The next morning, I biked the last few miles to the Headwaters of the Missouri River. It didn’t hit me until I called my dad and he said I’d biked the entire length of two of the most major rivers in the country that it really hit me how much I’d done. I was radiating joy. For so long my milestones had been checking off each new state I entered. It was a success, a moment of happiness, but it did give me pause. I only had so many milestones left and one of them was quickly coming upon me. The Continental Divide. We had plans to stay in Three Forks that night to charge up our devices and take a shower at the motel in town. Prices were exorbitant, but it was a weekend and there was a music festival happening not far off. It was difficult to find any sort of lodging, camping or otherwise. I kept biking, but after a certain point I met up with my mom on a road with no shoulder to take a break. The drivers were so angry and aggressive and there was just so much traffic, that I had my mom push on down the highway. We were curving around the bases of cliffs, so there weren’t any pull offs on our side of the road. With the curves, the speed these Montana drivers were going, and the curves they were going around, added with the lack of shoulder (the line was painted on the grass in places) I gave in, and my mom and I went to Lewis and Clark Caverns to explore instead. We caught a glimpse of the enormous festival as we drove by. Seriously, there’s that kind of traffic in the middle of nowhere Montana? I’d venture to guess that thousands of people had showed up for this festival by the look of the crowd and the field covered in tents and RVs.
My mom doesn’t like caves the way I do. Any time I’m near somewhere that has a cave I want to go in it. I hope to see crystals inside, or rock formations I’ve never seen before. The last time I’d had the opportunity was in South Dakota, again with my mom. I convinced her to go on the easy tour with me, but I was disappointed I didn’t go on the long one. I believe it was Jewel Cave in the Black Hills, and it sounded like the longer tour had you squeeze through holes and cervices to see frost crystals on the walls of the cave. So in the hopes of having one of these experiences myself, I went on the longer tour and left my mom to wait up by the car. There were no crystals, but I got to slide down a slick bit of stone and climb around like the adventurer I claim to be, plus I saw bats! We headed back to our hotel, grabbed the best country fried chicken I’ve had in a very long time just outside of Three Forks, and got back on the road the next day. I tried hard not to guilt myself about how few miles I’d done. If I’d been there on that highway after the music festival was over and the traffic had dissipated, I would have biked it no question. I didn’t even skip that many miles, I just stopped in early afternoon.
My mom dropped me off at the entrance of the Lewis and Clark Caverns the next morning. The roads still didn’t have much of a shoulder, but past the festival the traffic wasn’t quite so bad. I dealt with a lot of RVs angry that I had the audacity to bike on the road. I cruised up and down, stopping at occasional historic markers and trying to describe the scenery in my head. I made up some of the mileage I’d missed the day before. Months ago my mom sent me an article about murals in Montana that a town was looking to restore. The town was called Whitehall, and I hadn’t even thought about whether or not my trail went through there until suddenly we were in the town, and I started to see the murals. My mom and I took our lunch break there and drove from mural to mural taking quick photos before I got back on my bike and headed toward Dillon. Somewhere after that, purely by chance I found a Sacagawea interpretive park. Not long after that I reached Beaverhead Rock, the first landmark Sacagawea recognized on the journey West, and the first sign that her people, the Shoshone would be nearby. This was the first of a few instances where the map advertised a state park, but there was no entrance, no place to drive in it. The GPS directed to nothingness, but as I continued up the road, there was a pull-out with signs and a viewpoint area.
I was frustrated with the smoke and took far fewer photos than I usually do. The smoke made everything cast in a blur. Any pictures I took would be a foggy mess. I did at least take photos of Beaverhead Rock before I kept on pedaling toward Dillon. I was exhausted at the end of the day. I usually met up with my mom every 10-15 miles to sit down, drink water and take a break, but I was so tired before my last stint, I told my mom I had to stand for this break, otherwise I wasn’t going to be able to keep going.
We found a place at a KOA in Dillon, and after some brief discussion we agreed that I should take the next day off, since it would be our last time near anything before, I did the Continental Divide. I complimented a neighbor’s puppy and wound up talking for a long while with him about my bike trip. He was excited about meeting me. He said his wife was always the one who met interesting people, but now he had a chance to one-up her. He even wound up donating some money to my trip! He was there with his kids to celebrate his daughter’s 21st birthday. They went to Bannock State Park, a ghost town a half an hour away, and he highly recommended it, so the next morning my mom and I went there to explore. “Arrested Decay” seems to be the goal of many state parks with crumbling structures. I told my mom this was the closest I was going to get to being an urban explorer. I’m intrigued by the concept, but the trespassing aspect has my goody-two-shoes attitude shaking in its boots. That’s much the same reason I didn’t stealth camp on the road.
We had fun exploring that morning, then headed toward Butte, mostly because I was dying for a shirt that says “Ain’t She a Butte.” There was also a brothel museum up there I was curious about. That was closed and we had no success finding that shirt. My mom didn’t particularly want to go to the mining museum and I didn’t want to force her, but she was intrigued by the painted advertisements on the sides of buildings, so I decided to make my own fun and find as many of them as possible before we headed back to Dillon.
The next morning we got our coffee, I scheduled a blog post and we hit the road towards the Continental Divide.
The Stars On the Horizon 