"I looked west over my shoulder and was greeted by deer backdropped by what could only be described as a nuclear holocaust."
Caramel Pig
Peddling the Dirt across North America
Contents
Hot and Bothered
Stage 4.2
Lewistown, Montana - Beach, North Dakota
280.68 Miles – 451.17 Kilometres
Total distance ridden 1711.20 Miles – 2753.90 Kilometres
Our host, whom I will call Billy, met us at his basement door. He was unshaven, wearing oily dungaree overalls, and quickly showed us a windowless room with a grubby couch splattered with a dirty blanket. There was no way we were going to sleep in this dank dungeon. He must have read our faces and promptly offered us his step-daughter's bed. We gladly accepted, not realising this meant that she was about to be kicked out of her room.
We had to wait a decent amount of time for her to clean and make space for us. During this time Billy started his mission to convert us to his very particular brand of Christianity. By the time we got to our room we were very relieved to see that it had a lock on the inside of the door.
Once we had settled, we wandered upstairs for tea. Billy immediately continued on a very aggressive crusade for our souls. In an effort to make him stop, I told him we were Christian Pastors. Billy changed tack and starting attacking Sharon for being a woman in leadership. He was ranting, was quite scary and was fanatically backing up his points with 'the Bible says'. We were in a relatively dangerous situation, our guards well and truly up and all of our training and protection strategies had kicked in. This guy needed to slow down, we needed to de-escalate the situation.
I started by asking him that if he was going to quote the Bible, could he please tell me the book and verse he was quoting and then I could look it up and comment. This worked a treat and almost totally stopped him from quoting the Bible. Like many Christians in the area, he had somehow confused in his head the Kingdom of God and the United States of America; at some level he seemed to think they were the same thing. With some relief to us, the subject moved on from women who shouldn't speak in church to how evil Hillary Clinton was. Somewhere during the evening we met his family, but at this stage we were much too traumatised to take anything in.
In the morning, we put our clothes through the washing machine and then we went out to find a replacement for my shaking suspended seat post and to find someone to look at my gears. There was no bike shop in town, but the Adventure Cycling map provided us with a phone number of a backyard mechanic. This guy was so nice and so kind, he fixed my gears without a problem and sold me a good second-hand seat post for $15.
In the afternoon, in order to keep away from Billy, we decided to find a peaceful cafe to upload our blog, do our mapping and other admin. I clearly hadn't learned my lesson, because for some reason I decided we should buy our coffee in a peaceful-looking cafe. The place was nice, the coffee was okay. After about 20 minutes, a bunch of chatty grey-haired women came in and sat at the next table. They started screeching loudly about how great their Christian president was. Every sentence was punctuated with a rumbustious 'praise the Lord'. They started praising the Lord for factories that President Trump had closed down, one person did mention that job losses were sad, but backed it up with another 'praise the Lord'. As the conversation moved on to 'left wing liberals sucking the system dry', my tolerance was quickly running dry and my anger levels and feelings of being trapped in this terrible town were rising. We packed up and extricated ourselves from the cafe. As I was paying, I said to the person serving me, 'I'm a Christian Pastor, I'm probably one of those left wing liberals sucking the system dry and I am totally offended by the conversation in this room'. The poor man shrugged his shoulders, threw his hands in the air in a gesture of 'what can I do?' and said sorry.
Somewhere around here, Billy texted us inviting us to float down the local river on inner tubes. It was a kind offer, but absolutely no way.
Sharon left to buy groceries and I trudged up to the local library to watch a theatre group perform. The theatre was surprising good. It was performed by presumably left wing liberals from Billings, Montana. Their whole company was travelling by bicycle and all their lighting and sound was generated by people riding stationary bicycles. The story was about people depleting the planet of its resources. I thought they were very brave to give such a performance in rural oil rich Montana.
We returned to Billy's for a BBQ tea. My personal view is that he was a kind hearted person, just very contentious and misguided. We tried to direct the conversation as much as possible away from God and politics and tried to get to know his wife and step-kids. It was a pleasant night, we retired as early as possible.
It was a very difficult and stressful supposed rest day. These horrific experiences with Billy and in the cafe were by far the most miserable points of our journey. My journal entry kind of bluntly sums up our rest day.
“We are in culture shock. I think we need to stay away from right wing Christians for a while.
Being American, the Republican Party, the Kingdom of God and the Church are just way too confused here.
We are getting frustrated with angry Christians.”
We left as early as possible in the morning and rode out upon dark bitumen, repented of judgemental attitudes and allowed the peace of God and the freedom of empty wide skies to mingle together and settle us down. It took hours for the trauma and shock to roll out of our bodies, we never looked back and subconsciously knew we would never willingly return. Oddly enough, as we rode past the cafe, the owner, pausing from sweeping his stoop, gave us a warm wave.
The start of the day was uphill, followed by a slight downhill all the way to Grass Range. Right up until I stumbled upon the Warm Showers in Lewistown, we'd planned on staying here. Grass Range was a pretty miserable place, I was happy to be passing through.
We arrived in the sweet wee town of Winnett around 1 p.m. To our joy, right beside our camp spot was a swimming pool, we jumped in with all the kids and cooled off. Whilst in the pool I met a country music singer called Hayley and she invited us to see her perform in a beauty salon. We willingly accepted this slightly odd offer. She was good and the salon had air conditioning but unfortunately no free food.
Sharon's seat post had begun to wobble. Lesson learnt, don't ride with suspended seat posts, eventually they wobble and give you saddle-sore. I spent time in a local cafe researching where to buy them. The best I could come up with was buying one from a bike shop five days down the road. This would mean a lot of angry saddle-sore for Sharon.
We set our alarm for 4:30 in the morning and settled down for an early night in the town park.
After another good sleep, I awoke to the sound of my phone buzzing. I popped my head out of the tent, looked east into beautiful clear skies, relaxed and decided this was likely to be a hot but beautiful day. As an afterthought, I looked west over my shoulder and was greeted by deer, backdropped by what could only be described as a nuclear holocaust. The sky was glowing blue with purple orange clouds falling out of it. Fork lightning was sparking its way towards us.
With some urgency, I shoved Sharon from her slumber commanding her to get up now and not do anything else but get her sleeping gear and the tent packed and on the bikes. Trying to stay calm, but panicking slightly, we decamped considerably faster than we ever had. We rushed everything into the single table shelter just as the heavens unleashed their watershed. We sat there quietly still in our pyjamas and in prayer and watched the eye of the storm split in two and proceed to travel around both sides of us. There was lightning bouncing off the ground about 600 metres both to the north and south of us, but none coming close to us.
We were somewhat miraculously protected from the worst of the storm, we got a little wet, but that was about it. Whilst sitting there waiting for the rain to clear, the volunteer fire brigade alarm went off. We watched the firefighters all rush to the station. The engine pulled out of its base with sirens blaring, only for the crew to stop a hundred metres up the road and run into the cafe to buy coffee before zooming off again.
At 6 a.m. we pushed our bikes over to the dark cafe, used the toilet and filled up our water bottles with ice and water. Like the town, the cafe had lost its electricity during the storm. The lovely cafe staff seemed slightly concerned for us and sent us off with smiles.
We rode back to the 200, turned east and headed into the heat haze. Sharon was understandably quite nervous, in the distance on both sides of us lightning was still flashing. It was late in the day to be leaving and it was going to be a hot one, so we needed to keep moving.
Our first stop was the Montana State Department of Transportation rest area in Mosby. This was perhaps the poshest roadside loo I have ever stopped at. It was 104°F outside and the air conditioning inside was working overtime. We faffed around forever, filling our water bottles with warm water. The complex's water cooling system was failing miserably. The building had an intercom system on a loop that nagged away at anyone who was prepared to listen. We definitely were not paying attention. In fact, we were even giggling at what we were trying hard not to hear. The benign woman's voice was informing us that 'there is severe heat outside and people should stay in their air conditioning, under no circumstances should people go outside or attempt to do any exercise'. The problem was, little Miss Benign didn't offer any alternatives and it was clear that we couldn't waste a few days at this isolated outpost. So we jumped on our bikes and attempted to cycle the next 32 km of over 40°C heat to Sand Springs.
Twice on the journey my lovely European chain guard knocked off my chain, which got wedged in my front cogs. It was hard to be fighting with such things in this extreme heat. I ripped off the guard and donated it to the people of Montana. This turned out to be a very good decision: without the guard, my chain stayed on for the next 5000 km.
By now we were very hot and bothered and close to losing it. Then right at that moment on the crest of a straight road, some nasty person gave Sharon an angry long honk of the horn. This was the last straw for her, she coasted into the ditch at the side of the road, jumped off the bike, letting it fall to the ground, and yelled in frustration, 'I cannot go any further, I'm giving up'. Equally as cooked and burnt-out, I also lost my cool, kicked a roadside marker and stated in a much more black and white manner than normal, 'if we stop here, we die. We need to keep moving, Sand Springs is only a few kilometres away'. Angst-ridden Sharon cried, “God have mercy”'. Within about five minutes, Billy's wife, who was driving her daughter to a swimming carnival, spotted us and pulled over to help. Knowing that they might see us on their journey, they had their van fridge filled with ice, ice water and chocolate muesli bars. Her son jumped out of the vehicle and told Sharon he had been praying for us, while his mother, looking concerned, started pumping cold water into us. Five minutes later, she pulled her Bible verse-plastered Chevrolet van back on to the road.
We were so, so grateful for her very timely display of God's mercy and could not help but be startled at how much more effective her witness was in comparison to her husband's wild ranting.
Quite soon afterwards, exhausted and rattled, we wobbled in to the one-horse town of Sand Springs. This place really was just a gas station, tiny school and church. We went straight into the shop, to be greeted by a lovely and concerned woman. We quickly consumed Gatorade and crisps. We cooked our lunch in a shady spot outside before returning indoors for a delicious and cold milkshake. The petrol station and the lovely people who ran it were very much so a welcome oasis in a very hot desert.
We pitched our tent without the fly in the afternoon shade of the church and fell asleep to the rhythmic noise of machinery repairing the roads.
4:30 a.m. and we were back at the forecourt using the toilet. I took this time to talk to the road crew, who informed me we could not actually ride the road. After some discussion, our bikes were put on the back of a pilot truck and we were crammed into a single front seat and driven a very hot 12 miles to the end of the roadworks. I enjoyed the adventure, but didn't enjoy not being on my bicycle. We arrived at our destination of Jordan at 9 a.m. This caused a minor problem. Knowing that the next day was going to be a big day, we had booked a motel and were probably about six hours early for it. We knocked on their door pleaded our case, they changed our room to one that had just been cleaned and by 9:15 a.m. we here happily ensconced in their air-conditioning. It was already 81°F outside.
Jordan was a strange wee town, dinosaur bones were found close by, the place was swarming with synthetically clad townies strolling around attached to their take out coffee cups. They were referred to by the locals as bone-diggers and were mostly unfriendly university students.
We decided to use the time and go to the town's market and stock up on supplies. In the shop, we bumped in to a couple of cycling Québécois. These two men were quite young, very thin and were debating if they could afford the cheapest bag of pasta on the shelf. We invited them up to our motel for a cup of coffee and to cool in our air-conditioning for a few minutes. I quickly grabbed a bag of coffee, some Graham crackers and Nutella. We returned to our motel, looking forward to a peaceful day reading and relaxing in a cold, dark room.
I had just finished spending an exorbitant amount of time making and bagging Nutella & Graham cracker energy-packed sandwiches when we heard a knock on the door. I was excited to welcome them and quickly gave them the bag of coffee and our energy treat. Being vegan, they gladly accepted the coffee but not the crackers. Both were lovely guys, we spent hours chatting about the road ahead. They stayed much, much longer than we would have liked, but there was no way we could have kicked them out into the heat. They left at 7 p.m. hoping to make it to Sand Springs. At their time of departure it was still 102 degrees. I do not know how they got on. A few days later, we received a message saying that the storm we experienced had started a fire that was burning uncontained over a 200 000 acre radius along Highway 200 between Lewistown and Jordan. It seemed that unbeknown to us, the fire had been slowly chasing us.
We were back on the road cycling by 5 a.m. For the first four hours, we had a grand total of four cars overtake us. In hindsight, this was probably because the road was closed behind us, but at this stage we were oblivious to the fires and thought we had just struck quiet roads.
There was a thick layer of ground mist blanketing the morning darkness and as the road undulated, we dropped and rose in and out of it. Though it caused condensation problems on our glasses, it was totally beautiful. We were also often flanked by wee herds of antelope and deer. The first few peaceful hours of this morning turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.
Before long, we stumbled upon the amazing Fort Peck intersection rest area. Here, for the first time, I met a man carrying an unconcealed weapon. He literally had a revolver shoved down his belt at the front of his trousers. He stopped to ask me the standard cycling questions, I quickly changed the conversation and demanded he tell me why he needed that gun. He told me that he drove these roads regularly for work and that it was dangerous out here. I told him that from my bicycle seat, it seemed pretty safe.
Back on the road, I had the closest thing I had had so far to an accident. A Dodge Ram towing a fifth wheeler RV that had a speed boat on a second trailer behind it, decided to overtake me on a corner, on a blind summit into an oncoming car. The Ram stayed on the road, the fifth wheeler almost managed it, but the boat was totally on the gravel and probably missed my handlebars by no more than two millimetres. If I hadn't pulled in my elbows, I would have been collected and thrown into the ditch. I was very fortunate to survive. Shortly afterwards some nasty person honked long and hard at Sharon. Part of the problem was the undulations. It was hard for speeding motorists to overtake us when they could not see over the summits. People got angry mostly because they didn't want to, or couldn't, slow down to safely go around us.
We finished our 110 km day in 102 degree heat at 2 p.m. We had been riding for nine hours. We dived into the first bar that Circle offered us, purchased root beer and burgers and waited for the day to cool.
We found a petrol station that provided showers for truckers. For a cheap fee we were both given towels and soap and were able to enjoy hot showers. Whilst Sharon was showering, I got talking to a bunch of motorcyclists. Over the years of cycle touring, we had learned that motorcyclists have our backs and always ask us caring questions, rather than demanding questions. This lovely group of road-tired women and men were no exception.
Eventually we found our way to Circle's town park. It was tinder dry and because of the wildfire light it just looked freaky. We knew a storm was coming, so pitched our tent on the concrete floor of a picnic shelter. I carried an assortment of bungee cords and tautly secured the tent to a collection of picnic tables and whatever else we could find. We lay our bikes flat on the grass, locked them to another picnic table, jumped into bed and prepared for the worse.
The storm hit us in the wee hours of the morning. It came in the form of gale force winds, torrential rain and yet more fork lightning. The wind attacked our tent with vigour. Feeling somewhat trapped, I was quite keen to be outside, but knew the only thing that was really keeping the tent on the ground was our body weight. After about a scary hour, I jumped on Messenger and asked a few people to pray. Surprisingly, our friend in Iowa replied and asked exactly where we were. Then she warned us that according to her weather app, another front was about to hit us. Shortly after, we were slammed again and this carried on all the way to sunrise.
From here it was a rather uneventful ride along the 200S into Glendive. We arrived quite early and were relatively cool. After the previous gruelling days, we didn't really want to camp. The town was large enough for us to feel a little uncomfortable pitching in a town park. To no avail we knocked on a couple of church doors and in the end apologetically messaged a couple of Warmshowers' hosts. To our surprise, both hosts offered us a bed. We chose the one that didn't already have cyclists staying.
We had a lunch of fried chicken across the road from the Albertsons supermarket. We had just received a video of our Lithuanian foster son's high school graduation, so were feeling our emotions. Our host called herself Mutt, was very welcoming and took us out for a tour and a beer. All this combined managed to insulate us a little from our homesickness.
We slept on the floor in our sleeping bags and awoke to a home-cooked breakfast. Mutt was going a long way to redeeming the efforts of our previous host.
Within a mile or two of leaving, we were supposed to be cycling on the I94. Apparently in Montana it is legal to cycle on the Interstate if there is no alternative route within 60 miles. Our problem was that half the road was under construction and the other half was two-way with no shoulders and lots of articulated lorries. We opted for slowly riding and pushing our way through the roadworks. Sharon's butt was pretty cut up from her wobbling seat post, so any time pushing was a rest for her. Seven miles later, we turned off on to a rather rough 106. We were aware our bikes had suffered quite a beating of late and knew we needed to get them in to be serviced. We jumped back on the freeway and rode into Wibaux.
Freeway riding isn't a bad thing. First, we are quite safe on the far edge of the motorway's huge shoulders and they are often flat and smooth. Americans are fantastic drivers and usually pulled out into the passing lane when overtaking us. If you leaned slightly into the overtaking semis, they sucked you in and dragged you up the road. What was hard about the freeways was the vehicle shrapnel and the noise. Oh that noise, it just got us worked up and stressed, it was horrible.
Before leaving Lithuania, I had searched this area for a place to spend a rest day. I had found a random church who had found a member in Beach who was willing to host us for two nights. She wasn't going to be home, so we were instructed to pick up her house key from her pastor in Wibaux.
We met him opposite his church in the community park. He was a nice guy and readily agreed to drive us the 78 mile round trip from Beach to Medora in order to get Sharon's seat post replaced. We also asked since he was driving to Beach and Sharon's butt was in pain, could he throw her bike on the back and give her a ride. To our shock he said no, that if we were going to cycle across the USA then we needed to ride the whole way. Poor Sharon, she had to suck in her pain and get that wobbling seat post back out on to the freeway and keep cycling. 14 km later a rather grumpy Sharon and I pulled off the road to take photos at the Montana/North Dakota border sign. Halfway through the process, Pastor Rick pulled up, took our photos and threw both our bikes on his pickup truck and drove us the last four miles into town. We dropped off Sharon and all our gear at our host's home. Rick and I carried on to the bike shop in Medora.
Lovely place, nice bike shop, kind apologetic woman behind the counter, but gosh what a cantankerous old sod of a bike mechanic. He was grumpy, very expensive and Sharon's seat post came at an astronomical cost. It was clear that they were the only bike shop for miles. Upon saying this, he did give our bikes a very good and full service.
Rick, for whom I was very grateful, took me out for ice cream while we waited and got me back to Beach in time for lunch. That evening we found an off-licence, purchased a couple of beers and celebrated leaving Montana behind us and the completion of another segment of our trip. After starting so well, Montana had been brutal on us and we were glad to be in a new state.
Lewistown, Montana - Beach, North Dakota
280.68 Miles – 451.17 Kilometres
Total distance ridden 1711.20 Miles – 2753.90 Kilometres
Our host, whom I will call Billy, met us at his basement door. He was unshaven, wearing oily dungaree overalls, and quickly showed us a windowless room with a grubby couch splattered with a dirty blanket. There was no way we were going to sleep in this dank dungeon. He must have read our faces and promptly offered us his step-daughter's bed. We gladly accepted, not realising this meant that she was about to be kicked out of her room.
We had to wait a decent amount of time for her to clean and make space for us. During this time Billy started his mission to convert us to his very particular brand of Christianity. By the time we got to our room we were very relieved to see that it had a lock on the inside of the door.
Once we had settled, we wandered upstairs for tea. Billy immediately continued on a very aggressive crusade for our souls. In an effort to make him stop, I told him we were Christian Pastors. Billy changed tack and starting attacking Sharon for being a woman in leadership. He was ranting, was quite scary and was fanatically backing up his points with 'the Bible says'. We were in a relatively dangerous situation, our guards well and truly up and all of our training and protection strategies had kicked in. This guy needed to slow down, we needed to de-escalate the situation.
I started by asking him that if he was going to quote the Bible, could he please tell me the book and verse he was quoting and then I could look it up and comment. This worked a treat and almost totally stopped him from quoting the Bible. Like many Christians in the area, he had somehow confused in his head the Kingdom of God and the United States of America; at some level he seemed to think they were the same thing. With some relief to us, the subject moved on from women who shouldn't speak in church to how evil Hillary Clinton was. Somewhere during the evening we met his family, but at this stage we were much too traumatised to take anything in.
In the morning, we put our clothes through the washing machine and then we went out to find a replacement for my shaking suspended seat post and to find someone to look at my gears. There was no bike shop in town, but the Adventure Cycling map provided us with a phone number of a backyard mechanic. This guy was so nice and so kind, he fixed my gears without a problem and sold me a good second-hand seat post for $15.
In the afternoon, in order to keep away from Billy, we decided to find a peaceful cafe to upload our blog, do our mapping and other admin. I clearly hadn't learned my lesson, because for some reason I decided we should buy our coffee in a peaceful-looking cafe. The place was nice, the coffee was okay. After about 20 minutes, a bunch of chatty grey-haired women came in and sat at the next table. They started screeching loudly about how great their Christian president was. Every sentence was punctuated with a rumbustious 'praise the Lord'. They started praising the Lord for factories that President Trump had closed down, one person did mention that job losses were sad, but backed it up with another 'praise the Lord'. As the conversation moved on to 'left wing liberals sucking the system dry', my tolerance was quickly running dry and my anger levels and feelings of being trapped in this terrible town were rising. We packed up and extricated ourselves from the cafe. As I was paying, I said to the person serving me, 'I'm a Christian Pastor, I'm probably one of those left wing liberals sucking the system dry and I am totally offended by the conversation in this room'. The poor man shrugged his shoulders, threw his hands in the air in a gesture of 'what can I do?' and said sorry.
Somewhere around here, Billy texted us inviting us to float down the local river on inner tubes. It was a kind offer, but absolutely no way.
Sharon left to buy groceries and I trudged up to the local library to watch a theatre group perform. The theatre was surprising good. It was performed by presumably left wing liberals from Billings, Montana. Their whole company was travelling by bicycle and all their lighting and sound was generated by people riding stationary bicycles. The story was about people depleting the planet of its resources. I thought they were very brave to give such a performance in rural oil rich Montana.
We returned to Billy's for a BBQ tea. My personal view is that he was a kind hearted person, just very contentious and misguided. We tried to direct the conversation as much as possible away from God and politics and tried to get to know his wife and step-kids. It was a pleasant night, we retired as early as possible.
It was a very difficult and stressful supposed rest day. These horrific experiences with Billy and in the cafe were by far the most miserable points of our journey. My journal entry kind of bluntly sums up our rest day.
“We are in culture shock. I think we need to stay away from right wing Christians for a while.
Being American, the Republican Party, the Kingdom of God and the Church are just way too confused here.
We are getting frustrated with angry Christians.”
We left as early as possible in the morning and rode out upon dark bitumen, repented of judgemental attitudes and allowed the peace of God and the freedom of empty wide skies to mingle together and settle us down. It took hours for the trauma and shock to roll out of our bodies, we never looked back and subconsciously knew we would never willingly return. Oddly enough, as we rode past the cafe, the owner, pausing from sweeping his stoop, gave us a warm wave.
The start of the day was uphill, followed by a slight downhill all the way to Grass Range. Right up until I stumbled upon the Warm Showers in Lewistown, we'd planned on staying here. Grass Range was a pretty miserable place, I was happy to be passing through.
We arrived in the sweet wee town of Winnett around 1 p.m. To our joy, right beside our camp spot was a swimming pool, we jumped in with all the kids and cooled off. Whilst in the pool I met a country music singer called Hayley and she invited us to see her perform in a beauty salon. We willingly accepted this slightly odd offer. She was good and the salon had air conditioning but unfortunately no free food.
Sharon's seat post had begun to wobble. Lesson learnt, don't ride with suspended seat posts, eventually they wobble and give you saddle-sore. I spent time in a local cafe researching where to buy them. The best I could come up with was buying one from a bike shop five days down the road. This would mean a lot of angry saddle-sore for Sharon.
We set our alarm for 4:30 in the morning and settled down for an early night in the town park.
After another good sleep, I awoke to the sound of my phone buzzing. I popped my head out of the tent, looked east into beautiful clear skies, relaxed and decided this was likely to be a hot but beautiful day. As an afterthought, I looked west over my shoulder and was greeted by deer, backdropped by what could only be described as a nuclear holocaust. The sky was glowing blue with purple orange clouds falling out of it. Fork lightning was sparking its way towards us.
With some urgency, I shoved Sharon from her slumber commanding her to get up now and not do anything else but get her sleeping gear and the tent packed and on the bikes. Trying to stay calm, but panicking slightly, we decamped considerably faster than we ever had. We rushed everything into the single table shelter just as the heavens unleashed their watershed. We sat there quietly still in our pyjamas and in prayer and watched the eye of the storm split in two and proceed to travel around both sides of us. There was lightning bouncing off the ground about 600 metres both to the north and south of us, but none coming close to us.
We were somewhat miraculously protected from the worst of the storm, we got a little wet, but that was about it. Whilst sitting there waiting for the rain to clear, the volunteer fire brigade alarm went off. We watched the firefighters all rush to the station. The engine pulled out of its base with sirens blaring, only for the crew to stop a hundred metres up the road and run into the cafe to buy coffee before zooming off again.
At 6 a.m. we pushed our bikes over to the dark cafe, used the toilet and filled up our water bottles with ice and water. Like the town, the cafe had lost its electricity during the storm. The lovely cafe staff seemed slightly concerned for us and sent us off with smiles.
We rode back to the 200, turned east and headed into the heat haze. Sharon was understandably quite nervous, in the distance on both sides of us lightning was still flashing. It was late in the day to be leaving and it was going to be a hot one, so we needed to keep moving.
Our first stop was the Montana State Department of Transportation rest area in Mosby. This was perhaps the poshest roadside loo I have ever stopped at. It was 104°F outside and the air conditioning inside was working overtime. We faffed around forever, filling our water bottles with warm water. The complex's water cooling system was failing miserably. The building had an intercom system on a loop that nagged away at anyone who was prepared to listen. We definitely were not paying attention. In fact, we were even giggling at what we were trying hard not to hear. The benign woman's voice was informing us that 'there is severe heat outside and people should stay in their air conditioning, under no circumstances should people go outside or attempt to do any exercise'. The problem was, little Miss Benign didn't offer any alternatives and it was clear that we couldn't waste a few days at this isolated outpost. So we jumped on our bikes and attempted to cycle the next 32 km of over 40°C heat to Sand Springs.
Twice on the journey my lovely European chain guard knocked off my chain, which got wedged in my front cogs. It was hard to be fighting with such things in this extreme heat. I ripped off the guard and donated it to the people of Montana. This turned out to be a very good decision: without the guard, my chain stayed on for the next 5000 km.
By now we were very hot and bothered and close to losing it. Then right at that moment on the crest of a straight road, some nasty person gave Sharon an angry long honk of the horn. This was the last straw for her, she coasted into the ditch at the side of the road, jumped off the bike, letting it fall to the ground, and yelled in frustration, 'I cannot go any further, I'm giving up'. Equally as cooked and burnt-out, I also lost my cool, kicked a roadside marker and stated in a much more black and white manner than normal, 'if we stop here, we die. We need to keep moving, Sand Springs is only a few kilometres away'. Angst-ridden Sharon cried, “God have mercy”'. Within about five minutes, Billy's wife, who was driving her daughter to a swimming carnival, spotted us and pulled over to help. Knowing that they might see us on their journey, they had their van fridge filled with ice, ice water and chocolate muesli bars. Her son jumped out of the vehicle and told Sharon he had been praying for us, while his mother, looking concerned, started pumping cold water into us. Five minutes later, she pulled her Bible verse-plastered Chevrolet van back on to the road.
We were so, so grateful for her very timely display of God's mercy and could not help but be startled at how much more effective her witness was in comparison to her husband's wild ranting.
Quite soon afterwards, exhausted and rattled, we wobbled in to the one-horse town of Sand Springs. This place really was just a gas station, tiny school and church. We went straight into the shop, to be greeted by a lovely and concerned woman. We quickly consumed Gatorade and crisps. We cooked our lunch in a shady spot outside before returning indoors for a delicious and cold milkshake. The petrol station and the lovely people who ran it were very much so a welcome oasis in a very hot desert.
We pitched our tent without the fly in the afternoon shade of the church and fell asleep to the rhythmic noise of machinery repairing the roads.
4:30 a.m. and we were back at the forecourt using the toilet. I took this time to talk to the road crew, who informed me we could not actually ride the road. After some discussion, our bikes were put on the back of a pilot truck and we were crammed into a single front seat and driven a very hot 12 miles to the end of the roadworks. I enjoyed the adventure, but didn't enjoy not being on my bicycle. We arrived at our destination of Jordan at 9 a.m. This caused a minor problem. Knowing that the next day was going to be a big day, we had booked a motel and were probably about six hours early for it. We knocked on their door pleaded our case, they changed our room to one that had just been cleaned and by 9:15 a.m. we here happily ensconced in their air-conditioning. It was already 81°F outside.
Jordan was a strange wee town, dinosaur bones were found close by, the place was swarming with synthetically clad townies strolling around attached to their take out coffee cups. They were referred to by the locals as bone-diggers and were mostly unfriendly university students.
We decided to use the time and go to the town's market and stock up on supplies. In the shop, we bumped in to a couple of cycling Québécois. These two men were quite young, very thin and were debating if they could afford the cheapest bag of pasta on the shelf. We invited them up to our motel for a cup of coffee and to cool in our air-conditioning for a few minutes. I quickly grabbed a bag of coffee, some Graham crackers and Nutella. We returned to our motel, looking forward to a peaceful day reading and relaxing in a cold, dark room.
I had just finished spending an exorbitant amount of time making and bagging Nutella & Graham cracker energy-packed sandwiches when we heard a knock on the door. I was excited to welcome them and quickly gave them the bag of coffee and our energy treat. Being vegan, they gladly accepted the coffee but not the crackers. Both were lovely guys, we spent hours chatting about the road ahead. They stayed much, much longer than we would have liked, but there was no way we could have kicked them out into the heat. They left at 7 p.m. hoping to make it to Sand Springs. At their time of departure it was still 102 degrees. I do not know how they got on. A few days later, we received a message saying that the storm we experienced had started a fire that was burning uncontained over a 200 000 acre radius along Highway 200 between Lewistown and Jordan. It seemed that unbeknown to us, the fire had been slowly chasing us.
We were back on the road cycling by 5 a.m. For the first four hours, we had a grand total of four cars overtake us. In hindsight, this was probably because the road was closed behind us, but at this stage we were oblivious to the fires and thought we had just struck quiet roads.
There was a thick layer of ground mist blanketing the morning darkness and as the road undulated, we dropped and rose in and out of it. Though it caused condensation problems on our glasses, it was totally beautiful. We were also often flanked by wee herds of antelope and deer. The first few peaceful hours of this morning turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.
Before long, we stumbled upon the amazing Fort Peck intersection rest area. Here, for the first time, I met a man carrying an unconcealed weapon. He literally had a revolver shoved down his belt at the front of his trousers. He stopped to ask me the standard cycling questions, I quickly changed the conversation and demanded he tell me why he needed that gun. He told me that he drove these roads regularly for work and that it was dangerous out here. I told him that from my bicycle seat, it seemed pretty safe.
Back on the road, I had the closest thing I had had so far to an accident. A Dodge Ram towing a fifth wheeler RV that had a speed boat on a second trailer behind it, decided to overtake me on a corner, on a blind summit into an oncoming car. The Ram stayed on the road, the fifth wheeler almost managed it, but the boat was totally on the gravel and probably missed my handlebars by no more than two millimetres. If I hadn't pulled in my elbows, I would have been collected and thrown into the ditch. I was very fortunate to survive. Shortly afterwards some nasty person honked long and hard at Sharon. Part of the problem was the undulations. It was hard for speeding motorists to overtake us when they could not see over the summits. People got angry mostly because they didn't want to, or couldn't, slow down to safely go around us.
We finished our 110 km day in 102 degree heat at 2 p.m. We had been riding for nine hours. We dived into the first bar that Circle offered us, purchased root beer and burgers and waited for the day to cool.
We found a petrol station that provided showers for truckers. For a cheap fee we were both given towels and soap and were able to enjoy hot showers. Whilst Sharon was showering, I got talking to a bunch of motorcyclists. Over the years of cycle touring, we had learned that motorcyclists have our backs and always ask us caring questions, rather than demanding questions. This lovely group of road-tired women and men were no exception.
Eventually we found our way to Circle's town park. It was tinder dry and because of the wildfire light it just looked freaky. We knew a storm was coming, so pitched our tent on the concrete floor of a picnic shelter. I carried an assortment of bungee cords and tautly secured the tent to a collection of picnic tables and whatever else we could find. We lay our bikes flat on the grass, locked them to another picnic table, jumped into bed and prepared for the worse.
The storm hit us in the wee hours of the morning. It came in the form of gale force winds, torrential rain and yet more fork lightning. The wind attacked our tent with vigour. Feeling somewhat trapped, I was quite keen to be outside, but knew the only thing that was really keeping the tent on the ground was our body weight. After about a scary hour, I jumped on Messenger and asked a few people to pray. Surprisingly, our friend in Iowa replied and asked exactly where we were. Then she warned us that according to her weather app, another front was about to hit us. Shortly after, we were slammed again and this carried on all the way to sunrise.
From here it was a rather uneventful ride along the 200S into Glendive. We arrived quite early and were relatively cool. After the previous gruelling days, we didn't really want to camp. The town was large enough for us to feel a little uncomfortable pitching in a town park. To no avail we knocked on a couple of church doors and in the end apologetically messaged a couple of Warmshowers' hosts. To our surprise, both hosts offered us a bed. We chose the one that didn't already have cyclists staying.
We had a lunch of fried chicken across the road from the Albertsons supermarket. We had just received a video of our Lithuanian foster son's high school graduation, so were feeling our emotions. Our host called herself Mutt, was very welcoming and took us out for a tour and a beer. All this combined managed to insulate us a little from our homesickness.
We slept on the floor in our sleeping bags and awoke to a home-cooked breakfast. Mutt was going a long way to redeeming the efforts of our previous host.
Within a mile or two of leaving, we were supposed to be cycling on the I94. Apparently in Montana it is legal to cycle on the Interstate if there is no alternative route within 60 miles. Our problem was that half the road was under construction and the other half was two-way with no shoulders and lots of articulated lorries. We opted for slowly riding and pushing our way through the roadworks. Sharon's butt was pretty cut up from her wobbling seat post, so any time pushing was a rest for her. Seven miles later, we turned off on to a rather rough 106. We were aware our bikes had suffered quite a beating of late and knew we needed to get them in to be serviced. We jumped back on the freeway and rode into Wibaux.
Freeway riding isn't a bad thing. First, we are quite safe on the far edge of the motorway's huge shoulders and they are often flat and smooth. Americans are fantastic drivers and usually pulled out into the passing lane when overtaking us. If you leaned slightly into the overtaking semis, they sucked you in and dragged you up the road. What was hard about the freeways was the vehicle shrapnel and the noise. Oh that noise, it just got us worked up and stressed, it was horrible.
Before leaving Lithuania, I had searched this area for a place to spend a rest day. I had found a random church who had found a member in Beach who was willing to host us for two nights. She wasn't going to be home, so we were instructed to pick up her house key from her pastor in Wibaux.
We met him opposite his church in the community park. He was a nice guy and readily agreed to drive us the 78 mile round trip from Beach to Medora in order to get Sharon's seat post replaced. We also asked since he was driving to Beach and Sharon's butt was in pain, could he throw her bike on the back and give her a ride. To our shock he said no, that if we were going to cycle across the USA then we needed to ride the whole way. Poor Sharon, she had to suck in her pain and get that wobbling seat post back out on to the freeway and keep cycling. 14 km later a rather grumpy Sharon and I pulled off the road to take photos at the Montana/North Dakota border sign. Halfway through the process, Pastor Rick pulled up, took our photos and threw both our bikes on his pickup truck and drove us the last four miles into town. We dropped off Sharon and all our gear at our host's home. Rick and I carried on to the bike shop in Medora.
Lovely place, nice bike shop, kind apologetic woman behind the counter, but gosh what a cantankerous old sod of a bike mechanic. He was grumpy, very expensive and Sharon's seat post came at an astronomical cost. It was clear that they were the only bike shop for miles. Upon saying this, he did give our bikes a very good and full service.
Rick, for whom I was very grateful, took me out for ice cream while we waited and got me back to Beach in time for lunch. That evening we found an off-licence, purchased a couple of beers and celebrated leaving Montana behind us and the completion of another segment of our trip. After starting so well, Montana had been brutal on us and we were glad to be in a new state.