You Have To Put A Lot Of Ground Behind You To Be Anywhere - Eastern Montana

When you've ridden as far as we had, and crossed as much terrain, you start to feel kind of invincible. After all the rain, wind, heat, mountains, and dilapidated roadways, it's like there's nothing else the world could throw at you. Heck, we made it out of North Dakota - anything afterwards should be smooth sailing.

Yeah, well...remember we mentioned running into a guy in Minnesota who let us take his Montanna highway map? He was close to finishing his Portland - Minneapolis journey, and was clearly exhausted. And he had said, when we asked about our oncoming ND terrian, that the real trouble was going to be East Montana. Foolishly, we brushed that off and figured it'd be an exciting world of cowboys and wilderness. And it didn't take long for us to realize after crossing the state line how very wrong we were.

(We didn't see any dinosaurs, unfortunately)

You hear that Montana is "Big Sky Country" - meaning that there's a lot of open space. But you don't really grasp the significance of that until you feel the immense weight of that vast nothingness bearing down on you as you pedal through an emptyness you have to see to believe. Montana is so huge, so open, so dry...and demographics-wise, nobody lives there.

Decisions, Decisions

After North Dakota (and honestly, Minnesota factored into this, too), Erin and I decided to start altering our route. We had gotten a little fed up with the Northern Tier, and decided that once we got into Western Montana, we'd hop onto the Lewis and Clark bike route and finish our trip along the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. And since we had that handy highway map (and there's basically only 3 roads to cross Montana with anyways), we figured why not just jump routes now?

So we made the shift after hitting Wibaux, striking out along MT 200 west. Now, maybe it wouldn't have made a difference whether we switched or not, but we quickly found ourselves adrift. We'd see highway signs for cities 60, 90, 165 miles away, the only promises of civilization we had to look forward to. But then - nothingness, towns just barely hanging on before turning to ghosts.

(Seriously, this is what all the photos look like...)

When you pass a town who's highway sign reads "Go Ahead and Blink, We're Still Here", how do you even process that? Especially when being "still here" means there's like 10 people living in the town.

Life In The Void

Here was another stretch of days where battery life became a precious commodity. As such, pictures are sparse. And the thing is, nothing could really do justice to this alien world. There's little I can think of that feels more ominous and foreboding than pedaling across a wide open plain, seeing three different large rainstorms off in the distance, with no notion of where they are going to end up or how far away they actually are. When you're on a giant metal machine with nothing else around, lightning becomes the scariest thing you can see out on the horizon.

(Guys, look at these numbers. Remember, this state is huuuuuge)

Of particular note, by the way, is the increase of roadkill instances we encountered. Snakes (a lot of snakes), coyotes, and magpies replaced the raccoons and porcupines we had become accustomed to seeing. This was a different place, for certain. Along the sides of the road we'd see lots of strange looking deer, and every once and a while the odd live coyote would lope across the asphalt and sneak under a barbed-wire fence. Since there was still plenty of truck traffic, especially in the evenings, our guess is that the combination of low light conditions and creatures not afraid of being on the highway lead to some unfortunate collisions.

Morale started dragging something fierce around this time, too. The isolation, the weather conditions, and the monotony combined to make life in the void a real struggle. But we pressed on, in part because we knew the "best" part of the trip was oh so close. A huge reason for selecting the Northern Tier was so that we could visit Glacier National Park (which we planned to still ride to on a slight detour off our new course), and our adapted route would have us ride through the Bitterroot Mountains afterwards - some really gorgeous stuff after crawling across the Midwest. So with those promises firmly rooted in our minds, we endured.

(Oh, yeah. Not all parts of every road were paved here.)

Next post - even more changes, surprises, heartbreak, and accomplishments. Montana...was a tumultuous state.