T+91: Welcome to Wisconsin

Mile 3133: Imlay City, MI

The wild and scenic river of St. Croix delineates the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.  It is a very different landscape than anything we have yet encountered.  In fact, it reminds me of a little finger of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  Steep hills, big trees, and unadorned water.  It is always refreshing to see water that is not completely ringed by summer homes. 

Wes and I stopped to take pictures at the scenic overlook, then zoomed down to the town of Taylor Falls.  It is a classic tourist town, and it is hopping.  The streets are full of Minneapolis day trippers here to see the St. Croix National Scenic River Park.   Wes and I consider stopping at one of the crowded coffee houses or restaurants for about 20 seconds, but the hub-bub is too much, so we push on. 

We walk our bikes over the bridge, which points out that the word “falls” in the 19^th century also meant any stretch of white water in a river.  The “falls” at St. Croix Falls are a stretch of about 50 yards of rapids in a beautiful tree lined canyon.  As people who were raised in the Rocky Mountains, we were amused at this fuss over the little change of elevation, although we do grant that the deep, tree-lined, river course is quite beautiful.  

We push our bikes partially up the steep bank and visit the decidedly much quieter town of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.  The streets are almost empty and there are no cars visiting the federally funded visitors’ center.  We wander up and down the street and are most intrigued by a small café that says, “Vegetarian and Vegan Food.”    We are so sick of bar food.   We don’t think we have seen the word “vegan” for over a 1000 miles. 

We are greeted effusively by the Indian host when we enter.  The place is not full, but the people who are there seem mostly to be young, mostly people of color.  We have not seen this crowd since we left the West Coast.    The menu is eclectic, but we are drawn to the northern India dishes.    We savor dishes made with beans and with exotica like eggplant.   We are sick beyond belief of fried stuff.   Fried stuff is the cheap and easy offering at 90 out of 100 American restaurants.   Why this is, especially here in the fertile Midwest, we cannot tell you.   In the land of corn and tomatoes, why is it impossible to get fresh corn and tomatoes at the restaurants we visit?

Afterwards, we make our way to the Wisconsin tourist information station, where I hope to get a state map.  We have already decided we are not going to take the ridiculous Adventure Cycling route, which would have us ride north to within 3 miles of the Michigan border (for several days), then turn south for several more to go the ferry at Manitowac.  Instead, we will make a dash across the center of the state, without all the ups, downs, ins and out, prescribed by the bicycle touring organization.

At the tourist information, Wes goes right in, but I get hornswoggled by an interesting trio of people.  They are all in their 70’s.  There are two women, each tightly gripping the arm of a slender, formerly red-haired, gentleman.  They ask about our trip.  After the usual responses to the usual questions, I ask about them.   He is a former pastor who had lived in Wisconsin for many years, then had a parish in Florida.  The short, grey haired woman clutching his left arm was also from Wisconsin.   The tall, willowy woman in the bob haircut is clinging to his right arm.  She is a former teacher from Florida, where she retired a few years ago.  The pastor’s wife died last year.  Now that he is alone, it seems that these two women have come to his aid.  I sensed a competition over this pastor, as each woman ever so slightly pulled at his arm as they talked about the places they have visited and planned to visit.  He looked at pleased as punch; his bright blue eyes twinkled beneath his light eyebrows.  When Wes returns with the needed maps, the talk turns to our travels.  Wes always encourages people to make plans for their cross country ride.  This is particularly amusing to our elders.  The former pastor replies, “In my younger days, I would have taken you up.  But now, I’ve got a bad back, and I just can’t get around like I used to.  I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have so many kind people around me.”   The women blush, and clutch their pastor a little more tightly.    We make our good-byes and go to get on the first of several bike trails we take in Wisconsin.
 

The nice folks at the information booth have given Wes a tourist map, and a series of small maps which highlight the very local bike trails, as well as the statewide network of bike trails.  One of the most famous trails starts here and goes north following the river and ending at Lake Superior.  We are to follow a short local route.   In a few miles, there is another route which will take us to our destination for the evening, Ashby.   The first route starts out badly: badly marked and bumpy, it is just feet away from a nice highway with a wide shoulder.  It is much steeper than the road and we cast aspersions about the trail designer.   All of a sudden the route ends.   Perhaps it goes into the state park and resumes, we wonder.   We ride into the park, talk to the attendant.  No, no bike route around here.  Sorry.

Feeling snookered, we return to the highway and travel down a series of ups and downs, with one very long, fun downhill.   We have a map leading us to a route called the 7 Lakes Trail.  It is a complicated set of instructions to get there and I am skeptical after the first snafu with the trail.  We ride up and around, through little towns, and into smaller and smaller roads.  I keep questioning Wes, “Are you sure this is not a goose-chase?”   We have already cycled more than 40 miles through the Hay Daze and St. Croix tourist enclave, the last thing I want to do is go wandering aimlessly in the Wisconsin hinterlands.

However, the instructions are good and my fears are unfounded.  We ride a 10 mile trail through truly lovely scenery.  There are in fact 7 lakes, as well as marshes, and farms, and cute little towns.  The day is getting late, however, and we are getting tired.  About 2 miles from our destination, the rain comes down.  We don rain gear and push on.  By the time we get the town of Ashby, the rain, though fierce for a few minutes, is gone.  We goggle at the fancy new bike center with WiFi at the terminus of the bike trail, and wander about town trying to find a motel.  There are only two.   We decide to take the closer, cheaper one, but I have a fit when we get there and see guys hanging outside and a big anti-meth poster just outside the office.  The proprietor can barely be pulled away from her Packers game to give Wes the registration form. 

The room is underwhelming, to say the least.  With wall paper from the 1960’s and in need of a good scrub, I am less than happy to be here.  We have to bring our bikes into the small room, not only out of fear of the rain, but also with some concern about theft.  I fuss about the cleanliness of the room, and Wes is irritated: “If you wanted to see the room before we rented it, why didn’t YOU ask to?”  The room is icky and worn, but not worth a fight.  We go next door and have good margaritas and bad Mexican food, then come back to the room and sleep surprisingly well.

The next day we are up early.  It is very foggy.  After a quick breakfast at the brand new restaurant across the street, we start following Highway F.  Wisconsin is the only state I have encountered where all county roads are named by letters instead of numbers.  There is limited visibility and this part of Wisconsin is a series of glacier-made hills and dales.  We ride up short steep hills, then right back down.  This goes on for some hours and is getting wearisome.  The agriculture in this part of the state is marginal.  We encounter much that makes us uncomfortable.  First, this must be some sort of center for puppy mills.  We identify them by the endless howling of dogs, the cyclone fences, and the multiple NO TRESPASSING signs. 

This is also the first time Wes and I have seen factory turkey farms up close.  One such: behind the sign “Welcome to Wesley and Debbie Nelson’s Farm”, we see a big warehouse, approximately 100’ by 24’.  Along the long side closest to us, there are at least 25 turkey pens.  Along the short side, there are four turkey pens with a center aisle between them.  Each of these 100 pens is about 8’x8’.  There are 8 turkeys in each pen.  Each turkey has about 1 yard square.   They are screaming and pecking and flapping, but they cannot turn around.  There must be at 1000 white turkeys in this single building.  A while later, we see another farm with 3 of these turkey torture chambers.   I don’t think that Wes will ever be able to eat commercial turkey again.

We make another corner, and I see several rows of what looks like large igloo type dog houses.  As we get closer, I see that these are not dog houses, but calf-cages.  Very young calves of just few weeks in age are chained to each of these dog houses with big industrial chains about their necks.  They can walk only a few steps.  This is a veal operation.  I look at their knobbly knees and big eyes and am repulsed at the cruelty to these baby animals.

By noon or so, we are ready for a break.  Wes is having issues with his bike (a trend that started in Minnesota and will continue all the way through Michigan).  The back derailleur quits working just as we pull into the little town where we hoped to take our break.  Unfortunately, this town is in the process of becoming a ghost town.  The pub is out of business.  Most of the houses are for sale or abandoned.  The only place that seems occupied also seems to be a puppy mill. 

We mess around with his cables and shifters.  We take his shifter apart, then have a hell of a time getting it back together.  In the end, we cannot get all the washers and spacers back in and still get the shifter to work.  We are frustrated, hungry, and a bit freaked out by our surroundings.   We didn’t think Wisconsin would be like THIS.  All our messing around with the shifter does not fix the problem, but Wes has no more patience.  He smacks the back derailleur in frustration.  Out pops the missing nut that holds the hook of his bike bag.  The derailleur now works.  We didn’t need to disassemble the shifter at all.  Mercifully, and inexplicably, the whole thing works better than before, so we stagger on.

A couple hours later, we pull into a beautifully situated farm town on a lovely river.  There is a “c-store” where we buy nuts, cheese, and other emergency supplies.  There are no restaurants, but we can get food at the tavern next door.  We do and it is wretched, though not as bad as the chicken-cheese-wild rice goo of the other day.  Back on the bike, I rail about the unconscionably bad state of American foodways.  How can we have ridden through 1000 miles of farmland and yet have been served so much adulterated and overly processed food?  Where is the respect for the food and the eater?

As the day goes on, however, the ride becomes more pleasant and more beautiful.  In one little farm town, I see a sign on a corner store announcing “home-made root beer floats”.  We pop in, have a truly delicious treat and encounter ebullient and talkative Wisconsin natives, who make us laugh and ask us about our travels.  Afterwards, we both don headphones to listen to our “stories” as the miles zoom by and the discomforts of the morning slip away.  We get to the freeway two miles from our reserved room, but have to circle all the way through the town of Bloomer then back out because cycles are not allowed to ride on the freeway in Wisconsin.  The extra six miles are a drag at the end of this nearly 70 mile day, but the town is well put together, with lots of social services.  

When we get to our motel, there is a big crew of youngish men drinking beers out on the porch.  They are very fascinated by us, and true Wisconsinites, start asking questions before we can even get the bikes parked.  They can’t believe we have ridden from Portland, Oregon.  We are surprised that they are a crew of traveling grain elevator maintenance men.  They will be out for months at a time, servicing the giant metal and ceramic containers we see every few miles.  It is a good, hard, dangerous job.   I didn’t realize such job even existed. 

These first two days in Wisconsin have been surprising in so many ways.  There is so much we don’t understand, but we sure do like the people.  We look forward to the rest of our whisk across the center of Wisconsin, but conk out immediately and sleep like logs.

 

 

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posted from St. Clair, MI

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

T+55: We Leave the Mountains

Mile 1422: Chinook, MT

After leaving the home of the Snyders’, we travel up US 2 to Columbia Falls.  It is a fairly busy, four-lane road, but it has wide shoulders and is pretty flat, so we scoot along.  About eight miles outside of town, there is an old gold Dodge truck parked in the shoulder.  We check to make no cars are coming and move into the lane to pass the truck.  As I go by, I see that there are people in the truck.   Something is obviously wrong.

I go up to the driver’s window on the truck to ask if they need help. There are two young people inside and the young woman wakes up, startled, but has the presence of mind to ask if I have a cell phone.  I go around to the passenger side.  A young, handsome, Native American male, shakes awake.  I pull out my cell phone and hand it to him.  He is unfamiliar with the workings of my Windows Phone, and cannot get the numbers in, so I end up entering the numbers.  While all this is going on, they explain that they ran out of gas at 3 a.m. the night before, and had been sleeping in the truck until they could get some help.  While he tries to get someone in Columbia Falls to come bring them some gas, I have chance to get a good look at them and make small talk.

The driver is a young woman, quite small and slender, with tousled blonde hair. She has big hazel eyes, deeply sunk into her sallow face.  When she smiles at me, she has a pretty, orthodontically correct grin, but it is marred by the tell-tale black edges of heavy meth use. She is probably 25.  He is shirtless, and his smooth chest has numerous scars and scrapes.  His smile is not yet marked by black, but his eyes are not focusing correctly.  He cajoles his correspondent to bring him some gas, “C’mon man, I’m just out here by the airport…just bring me some gas, ok?”  It is clear that the person on the other end is reluctant, but eventually agrees to bring them some gas.

Hearing that someone is coming to help them, we take our leave, and wish them well. They thank us effusively.  As we pedal, we ponder.  The truck ran out of gas in a fairly busy area.  There are gas stations and phones within easy walking distance.  It is well after 10 am, so they have been in that truck for more than 7 hours.  We speculate that they ran out of gas, then ran out of high at about the same time, and just fell asleep there.  We wonder if we are being unfair.  We don’t understand why they didn’t leave the truck to make a call, or walk to town, or do anything to change their situation.

When we get to Columbia Falls, and stop to update the blogs, we encounter more signs of rampant meth. Wes watches, in horror, while one young man who appears to be the brother of young woman, attempts to get her to eat something and then get in the truck with him.  She is cadaverous and wild; he is doing all he can to stay calm and not make a scene. 

Here we are at the gateway to Glacier Park.  There are scads of vacationers, recreation vehicles, trailers---families out for a final hurrah before school begins.   They pass by, fully self-enclosed, most likely oblivious to the street level destruction taking place around them.

The bike route takes us off busy Highway 2 to a back way to West Glacier.  As we ride along, we realize that this is very route that we had taken into Columbia Falls, years ago, when we had taken our wonderful Great Parks tour.  On that trip, we traveled from Jasper, Alberta to Yellowstone.  We went the back way through Glacier.  It was one of the most trying, but ultimately wonderful parts of trip.  We laugh and re-tell our stories of the rain and the train in the deer graveyard, having to hoist our bicycles over a giant scree pile, following the bear, and then finally passing into huge magnificent, empty mountain valleys where the only noise is the greeting call of a giant bald eagle.

This route ultimately turns away from the back country and through a hidden little housing development, then turns to gravel right at the confluence of the west and middle branches of the Flathead River.  We pause and look at the many, many people coming off their float and fishing trips right at this point.  A few more miles and we are back at the roaring traffic on Highway 2.  Our bad timing has us going to Glacier on one of the last weekends before school starts.  It is busy, so we better find a place to camp, and soon. 

Most of the campgrounds are full, but we happen to see one that says, “ RV Campground Full, Tents Only.”  It advertises something called a “Backcountry Bistro”.   It is a hard climb up to the site, but when we get there, we are very tickled.  It is run by two no-nonsense middle aged women, who from their accents and demeanor, could be Jewish matrons from Brooklyn.  They deal with a never-ending stream of vacationers, “How was your trip…oh you drove from Medicine Hat…that’s a long drive… you must be tired…well let us get you into your site.  It’s a good one.  You’ll have lots of trees.  Do you know where the restrooms are…”  Unlike so many campgrounds, there are flowers, a commons room with magazines and thoughtful seating arrangements around the children’s play area.  Attentive womanly touches. 

Although we are perched on a hill, and completely surrounded by other campers, there is privacy and it is a good camp.  Wes and I make our way to the bistro.  Wes says he is looking forward to being inside and that is one of the things he has discovered on this trip.  We laugh when we see the “bistro” is a bunch of picnic tables under a wood awning.  There is an open kitchen at the end.  The menu is pure Southern food.  We choose the catfish, grits, and greens.  They apologize profusely and tell us they couldn’t get the greens this week: would a salad do?  The food is delicious, if surprising, in very northern Montana.  Back at our campsite, I play my penny whistle and visit with the 70 year old New Yorkers who have come for the umpteenth time to backpack into the backcountry of Glacier.  I am filled with admiration at their gumption.

The next day, we are up early to begin our push over Marias Pass, which will take us over the Continental Divide and end our mountain sojourn.  Traveling in the mountains and trees, which have been doing pretty much since we left Portland, has been both beautiful and challenging.  We have been traveling very slowly and can see the time ticking away.  Once we cross this Continental Divide, we enter the miles and miles of the Great Plains.  We know the terrain will be easier, but it will probably be some of the hardest miles of the journey.  We are ready, but also nervous.

Marias Pass is the lowest pass on the divide at only 5200 feet.  We climb steadily, but fairly easily from West Glacier.  Through the park, there are minimal shoulders and it is not very pleasant.  We are following the Flathead River and seeing lots of floaters and fishers.   When we stop for lunch, we are warned to stop at the Halfway House in Essex.  If we leave there, we will be committed to make the rest of the pass without stopping as there are no services.  When we get there, it is still early afternoon.  We know we do not have the wherewithal to go another 20 miles over a pass.  There are no rooms at the motel, so they let us camp in their backyard.  We hang out in the restaurant, visit with the locals and travelers.  We are worried at how slow we have been traveling.

 

We got to Whitefish on Wednesday.  It is now Saturday: as the crow flies, we have only come about 50 miles.  This is not good.  The next morning, we are up early, have a hellacious climb out of the Flathead Valley, then a completely smooth and rideable, if long and uphill, amble to the Continental Divide.  We take the mandatory pictures and expect a big downhill to East Glacier.  No, the ride down is like the ride up.  There are no long coasts.  In fact, there are a variety of big hills. 

We make to East Glacier and decide to stay in the last Glacier Park Hotel, one of the grand edifices in the “Parkitecture” style.  We revel at the lobby with its twenty-four 40 foot Douglas Fir pillars, but are not so pleased with the high-priced, but less than average food, and the general lack of amenities and service in the expensive, old fashioned room.  We are not surprised when we read in the local paper that the concessionaire will be replaced in the next season.

When we climb out of the valley, we stop at look back at the mountains which rim the skyline from north to south.  Wes sings, once again, “So long, it’s been good to know you…”  We face the treeless east and push on.

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Posted from Saco, MT

T+41: Final Part: A Tale of Towns and Passes

Mile 920: HOPE, IDAHO:  Having had our butts kicked by the two previous passes, Wes and I prepared for the worst heading up the third pass of this trip.  Wauconda.   There was a little town, near the summit, 24 miles along, which we considered might be our terminus for the night.  The summit was another few miles beyond.  Knowing that we had found both the Northern Cross and Loup Loup plenty challenging, we packed extra food and water and prepared for another siege. 

Getting out of town was rough, but it was well before dawn and the views were incredible.  At the tip of one hill, we could see the craggy peaks of the North Cascades.  We pushed/rode through a small desert canyon about five or six miles.  Then we cleared a lip, and all of a sudden, we were on the set of The Big Valley.  In a broad mountain valley, beneath forests of Ponderosa pine, we cycled easily past historic ranches.  There was little traffic amid hay fields, and little groupings of short-horn and Hereford cattle.  Little streams tumbled out of the hills.  Wes sang the theme song to The Big Valley, as we felt a kind of elation at the unexpected beauty and ease.

The riding continued much like this.  There would be short, tough climb through a glade, where we would follow a water course from a lower bench to a higher one.  Each bench became progressively smaller and wilder.  But the country was fertile and littered with old log cabins.  It felt like we had been transported to a different time.

At about mile 22, our pre-dawn coffee and granola had long since worn off, as had our road-side figs, and we were starting to flag.  A group of five bicyclists, obviously long-distance tourers by their loads, came the other direction.  I asked how they were doing, and they answered, “Great!  We just had breakfast!”  Without missing a pedal, I asked, “How long to breakfast?”  With the answer, “less than a mile”, my adrenalin surged to the visions of pancakes or an omelette.

There is a joke among bicycle tourists about the trip being a journey from one meal to the next.  Keeping the bike going, especially carrying a load, burns up enormous calories.  We are probably eating 5000-6000 calories a day and both of us are losing weight.  It is no joke to be out on the road, miles from the next stop, and out of energy, or even worse, out of water.   We have made both mistakes.  We try to carry at least some food at all times.  We have both added water bottles, and probably need to add another.  We will just need to cope with the added weight.

Wauconda cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called a town.  It is a restaurant/gas station/store/bar and a sight for sore eyes.  The store owner was really happy to chat with us and had all sort of stories of bicyclists stopping at his self-described “one horse town”.  He said that more than 95 percent of bicyclists going up the pass stop, while about 90 percent of those going down the pass do.  Some stop and wolf down candy bars, while others stop and eat and lurk about (like we did).  There are cyclists making a hundred miles a day, which sounds like torture to us.  There are kids as young as 8 on the ride, lots of what the owner calls “grey-beards”.  What he says there isn’t…and we have noticed this as well…are mature women.   We see lots of men, both young and old, traveling alone or in pairs.  There are a few young couples.   We have seen one young woman biking alone.   We do not seen any women my age traveling by bike.

After breakfast, we fairly cruise over the last phase of the pass.  We take a nice ride down the side, stopping to read the historical markers that pepper this part of the country, which was one of first part of this state to be populated by European-Americans, who came looking for gold, but stayed for trees.  We cycle in and out of what feels like “hollers”—small valleys with a few houses.  There are no trophy houses around here.

We clear a corner, and all of a sudden cross a modern, fancy bridge, which deposits us, unexpectedly in the little mining town of Republic.  Perched on the side of the mountain, with roads that skew up and down steep hills and don’t necessarily connect.  We stop at Eich’s Mercantile, which sells milkshakes, coffee, garden supplies, violins, computer parts, shoes, and more.  It has been in business in this little town for nearly 100 years.  As we wander the streets of this town, we see it is everything that Winthrop is not.  Its 19^th century buildings house real business like title companies, plumbing stores, and mom and pop shops.  There is not a single chain anything in the town except a Bank of America, which we read in the local paper, is pulling out of Republic and selling the branch to a regional chain.  The grocery store, Anderson’s, has been in the same family for six generations.   The town was founded on gold mining in the 1860’s, and except for a four year period in the late 1990’s, there has always been at least one deep shaft gold mine near town.
The way out of town for us is the highest pass of the trip: Sherman Pass.  We are tired, and we like this authentic little town, so we decide to take our first day off of the trip.  We climb the hill to a small motel called the Klondike, and are greeted graciously by our host, a young Sikh named Behel, who was babysitting his niece and nephew and told us he was the proud father of an eight month old boy.   We wonder how Behel and his brother came from Northern India to this isolated mining town in Washington, but we don’t ask and regret it later. 

We wander the town, visit the local brewery and have a long visit with two young Canadians from Vancouver who are riding motorcycles all around the American West.  They are pleased when we tell them how much we Detroiters like living next to a “civilized country.”  They surprise us by telling us how much they appreciate the number of choices available in the US.

Back at our room, we gorge our desire for media by watching two Harry Potter movies.  The next morning we climb up to the Catholic Church perched on a retaining wall high above the main town.    The church is lovely but the average age of congregation is probably 75 years old.  The priest is a remarkably fresh-faced and handsome young man of about 40.  He is brand new to the town and the congregation.  He apologizes for not knowing anyone’s names.  When we say we are from Detroit as we leaving, he whistles and says, “I bet you have some culture shock.”  It sounds like the voice of experience.   At the coffee hour after church, Wes blatantly asks about the age of the congregation.  We find out that their priest of more than 40 years died at the age of 85 just a few months ago, and they have not had any catechism or youth groups for as long as any of them could remember.  The question hanging in the air was whether this congregation could survive.

At and around the Laundromat, we again see the now familiar type of skinny, stringy-haired, burning eyed young person.   Again, the newspaper has stories of methamphetamine arrests and problems.  It is obvious that this scourge is rampant in these northern towns of Washington.  By the end of the day, we have walked up and down the streets of the town, where most of the shops are closed on this Sunday.  We are rested and ready for the next push.  We know the push over Sherman will take all day and a ton of energy.

The next day we are on the road by 6am.  We are traveling without the map, and are pleased to find a bike trail that parallels the logging truck packed highway….until it doesn’t.  Instead of heading east, we find we are going north and have to backtrack a few miles to get back on the right road.  It doesn’t take long before we realize the Sherman’s reputation is well deserved.  Not only is it the highest pass in the state, it is unrelenting.   We ride quite a few miles, but have to push our bikes most of the last 8 miles over the top.

About ¾ way up, while we stop for a break in the shade, a small car pulls up, and out jumps a slight brown-skinned man, who asks if we need any help.  We say we don’t, and end up talking for 30 minutes with this modern Native American, who was on his way to a nearby town to get supplies for his new farm on the Columbia River. He said he had always wanted to be “an old, dumb farmer” and for years, he was only able to get the first two elements right.  He offers to ferry us to the top, which we decline.  Not only would it take at least 4 trips to get bikes, BOBs and us into his little Ford Fiesta type car, we want to do it ourselves.  He shakes his head at our folly.  When we ask how far it is to the top, he answers, “Quite a ways.”

We think we are near the top, but our adviser was right.  This was a tricky pass, with lots of detours to side canyons, and a few false tops.  Near one false summit, we stop for lunch at a Forest Service display site, where two middle aged blonde women soon come eat their lunch as well.    They see us eating out cheese without benefit of bread, and offer, with heavily accented English and some pity, the rest of their freshly baked baguette.  They are two Swiss women on holiday, driving from Minneapolis to Seattle, visiting sites like Yellowstone and Teton National Parks.  They remark on the huge difference in wealth they see in America, how some places are so poor and some places so rich.  They find it shocking, but say, ruefully, that Switzerland is becoming more like this each day, too.

The ride down Sherman was great.  We are getting to be old hands at these 15 mile downhills.  We follow a little stream down, which all of a sudden opens to a chasm of 300 feet.  We peer over the edge and give ourselves a fright.  At the bottom of the ride, we see the Columbia River, which is still mighty big, even though it is many hundreds of miles upstream.  We ride parallel to it and catch glimpses of it through the trees.  There are huge lumber mills up and down its banks.  Right when we think we will zoom down and cross this big river, we have to climb a big hill, where logging truck after logging truck passes us by. 

Wes wants to film our crossing of the river, but mostly succeeds in capturing how scary it can be to ride in close quarters with cars and trucks.  When we clear the bridge, we are super disappointed to realize that the town of Kettle Falls, which used to be on the river at site of the now buried falls, has been moved up the bench, far from the river.  We are hot and tired; we have come 49 miles.  We were looking forward to re-connecting with the river.   A youngish couple in a station wagon stops when they see up peering up at the daunting hill.  They congratulate us for making it over the pass, but shake their heads in sorrow, when we ask if there were any other way to get to Kettle Falls.

So up the hill we go, in heavy traffic, at the end of our ropes.  Near the top, another car pulls over and asks if we need help.  By this time, we are wondering what about us looks so pitiful.  He directs to a camping spot and promises to buy us a beer at a nearby tavern.  We don’t find the tavern, but do find the camping spot:  a community park just off the highway, down the street from the 24 hour Boise Cascade lumber mill, with deep, soft grass.  We make a nice meal and sleep like rocks.

T+40: A Tale of Towns and Passes, Part 2

The coffee shop closes at 5pm, so we have to go.  It is still over 100 degrees.  We decide to make a quick shot to the next town, where there is a grocery store.    We push as fast as we can.   We pass through a landscape of rickety shacks, nice houses with watered lawns, industrial fruit farms with pickers’ cabins.  There are super skinny, burning-eyed young people all over the place.  We assume that these are some of the many “tweakers” mentioned by the barrista.

I make a wrong turn off the main highway, and we find ourselves in “Tweakerville”, suddenly having to push our bikes up a rough, dirt grade, in an neighborhood of beat up little houses with beat up old trucks, and old furniture, trash, and junk in the front yards.  We see a 7- 11 across the way and make our way to it, as fast we can.  We are panting and sweating profusely. 

Inside, we drink as much as we can, eat ice cream, take cold rags to our overheating bodies.  It is close to 6pm and there is a steady stream of working and poor people of European, Latino, and Native American ancestry coming in to buy beer and pop.   The store clerk commiserates with us about the heat and tells us that these temperatures usually don’t arrive until August, but lately they have been coming earlier and earlier.  He directs to the local Safeway, just up the hill.  It is still close to 100 degrees, even though it is after 7pm.    One guy takes a look at our bikes and trailers, and says, “That doesn’t seem to be a very good choice for riding today.”  What can we do but agree?

We dawdle in the store, pick up and write overdue condolence cards, talk to my mom on the phone, and otherwise kill time.   Just after 8 pm, the temperature is still 94 degrees, but we have to go.   There is a little campground on the Okanogan River we are trying to reach that evening.   As the shadows deepen, and the hills of the Okanogan Valley turn purple, we make our way to Margie’s RV Park and Pottery Barn Just before we cut down to the river, Wes yells “STOP!”  In the purpling light, he takes a short video of the ranch against the red canyon walls.

Riverside is a tiny town of just 350 people.  Susie has told me it is a little hippie enclave and so it seems, although it originally was the last place steamships could reach coming up the Columbia.  We get to the grassy, tiny, RV park, and are greeted by Margie’s daughter-in-law, an exceptionally skinny and obtuse 50 year old, who tells us, “No need to register, just give me the 14 bucks.”  We set up the tent, take a quick shower, and eat a bit in the dark.  We left Wilson and Susie’s 18 hours and a world ago.

The next morning, we are up before dawn to beat the heat. We cycle into the little town of Tonasket, through mile after mile of industrial fruit tree farms.  There are little breaks of pines, but mostly it is sagebrush desert or it is irrigated fruit farms.   We ponder the irony that many households in Portland, which must get 5 times the rain of the Okanogan valley, actively use xeriscaping to avoid watering their gardens and yards.  In this valley, sprinklers go constantly and every house that can creates a little English countryside with flowers and grass to fend off the sagebrush desert.  We wonder what the river would look like without the industrial tree farms and heavy duty watering.

At the first site of Shannon’s Fabulous Food and Espresso, under an enormous Catalpa tree, we both curve in.  While sitting there, we are just inches from a group of older European Americans.  We listen to their conversation, while pretending not to.   There is a long conversation about going to the casino on the nearby reservation.  One fellow notes, “They told me they collect the sales tax, like everybody else, but they use it to support the tribe.”  His compatriot snorts, “Yeah, more likely, buy the chief a Cadillac.”  They confer a bit more, and decide that the men will go to the casino, while their wives will go to the Walmart.  One notes, “Seems like the wife has got the car programmed to go the Walmart, every time we get close to Okan, we just turn right into the Walmart.”  We note that two of these folks leave in Cadillac Escalades. 

It is still morning, but too late to start the crossing of the next pass to the town on Republic.   We will have to spend the day. We ask about camping, and the waitress, says, “Stay here!  You can stay in the yard, and use the bathroom in the café.”  Without the map, and my phone dead again, we agree.  This proves to be a mistake.

I undertake a series of updates and repairs, while Wes reads at the whole food coop.  (This is typical for us.  I like projects; Wes likes stories.)  While tooling around town, and checking on Wes at the coop, I see that the town in split into three camps. 

There are the young alternative types, tattooed, pierced, and braided, teaching classes on permaculture, organizing and running the food coops, setting up massage and yoga parlors.  There are the industrial farmers in conservative haircuts, cotton plaid shirts tucked into pressed jeans, driving big American trucks.  Then there is a big group of young workers.  If they are Latino, they eat at the Mexican food trucks  outside in the heat.  There are also lots of skinny young men in beat up old trucks.   At the local dive bar, I have long conversation with a young man who had gone to school at Wyoming Tech to become a diesel mechanic.  Instead, he had become a fishing and hunting guide.   He used to take doctors and dentists from back East when he first started, but now “it’s all tech guys, geologists, and financiers.”  I am somewhat surprised to see him take a pinch of chewing tobacco as we talk.  It has been years since I saw someone “take a bite of snoose.”

We attend a perfectly awful concert of under-rehearsed and off-key bluegrass music in their lovely heritage park, where at least the people watching was good.  This is still the land of little dogs, which are welcome everywhere, including restaurants.  We are tickled by a pair of Chihuahuas who come over to visit us and who are the yin and yang of dogs. One named “Pacho” is very frightened, shaky, with his tale constantly between his legs; his “brother” Rip, described by his “mom” as having  “Riptitude”—was gregarious, curious, and proud.  A man in Yellowstone told her that he “could see the timber wolf” in this little dog.

Back at café, guests linger long into the night talking.  We are uncomfortable putting up the tent while people are still eating, but finally give up and do so, feeling extremely exposed.   The road traffic is noisy all night, and they forget to leave the door open, so we don’t have access to a bathroom after all.

The next morning we are up at 4am, to start the next pass---up Wauconda Pass to the little town of Republic.

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

T+39: A Tale of Towns and Passes, Part 1

Mile 865: NEWPORT, WA:  This is our last night in Washington.  After an L-shaped journey up the west side, then across the northern reaches of the state, we have learned a lot about it, but we will be glad to explore other terrains.

First of all, we had no idea that this was such a rugged state.  The incredible pass over the Cascades was a foretaste of travel to come.   We entered the Methow (Met-how) valley, where the three small towns each had a distinct personality.  We climbed a tough pass out of that valley to enter the Okanogon valley, which was rather surreal and unnerving.  Another big pass took us to a mining town perched on the side of the mountain.   A big hard pass that took all day dropped us into east Montana and the Columbia River Valley, where lumber is king.  One more climb dropped us into the Pend Orielle valley, which is remote, beautiful, and remarkably underserved.

Tonight we are in a town that is part Washington and part Idaho.  Our first impression was terrible, but has improved as we explored further.  This has been by far our longest day on the bikes.  We have cycled 63 miles, which is a testament to our increasing fitness, but mostly to the flat landscape of the Pend Orielle valley.  

As we wandered the town, had a nice dinner at a crowded Mexican restaurant, and observed the people, we saw signs of a town in transition.   This was obviously a former logging town.  One of the town monuments is an enormous 19^th century steam engine made Allis Chalmers which fueled a lumber mills that “cut more than 1 billion feet of timber.”  It is in the process of becoming a tourist town, but not there yet.  There is obvious poverty, some signs of drug addiction, but still a functioning downtown.

This is a pattern throughout the state.  There are towns that have given over completely to the hospitality/tourism industry, towns that struggling to hold to their industries and identity, towns that seem unsure about what is next for them.  

In the first valley after crossing the Cascades, “the Northern Cross,” as it is called, we first visited a very high end district, catering to the crowd that might visit Aspen.  There was heli-skiing; catered mountain bike rides with van, guided elk hunts.  The Freestone Inn, where we stayed, was a former pioneer dude ranch where guests stayed in cabins without electricity and running water.  Now there are photos throughout the facility harkening back to that time and claiming that heritage, but neither host nor guests would welcome that kind of ruggedness.  We stop at the pricey, beautiful store in Mazama and buy 10 blueberry newtons for $5, and forgo Wes’ latte because we can’t bring ourselves to pay $5.50 for it.

It is beautiful cruise in the early morning to the town of Winthrop.   The valley is filled with the smell of new cut hay.  As we curve in and out of Ponderosa pine forests, we see a mix of older, working ranches, and great big trophy second homes.   We are looking forward to breakfast at Winthrop, but when we turn the corner into the town, our hearts immediately falls.  The whole town has been turned into a fake Disney-fied version of Western mining town.  There are false fronts, goofy names like Black Bart’s; the only businesses in town are eateries, bars, and expensive kitchery, and one good bookstore.   The guy at the sport shop where we purchases a canister of cooking gas explained, “The town was starting to die, and there was a rich lady who told the town she would pay for it to become Western so it could bring in the tourists.”     Just down the street, we find out that she was the wife of the local lumber baron.   So now this town, deep in the heart of the Pacific Northwest, looks like a Nevada mining town, and draws the tourists by the busload.   At one point we look through a rough wood façade to see a miniature golf course, complete with Astro turf and plastic western décor.

The valley continues southward, with a more emphasis on working ranches and fewer trophy houses.  The heat is starting to pump and we are on a busy highway 20, with no shoulder and plenty of trucks.   It is well over 90 degrees when we land in the little town of Twisp.   A homegrown bakery called Cinnamon Twisp attracts us, where we go in, drink coffee, and work on the last blog post.  As I blog, and Wes reads the paper (exactly what is happening right now), an older man with a white beard approaches us and asks us about our trip.  This happens quite often.  These conversations usually last a few minutes; we answer the standard questions:  Where you going?  Where you coming from?  How many miles a day you travel?    However, this man is a veteran bicycle tourist.

When we tell him we are waiting out the day before tackling Loup Loup pass in the cool of the morning, he confirms our judgment.   He asks us if we would like to set up our tent in his back yard.  His mate, sitting a few tables down from us, says, “The basement would be much cooler.”   They offer us the use of the bedroom and we accept.  We haven’t even exchanged names yet.    A few minutes later, they give us their address, we exchange names and make arrangements to see them after we take care of some errands.

After errands, and returning to the bikes, I notice that the Adventure Cycling map we have been following is missing.  Not only do the maps guide you onto the best bike routes, they also provide critical information about camping, shopping, lodging, and bike shops.   After going o Wilson Hicks and Susie Gallaghers’ house, and discovering that both are artists and quite interesting people, I retrace my steps in search of the map.  No luck.  Perhaps I left it in Winthrop.   Wilson and Susie, understanding that I am distressed about the map, offer to drive us back to Winthrop to look.  Wilson, takes us the back way, through beautiful mountain scenery and lots of stories.  He has had a varied life and truly loved the bike trip he took with his son from Seattle to Colorado.  Susie is fairly recently retired from administrative work with San Francisco’s BART system.   At the tender age of 75, Wilson now works on call taking out cooking and shower trucks for fires, disasters, and big fundraising events.  Susie paints beautiful watercolors and volunteers at the library.

We talk and talk.  They are just a bit older than us, and we have a lot in common, artistically, philosophically, and politically.  They have been the soul of hospitality and helped us with our fruitless search for the map.  We take them to dinner at a delicious Mexican restaurant.  (The Latino community is big and obvious throughout northern Washington.)  We sleep like rocks in their cool comfortable basement, and leave before dawn to tackle Loup Loup pass.

In its own way, Loup Loup is just as hard as the Cascades.  It is dry and quite steep.  There is no shade for the first five miles.  We are glad we are pushing our bikes in the pre-dawn hours because it would be terrible during the heat of the day.  We push and ride, push and ride.  There are places where it so steep, we are reduced to the “25 steps, then breathe, 25 steps, then breathe” strategy to get over the hill.   It is about 35 miles to the next town, with the summit at about 15 miles.   It is slow, hot going, and we are going through our water rapidly.  Near the top, we stop for lunch at a national forest campground, assuming we can refill our water bottles.   We are thoroughly disgusted to find out that water and garbage service have been stopped in this, and most forest service campgrounds, a victim of budget cuts.   The fees, for a parking spot with a picnic table, remain however.  In my search for the water tap, I meet a young couple from Texas, traveling with two hounds who ceaselessly “arooh” at my presence.  They tell me there is no water and they were surprised that the campground was so primitive.  They offer us two bottles of water, which prove to be essential as we continue our journey.

We finally clear the top and begin the huge descent to the town of Okanogan, known as the hottest location in the state.  We pop out of the mountains into the sage desert, and see an unimaginably strange site.  There are thousands and thousands of fruit trees, perched high on the desert walls.  Some are swathed in netting, and there is the constant swoop, swoop, swooping of irrigating systems.  Right next to huge sagebrush are cherry, peach, apricot, apple and pear trees.   Just beyond the trees, there are signs of a very recent wildfire, which swept through the sagebrush, leaving a charred and blackened landscape.  It is growing hotter and hotter as we drop from the pine forests of the 4000 foot summit to the town center at 800 feet. 

There temperature is over 100 degrees during a hot ride through the nearly abandoned downtown.  We practically run into the air conditioned coffee shop.  It is too hot to cycle.  We have to wait.  As per usual, we read the local paper and are surprised to see story after story about methamphetamine arrests, deaths, and car-wrecks.  Wes engages the young woman working behind the counter, who tells us that most of her friends use meth and that she left the town for a while because she couldn’t stand what is was doing to them.  The coffee shop, however, is lovely and cool, and obviously, a well-loved community center.  We are there for hours.  We have a long conversation with a couple about our age, who own one of the last functioning retail businesses in town.  They were both former (short-lived) teachers who had been happily running a clothing and sporting goods business in this little town until two great calamities: the crash of 2008 and the opening of the Walmart (Sprawlmart in our parlance) in the next town.  Now they are watching their receipts go down every month.  They wonder how much longer they can hold on if the downtown continues to deteriorate.  

TO BE CONTINUED....