a tattooed South Sea islander extremely envious. No more section houses for us please.
I have a short day ahead of me to Miles City, and then tomorrow is my last day in Montana.
Yesterday was an 85 mile day. There was rain all around me most of the day, but it stayed off my head.
On the road and staying dry,
Dennis