On my way out of Great Falls I had an awful surprise. As I began loading my limited supplies on my bike to head out of town, I couldn’t find my bear mace. We pulled into a parking lot to search. I pulled everything out of the back seat to try to find it, but to no avail. That stuff’s not cheap. As we looked an old man in a pickup truck came to see if we needed help. I told him I couldn’t find my bear spray and he began to lecture me on how I shouldn’t use bear spray and if I see a bear I should just run, preferably downhill. That was the worst advice I have ever heard. Evidently bears, you know, the mountain dwelling beasts, can’t run downhill? I nodded politely and didn’t listen to a word he said. My mom and I went back into the city to a sports store to purchase another can.
I got a later start that morning than I wanted. It felt like between getting our morning coffee, and the bear mace fiasco, we had gone back and forth past the Lewis and Clark statue we had to scour the earth to find half a dozen times! I was getting impatient to get going. The wind was fierce yet again and I had to fight it for my first ten miles. My mom and I met up for my first break in Ulm. I saw signs on the road for First People’s Buffalo Jump State Park. I convinced my mom to go on a detour and see what was up. There was a small interpretive center and a drive up to the top of the butte and cliff in question. I liked the idea of learning more about the indigenous peoples in Montana. It was a bonus that the top of the buffalo jump happened to be a prairie dog town. First, I heard the squeaking, and I was so convinced that I walked out into the field and suddenly I saw little prairie dog mounds everywhere! Shows how rough my memory is, I completely forgot about this instance, thought my last sighting was in Fort Benton until I started writing this blog post.
It seemed this detour was the right choice. I was wiped when I stopped for this break, and by I got back on the road the wind had calmed and my energy had returned. And thus, I continued down the road and into my first of many ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This range was called the Big Belt Mountains. I followed the Missouri River between them on winding roads. I was itching to see my first sign of the Rockies, and at the time I didn’t realize these were a part of them. Despite this unexpected difficulty I enjoyed every minute biking here. It was sparsely populated, mostly ranches rather than agriculture, a few houses here and there, and beautiful blessed pine trees densely populating the mountainsides. Every few miles there were boat launches and fishing areas, which meant ample spots for my mom to pull off. As I was hyper-vigilant about grizzly bears, when we got to my planned end point and started looking for campsites, there were plenty by the river, just a pull-out with one or two spots. I wasn’t comfortable being close to the river in an area used so much for fishing when there were bears to contend with, so while we probably would have been fine, I found a state park a fair distance up the road.
To start with I thought this would be a lovely place to stay. We were on Lake Holter, yet another lake made by damming the Missouri River. The mountains were gorgeous, and green and blue gray. When I got there (I am absolutely sure I’m starting to sound paranoid about bears, but that’s not entirely wrong. My dad has reminded me on a regular basis that I need to be ever vigilant, and he’s gotten in my head) I read the warnings about bear safety. I wanted to talk to the campground host, but no one was in the office. As I filled out the form though, someone drove by in a golf cart and I wound up talking to her. They hadn’t seen a bear there all season, but they were known to have black and brown bears in the area. I talked to her about the man and the bear mace and she agreed with me that he was very wrong. She gave me advice on how to aim it and when I asked if she’d had any practical experience with bears she said that yes, she had had to deploy the bear mace before.
I finished paying. My mom and I chose a spot and set up our tent. I chose an area that had trees I could use my hammock on. After dinner (which we ate at the picnic area to keep food away from our campsite) I got in the hammock and my mom read Dracula aloud until…neighbors showed up.
I don’t understand the inclination to choose a campsite directly next to the only other tent in the tent area. Tent camping is often just a field with trees in it and vaguely numbered sites. While I was in the hammock next to our tent a family with two teenage daughters and a whole lot of angst started setting up their tent within feet of where I was swinging. We put our camp chairs inside of our tent and tried to continue reading. I say tried, because our neighbors were so noisy neither of us could concentrate. We both put ear plugs in and went to bed way before it got dark. When I got up in the morning, I was livid. Not only were our neighbors obnoxiously loud and argumentative, but they left three coolers, a full bag of garbage and a full bowl of dogfood out in the open in bear country. The rules to bear safety are simple. You don’t keep food out where you’re going to camp. You put your garage in the dumpster, you don’t leave it out, you keep all your food and toiletries in a bear cannister, tied up in a tree in a bear bag, or in your car. Bears have an incredible scent of smell. If it smells remotely food-like, they will be attracted to it. All of this, and a woman had been killed by a grizzly bear within the past month very near where we were camping.
I wrote a note listing their mistakes, informing this family that they weren’t just putting themselves in danger, but us as well. I left it on their windshield, as they were still asleep, and left the campground with fury in my veins.
The Stars On the Horizon 