T+63: Harvest on the Hi-line, Part 2

Mile 1810: DICKINSON, ND

We have had a number of adventures during the last week or so, but I wanted to finish telling the story of the Hi-Line, even though we left that country 5 days ago. 



Empty land on the Hi-Line

After our stop in Galada, we make our way to the town of Shelby.  On the way, we pass the Sweet Grass Mountains, three large anomalous buttes in the north, seeming unattached to the landscape.  They are on our left all morning, and we are interested to learn that they were revered as places to conduct vision quests.  In Shelby, we go into the coffee stop and the family there is quite surprised.  95% of their business is through the window.  Inside there is the owner grandma, her daughter and husband, teenage son, three little kids and a dog, occupying every available chair.  When they realize we want to sit, the dad and teenager leave and grandma scoots the kids away.  It is not long until the kids and dog are back, and I am getting them overexcited, playing tug of war with the miniature Australian shepherd.  I am always delighted when we encounter animals as I really miss Louie, Mimi, and Spike at home in Detroit.  The town has prominent anti-meth signs, but feels pretty healthy and solid.  When we park the bikes and go in the café, we have several conversations.  The same occurs when we go in the little restaurant. One fellow puts down his paper, scoots over three seats at the counter and asks us about our travels.

We camp that night in the city park in Hingham, which is a tiny town that has closed its beautiful three story brick school.  It still maintains its lush town square park on a volunteer basis, where it also offers free camping to all comers.  There is one café/bar/RV park in town.  We make our way there and meet Mike, the owner, who looks like Bob Seger’s younger brother.  He is a former 5^th grade teacher and has taken long distance bicycle tours.  He and Wes immediately get into teacher talk.  (In my experience, all teachers everywhere want to talk to other teachers about teaching.  It is sort of like a survivors’ society.)  He was often the only man in the building in the small towns where he taught.  Eventually he was promoted to management, which he hated.  He lasted a year or so, and decided he would rather own his business.  Among other things, his business caters to the traveling bicyclist.  He gives us a wooden nickel for a free drink at his establishment, with the instructions to give it a touring bicyclist heading west.  He says he does this all the time and it is amazing how many of the wooden nickels make it back to him.

We cruise into the piercingly hot city of Havre, which serves as the de-facto capital of the Hi-line.  Wes tells me a story I have never heard.  This is a rarity in our marriage.  As a high school student, he hitchhiked here from his hometown of Jackson, WY.  At the time, he thought all of Montana was mountains, and was shocked at the dry, dusty town.  There is a small mountainous range south of Havre called Bear Paw Mountains, but they are covered with scrub juniper and cedar.  Even though they are called the Little Rockies, they are a far cry from the pine-scented highlands of the west.  We decide to push on to the little town of Chinook on the Milk River. 

It is well into the 90’s as we make our way to the Chinook Motel.  I use my phone for the first time to listen to RadioLab podcasts and this helps the miles go by quicker.  I wonder why I hadn’t thought of that earlier.   About 5 miles from Chinook, a bicycle tourist crosses the highway to talk to us.  (Mostly we just wave at our fellow travelers as they go by.)  He warns us of the hard travels ahead, tells us of incredible mosquitos at Saco, and asks us about the route ahead.  We tell him he is just four days from the mountains and he almost cries.  The long miles from Bar Harbor, Maine are wearing on him, and the last 10 days of no trees, high temperatures, and limited services are wearing him out.  I regret not giving him the wooden nickel.  He could have used the encouragement and the cold beer.

At the Chinook Motel, not only was the hotel clerk exceptionally kind and competent, we meet the first installment of men’s coffee klatches that will become a regular feature of the next section.  This group says they are the unofficial Town Council, that “they give ‘m lots of counsel, that nobody ever takes.”   The same four grey-haired guys, with the farm implement baseball hats, and Wrangler jeans, are there again the next morning.  In café after café for the next few hundred miles, we see versions of this, but we do not see groups of women anywhere and wonder where they congregate.  Or if they do.

As we traveled the Hi-Line, we were really struck by how out-going and friendly the people were.  The route goes in and out of several Native American reservations.  The first one after the Blackfeet Reservation is the Fort Belknap, where we visit the tiny town of Harlem.   This is another railroad town, with the requisite grain elevator and businesses lining the tracks, but it is also on the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre reservation.  We stop to get a milkshake (an indulgence only permissible when cycling 50 miles a day.)  The shop is equally staffed by blonde Germanic or Swedish types or tall leggy or barrel chested Native Americans).  We have a long conversation with a barrel chested fellow who asks about our trip.  We end up talking about adventures in general, and he tells me of a horse trip he and group from the reservation took from Calgary to the Black Hills.  That must be at least 800 miles by horse.  They did not use wagons and they needed to change horses every 30 miles or so.  They were retracing the historic homelands via horse.   That’s a lot of horses and a lot of logistics.

The days are hot and we tarried too long at Harlem, so we attempted to stop at picnic grounds at Fort Belknap, only to eaten alive by mosquitos.  I stopped for just a few moments and looked down to see my calf covered by at least 50 mosquitos.  We decide to push on, perhaps foolishly.  We are way out in a desert-y landscape.  Gone are the wheatfields and we are crossing rough highlands until we come to the Milk River.  To make matters worse, we are cycling into a hot headwind. 

We plug along, going through our water at a fast clip.  We stop about 8 miles outside of Dodson, under one of the very few trees we have seen in miles.   We are running out of energy, so we need to re-fuel.  We eat our apple and a bit of cheese, dole out the last bit of water to ourselves, and slap the jillions of mosquitos which materialize out of the desert. 

Eight miles on a good day is hardly anything, but in a state of increasing dehydration and fighting a strong wind, it is very difficult.  We had left a message on the answering machine of our next lodging, but of course, I have no service, so there is no way to know whether we have a place or not.  Our map says that there is a store in Dodson.  We are so dehydrated and hot, we think we better get some liquid before riding out of town to the small ranch B & B where we are staying.  In the tiny town, we can find nothing.  So we turn straight into the wind and ride a few more miles.

When we knock on the door, there is a long while until it is answered.  We are almost desperate.  Finally, our hostess, Sandy appears and asks us in.  We immediately drink two full pitchers of water and full pitcher of ice tea.  We must have looked like something the cat drug in: completely sweat soaked and dusty.  This was one of those moments where a shower feels like a gift from God.

She is a garrulous former social worker, who has had a very who has had a very varied life.  The house is on land her grandparents homesteaded, but she has lived and worked in Malaysia, California, Arizona and more.  She offers to take us to the next town for dinner, but we demur.  She then offers to cook us salmon, which we again turn down.  She proceeds to make herself some for herself, but gets so caught up in her storytelling that she burns the salmon, and completely smokes up her newly and beautifully renovated kitchen.  She just laughs it off and goes on with one hair-raising story after another.  Being a social worker with a territory of over 300 square miles took her into lots of difficult driving and people situations.  She confirms that meth is rampant and has been since her first encounter with it in the 1980’s.

The next morning, after a restful sleep in the western antique filled house, she prepares us breakfast, and again gets so caught up with talking that there is very nearly another cooking disaster.  As it was, the sausage I ate (but Wes did not) was crispy hard on the outside and pink on the inside.  This is a fact which has an impact later.

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Posted from Bismarck, ND