July 1st - Getting close to Yellowstone.
Another couple of days with no service. It is kind of nice in a way, but somewhat disconcerting. We have ridden from Missoula to Dillon since the last post. Beautiful country. It is so different than the east coast. (I’m sitting at the table with several conversations going on and in many different directions with some drinking involved. It’s a little hard to focus.)
The pattern here in the Rockies is: Ride up a high pass, pause at the top, ride down and encounter a beautiful valley surrounded on all sides by mountains. Ride across the valley, which depending on the size of it may 1 to 3 days. Terrain in the valley is sometimes flat and sometimes rolling, but it is universally interesting and pretty. There is a fair amount of farming, a lot of cattle, some large ranches, some small dilapidated houses, and everything in between. The towns are mostly very small - 30 to 200 people, but they seem to be surviving. They at least have a convenience store, and the ones on the larger size have a small grocery. They all seem to manage a cafe and a saloon though. The people are very nice to us and are appreciative of our patronage. The area is very white, and even though there are many indian reservations abutting the areas, there is no evidence of native americans in the towns. I find this very odd, but I’ve not yet asked anyone who lives here about it.
Here’s one example from today: We stopped at a small cafe in the town of Jackson Montana. It is literally one block long. The cafe was open, but there was nobody inside. Finally a woman appeared and after a few minutes of chatting, I ordered toast and iced tea. Meanwhile, her husband had wondered in from working on something totally different, puts on a apron and goes to work. The guy I was riding with has now come in and only gets a coke. They treated us like we had spend $200 on food. We talked about their dog who has also wandered in by now, the weather, tennis, politics, hunting, and a few other things. When we paid our $3 bill they walked us to the door and said goodbye like they’d known us for years.
So the trip is going well. We’ve found a rhythm which varies by person. Roger is off early, I’m off kind of early, Mike and Johnathon like to sleep in, but we meet up in camp. Communication during the day is nonexistent without cell phone coverage, so we have a general plan, but I’m never sure who will show up in camp. Tonight we are missing one, and I’m wondering if he has decided to do his own thing. We lost another one yesterday who had joined up with us for a couple of days (he lives on his bike full time all year, so I’m not too worried about him).
Our last few days have been longer than ideal, especially given the terrain, but the fact is that there are only a few places to stay, and it is pretty harsh country for just putting up a tent somewhere.
I’ll post some pictures of the last few days. You’ll see a lot of peaks in the distance that still have snow on them, and two of the passes today were over 7,000 ft. We got rain and hail at the top of Chief Joseph pass yesterday.
We’ve seen many deer, one large herd of elk, thousands of ground squirrels, a few chipmunks, lots of birds, and lots of cow poop on the road.
Today we saw a woman on horse back moving a small heard of cattle from a field on one side of the road to a field on the other side. It was probably 12 head with 5 very young. It was pretty funny to watch, and something we don’t see on the east coast.
My next post will probably be when we are in Yellowstone!
