so we've made it safely to Glen's friends in Helena, at the eastern edge of the big, bad, snowy mountains. yes, we have been snowed on, and yes there is snow on the peaks of some of these bad boys, and yes snow is forecasted for this weekend, but don't worry, we still plan to get over the big humps and on to the West Coast. as far as we know the passes that we plan to use are not yet closed, and it's (probably) too early for any real big snowstorms. hopefully it will get a little warmer again allowing us to seize a window of opportunity over the next week and do lots of climbing and get on with getting to Seattle.
but first we have lots of places to stop, spending some days here in Helena and also in the Hamilton and Corvalis area, seeing folks. it's so good to be here, this place that we've been aiming for all along, that we've wanted to get to before it's too late to get over the big hills just west.
and wow, i have a lot of catching up to do on this trip diary thing! so i guess we go all the way back to Seven Sisters in Manitoba, Canada, where Glen and i were enjoying the company of cousins...
9/21, day 33: today we had our usual slow morning, even lazier for being a Saturday--chatting, eating pancakes, sending the kids outside after awhile so we could have some peace and chat, as adults like to do. Don went to a sheep sale. around noon we helped Louise and the kids put a stack of straw up into their barn loft. the straw was stacked high next to the barn, so we used muscle power and a short board to get the bales over and through the hayloft door. of course, the bales got harder and harder to heft across as the stack went down; we had to basically lift the last few over our heads to get them in. the kids had fun making forts, and we had fun doing some work and being outside. reminded me of fun days on my uncle's farm when i was younger. as we were hefting the last bales, we could see a rain shower moving our way across the open plains, so we hurried to finish then ran into the house through a downpour. stayed inside and played with the kids in the afternoon, had lovely butternut squash from the garden for dinner. went on another spontaneous and successful bear-spotlighting search. Glen and i not sure if this will be our last day here, or if we will stay for Sunday also.
9/22, day 34: woke up to strong wind from west and quite chilly. vacillated for awhile over whether to go or stay; our problem, as usual, not disagreement but simple uncertainty about how or what to decide. finally let the adverse wind and weather decide for us and stayed in Seven Sisters one more day. of course it was the right decision--had a great day starting with "church" together in the living room. in afternoon went to the site of an old dam along the Winnipeg River, upstream from Seven Sisters. saw the old town of Pinawa, a company town built to support the dam, buildings now nothing but foundation lines in a field of grass. walked along the old weirs and spillways of the dam, its basic concrete structure still standing after years of water wear and World War II demolition practice. stopped at a gravel pit that Don used to ride his motorcycle at when he was a kid; ran up and down hills of stone and sand. back home for dinner and ice cream, then a movie and (for me) the reading of Dante. I brought the Inferno along on this trip, only just now finding time to start on it (John Ciardi's translation). the plan is to find a used book store and trade it in for the Purgatorio, etc, when it is time. chatted around the kitchen table one last time after kids in bed. so good to have renewed connection with scattered family.
9/23, day 35: after packing up and re-stocking our food supplies from Don and Louise's generous pantry, we hit the road again. good to be on the bike, yet sad to go as we turned back to see our cousins standing and waving at the end of their driveway. stopped at the post office to mail some postcards and to dig out my winter gloves. today one of the first days we are riding in real cold, enough to have long sleeves on all day. we stop at a Subway in Beausejour to eat our packed sandwiches despite the "No Outside Food" sign on the door. i have to psych myself up to go back out in cold and get on bike again. all day riding spread-out plains, fields of yellow stubble with occasional clumps or rows of trees. smoke rising from burning fields. saw a sign for the "Sobering Funeral Chapel and Crematorium." not liking Canadian drivers--cars and semis not giving us the space or slowing down for us as much as we would like them to. we think people up here too used to driving at their own pace through open space, not used to seeing bicycles. as we approached Winnipeg, we're getting more and more stressed about the drivers and about the busy road we are on. flag down two bikers ahead of us. they take us on back roads and ways almost to our destination--another fortuitous meeting. for night we stay with Pam and Kevin Friesen, strangers to us but friends with Don and Louise, now our friends also. have a great time getting to know them and their four boys over dinner and after-dinner chatting and clean up.
9/24, day 36: woke up in Winnipeg to the kids getting ready for school. ate breakfast while kids flying around, then chatted more slowly with Pam when she got back from running them to school. having such a relaxing and comfortable morning that we don't get out until after 11, even though we have some shopping to do and upwards of 90 miles to our night destination. i have no real rain jacket yet and, with the weather turning cold, it's time to get one. we visit various shops looking for a jacket and some misc. bike stuff, finally have to go all the way in to downtown Winnipeg to a big outdoor store before i am satisfied. by then it's 1 pm and it looks like rain is coming and we might have some headwinds and we know we are getting a very, very late start. our destination Reinland, a town close to U.S. border where we can stay with more friends of Don and Louise. maybe 10 miles outside of Winnipeg skies started to spit. pulled off into a random barn and ate shivery lunch, donned rain gear. pushing hard across the rainy and windy prairies to try to make Reinland for the night, getting soggy and fighting winds and being blown off of road by passing semis. i starting to get crabby. around 5 we turned off onto gravel road to get away from thoughtless traffic. on edge of giving up for the day, stopped for water at a farmhouse inhabited by a lonely single farmer who invited us in for tea and company. brought out an electric heater for us to dry out things on. praise be for single farmers who have nothing better to do than watch TV because their fields are wet, and so have time to bring in damp and weary bicyclists and feed them tea and cookies and talk their ear off about farming! we refreshed, decide to keep biking even though 40 miles left to go and only two hours of daylight. not sure if the day will work out. when we got to blacktop road again, another miracle happened--a tractor came along and we were able to draft off of it, staying behind it while it blocked the wind for us. so instead of going 12 mph and working hard, we able to go 18 without much work at all! followed the tractor for 9 or 10 miles, got into town of Winkler in dusk. turned on our flashy lights and rode the last 10 miles to Reinland in the dark. our friends-of-our-cousins hosts Conrad and Val welcomed us, fed us dinner. we hung out and chatted with them and some of their friends for awhile, went to bed very tired.
9/25, day 37: woke up on Conrad and Val's dairy farm, breakfasted with Val and small son Jude, their daughter Kelly already off to half a day of school. Conrad out trying to deal with a problematic manure pit. mid-morning Conrad took us over to his uncle's farm, who showed us all the different crops they grow to sell for seed (we are learning lots about agriculture on this trip!). he also gave us a tour of an old homestead house, barn, and smithy that he and the family have preserved. Reinland a very small agricultural town settled by Russian Mennonite immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. very interesting to hear about the old way of life, learn about a Mennonite immigrant population different from the one my family comes from. lingered a bit longer at Conrad and Val's, Glen concerned about his knee that had started to hurt the day before. we decide to push on despite, so a prayer with Conrad and Val and their two kids, and goodbye to another wonderfully generous place, another set of strangers-now-new-friends (SNF's for short). back on the road, we tackle our first day of really serious headwinds. Glen's knee is hurting, so i lead mostly, schlogging into the wind but enjoying the better sight-seeing that the slower pace affords. we decide to head south to get away from Canadian drivers and make it across the border after being pulled into the guardhouse and having all our papers and such perused and our wallets looked through (and yes, the drivers became immediately more courteous and thoughtful). we are skeptical about the scenic possibilities in North Dakota (having only been through on the interstate before), but find our skepticism proved wrong when we hit the Pembina Gorge, a canyon-like gorge that we ride down into, climb out of. soon after the gorge we are getting tired and hungry, when a man in a pickup pulls up behind us and starts chatting. before we know it, he invites us back to his "homestead" for dinner and a warm bed. with a long day of fighting winds behind us and the signs of a cold night coming, we don't refuse! ride another few miles toward his place, then Kelly meets us and we follow him back long lanes to a house in a clump of trees. he cooks us pancakes and wild Russian boar sausage (he shot the boar himself), plus some of the best potatoes i've ever had. soon his wife Lou and ten-year-old daughter Kelly come home and, though Lou is skeptical of us at first (as would be expected, considering we are complete strangers!), she warms to us and we chat merrily around their table. readily apparent that we are welcome to make ourselves at home in this new place. after dinner he takes us out in car and shows us some of his favorite places around, including an overlook in the gorge that reveals the twinkling lights of Canadian towns miles away. fall asleep--warm and full and happy--in a double bed in an upstairs farmhouse room.
9/26, day 38: we wake up around 7 and eat breakfast with Kelly and Kelly, then get an early 8 o'clock start. why did this man take in complete strangers and treat us as friends? because he didn't want to leave us to sleep out in the cold, and he enjoys meeting and talking to new people, and he is a good man. it's that simple, i think, a simple generosity and openness and basic kindness that astonishes us. another day, another set of SNF's (strangers-now-new-friends); it's crazy. it's a cold morning, and i am thankful for my new warm jacket. in Langdon a reporter whom Kelly called met us and took some pictures, asked questions, promised to send Glen's mom a copy of the front-page article. later we stop in an implement shed to eat lunch, sit on boxes of motor oil and try to warm up. after an afternoon of more headwinds and the promise of another cold night, we begin looking for a barn or shed to set our tent in. after knocking at three places where no one is home, we see a very nice log house with a partially-constructed shed out back and decide to ask if we can sleep in the shed. it turns out that the owner is working on the shed as we pull in, so Glen goes back to ask and he says sure. we joke with the owner (Bob) and his friend as they work on the shed, then start to move our stuff in and begin dinner prep when it's clear we won't be in their way. As the dark comes and our new host finishes his work on the shed, he sits down to talk with us, takes us back to his garden and digs potatoes for our supper, gets us wood for a fire, brings us apples and butter and pop and tomatoes from the house. we very happy about our situation now--a shed to sleep in, good food, a fire to eat by. Bob chats with us as we eat, invites us to come up and take a shower. well, by the end of the evening we have not only showered, we are also sitting in his hot tub, drinking his beer, and sleeping on his warm basement couches! Bob is a teacher at the local high school, owns a combining business, and doesn't mind sharing his home with two cold travelers for a night. we have a great time talking with him, touring the very nice house that he and his wife did a lot of the work on, eating stewed apples and ice cream. sometimes on this trip it's hard for us to believe in the unexpected good fortune and good people that we meet, but we are learning quickly to accept friendship when it is offered and to receive when people are generous far beyond our expectations.
9/27, day 39: our host makes us sausage, eggs, and toast for breakfast, then roams the kitchen looking for food he can send with us. we are so giddy at his good will that we almost laugh out loud. he had to get to work, so we say goodbye to another SNF (they are beginning to pile up!) and get on the road before 9. better winds today, though still cold. biked through Devil's Lake area, appreciating beauty of dark, choppy water. on the downhill side of a long, sweeping climb we look back and see a house coming down the road behind us. yes, a house, a whole house that someone jacked up onto a trailer and decided to haul down the road at 35 miles an hour, everyone pulling onto the shoulder to let it pass. crazy sight. i tried to draft it as it went by, but they moving too fast. in small town of New Rockford stopped and sat inside a church to eat lunch. a lady gave us pop from the fridge. laughed hard about silly little things. as we were leaving i apologized to the Father for our rowdiness-- "there's just been so many good things happening to us," i said, "we can't contain ourselves." biked through gray fall afternoon (never thought i'd be spending a fall on a bike!) until a gravel road took us away from farmland and into rolling prairie--state land of grasses and wildlife. and hunters, bird season just opening. talking to some of them, we find out there is a campground at Coal Mine Lake, 4 or 5 miles in off the road. looking forward to a night out on our own, we head there. after a long struggle to start a fire with wet wood, we eat dinner and enjoy the sparking warmth, crawl into sleeping bags fully dressed for cold night.
9/28, day 40: hard to get out of the tent, but light on the lake and a re-started fire lured me out into a beautiful day. my first real cold-weather camping a success; i don't like being cold, but a warm fire and the novelty of being out on one's own in the "wilderness" does have its pleasures. biking back out to the road, a trucker stopped and talked to us, rambling energetically about the land we were in. actually turned down a shower from another man who we talked to whose farm was just up the road. marveled at beauty of the land as we rode, rolling hills of grasses and stubble, marshes with reeds and ducks that flew out of the water at our approach. like western PA, the beauty of North Dakota taking me by surprise. everyone we meet swears they would never leave the place, and i believe them. actually had good winds today that sped us to our destination of Pick City, planning to stay with a friend of a friend's parents (more crazy connections and good fortune). had a great riding afternoon, warm enough to be in shorts, me still leading to save Glen's knee. saw pheasants, a huge mechanical crane beside hills of mined coal. i realize we are now out where the legends were made, the wild wilderness that people like Lewis and Clark explored, the land settled by pioneers who made expansion and the myth of the open West, unlimited land and resources such a part of our American thought. a pleasure to ride into Pick City at end of day, find Steve and Mary Ellen Hoetzer's place on the shores of huge Lake Sakakawea. a wonderful welcome from them in their beautiful house that they are putting finishing touches on. with a warm place to stay, pleasant company, and bedrooms to ourselves we quickly decide to make the next day a rest day. i read late into the night, knowing i could sleep in the next morning--a wonderful pleasure.
9/29, day 41: today a slow day enjoying our hosts and their house. Mary Ellen made wonderful meals for us. i caught up on writing and Glen helped with some finish painting. enjoyed the warmth from their centerpiece wood-fired stone furnace. made cookies for the road. walked with our hosts and their dog Wolfie down to the lake and to their family cabin not far away. so good to slow down and rest, enjoy quiet company and another set of new friends.
9/30, day 42: took a slow morning, reluctant to leave such a comfortable place. rode by an old, falling-down prairie homestead in a pasture, the barn made of mud bricks. the first settlers here must have been crazier than us, braving new land and harsh winters. feels like we really have reached the West today, rolling prairies of farmland left behind, now rocky hills for cattle. hints of the mesas and buttes and plateaus that will soon be a prelude to the mountains. lunched in the shelter of a stack of hay bales. rode by nine black steers that got out of their pasture, the rancher chasing them back in with a pickup. stopped at a ranch house for water and the lady gave us two candy bars. last 22-mile stretch of day straight into headwinds, had to put head down and fight and try to let the mind drift away elsewhere. in the town of Killdeer, tented at a free town campsite, unfortunately the showers closed for the winter. a lady gave me a ride to the store. a kid working road construction invited us in to eat our dinner in the warmth of his old camper. locals warn us it will be a cold night. we are nuts.
10/1, day 43: wind the story of today. woke up around 4 am to the wind really picking up, ruffling the tent. thankful that i warm inside my sleeping bag with my long-johns, pants, two pairs of socks, poly long-sleeved shirt, T-shirt, long sleeved T-shirt, hat. actually slept well, both of us staying in tent an hour past usual, not wanting to get out and face the cold and the wind that we knew would be a headwind. finally got out and got breakfast; had to pack up making sure that nothing blew away, taking gloves off to do manually delicate things then putting gloves back on to warm hands. thought about trying to find a library to spend the day in, but options in Killdeer not looking that exciting, so we started pedaling into wind. all day trying to let the mind drift away, hoping to look up and realize we are farther than i thought. stopped in Grassy Butte at a bar to eat some lunch and warm up. bartender playing cards with two older women, baseball on, we eating slow, taking nap on our chairs, reluctant to leave. lingering not getting us anywhere but sometimes there's no sense in fighting the gallons of air coming at you. decided to cut through a national grassland on gravel roads to save some miles. dropped down into beautiful Little Missouri River Canyon. turned off into Theodore Roosevelt National Park, found our way to a campsite five miles or so inside the park. we had counted on finding water there, but water recently shut off for winter. not sure what we would do, barely enough in our bottles for the night, when a passing construction supervisor who stopped to chat saved our butts by giving us some bottled water she had in her truck. since no one around, we camped in a little pavilion outside the regular campground. enjoyed having a fire in the pavilion fireplace. saw beautiful northern lights just before bedtime. coyotes howling in the distance.
well, thanks for listening! that's enough for now, will catch myself all the way up to present in next day or two. peace.
Keep in touch - Joe (lappjoe@yahoo.com) and Glen (glapp@juno.com)!