Montana--80 mph, 100+ Degrees and the 47th State

 

Monday, August 16, 2021

Greetings from the land of the maskless.  I couldn’t believe it when I went down to breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express and the breakfast room was almost full of people eating.  And the only ones with masks were the guy who worked for the hotel and yours truly.  No wonder the Delta variant is causing a huge spike in the number of cases being experienced across the country.

After breakfast it was in the car to head to Miles City, Montana, almost 500 miles west of Fargo.  Google Maps said 6 hrs 27 minutes, so I figured eight hours with stops which would put me there around 3:30 p.m. (the time goes back an hour en route).  It turned out to be nine hours because I just made a few more stops than I had figured, so I arrived around 4:30. 

I had figured that I would get my “Tour de Miles City”done late afternoon.  However, when I checked the weather this morning for my destination it said that at 5 p.m. it would be 104 degrees!  So I figured with a late arrival and the heat it would make sense to do all my reorganizing and a load of wash this evening, get up early and ride at about 7:30 tomorrow and then head south to Fort Collins, Colorado.

As you can see from the attached shot of my dash board it was indeed 104 degrees outside, and notice the speed limit—80 mph!  When I got on I-94 this morning in North Dakota and it said 75 I thought that was fast!

The temperature just didn’t seem all that bad when I got here and I figured if I could get out by 5:30  my 13-mile ride would be done by 6:30 while it was still light enough.   

There is a lot of traffic along the main street where I’m staying.  In addition

to regular rush hour traffic there’s also traffic to and from the casinos mixed in with all the other businesses (not large Las Vegas type casinos.  Small, but drawing traffic nonetheless) so I wanted to get back when there was enough light to be seen.  I had figured out the course using ridewithgps.com and had both a cue sheet and the course loaded into my Garmin.  But when I went online to take a last look at the map it was suddenly showing several roads I planned to take as being gravel.  So I had to modify the route.  As a result I didn’t get out until 6 p.m.

The sun was trying to break through the haze which was, I think, primarily from the western forest fires.  From soon after leaving Fargo the sky had seemed hazy.  I headed south on the shoulder (lots of stones there) about a mile and a half where under the original route I would have turned right onto a road that would have headed up into a residential part of town, but that was indeed a gravel road. As I came back north on the shoulder of Route 59 it became clear that drivers in Montana don’t “think bicycle”.  At two side streets drivers looking my way began to roll—they seem to have looked right through me.  I wasn’t surprised which is why right from the beginning I approached side streets prepared to stop if there was a car coming out.

Back in town I headed over to the residential neighborhood that I thought I would have approached from the south had the road not turned out to be gravel.  Homes were very middle class but when I turned to go through another neighborhood they were small, not kept in very good condition.   

The former Miles City train station

Heading north again I saw the old Northern Pacific train station that had served Amtrak’s North Coast Hiawatha as late as 1979.  Just about then the wind picked up and the sky began to get dark in the west.  I debated heading right back to the hotel (I would have had to figure where I was going because the course in my Garmin and on the cue sheet headed toward the north side of down before coming back down to the hotel), but decided to continue even though the wind was getting stronger. 

At the north end of town I made a 180 degree turn as the wind blew harder—fortunately from behind me.  I breezed along, got back, and as I brought the bike into my room the loud clap of thunder told me that I had racked up my 47^th state just in time.

If you want to see the course ridden and the data click the following link: 

Tour de Miles City Info

Tomorrow will now be dedicated just to another day long drive to get me to Fort Collins, north of Denver.  If I get up early enough on Wednesday to take a ride in Fort Collins before going to the afternoon Padres-Rockies game I’ll rack up another ballpark and another state on the same day.  I’ll head to Glenwood Springs after the game, so if I don’t get to ride Wednesday morning, I’ll get Colorado as the 48^th state Thursday morning when I bike on the path along the Roaring Fork River.  The original plan to bike the trail through Glenwood Canyon was obliterated by the mudslide which blocked I-70 and damaged the bike trail about 10 days ago. Then it will be onto Salt Lake City for the Nevada, Utah and completion of my 50 state quest.