On Monday, 6/20, we went to the local cafe next to our motel for breakfast, and pedalled out of town headed to Malta, 28 miles away. The towns in this part of Montana that are big enough to have services like motels and restaurants or grocery stores are few and often far between. For us,they're sometimes too close together and sometimes too far apart, so it's necessary to have short days and long days of biking. This was a short day - and a very good one. Great weather, nice road without much traffic, andI pretty scenery. I even felt pretty good, which hasn't always been the case the last week. We saw some wildlife today. Our approach scared two white-tailed deer who were in the grass between the road and a barbed wire fence. They bounded over the fence and ran up the hill. When they thought they had run a safe distance away, they stopped and looked at us, but then they turned and ran again until they disappeared over the top of the hill.
I've never seen so many birds in one place before. Songbirds and waterfowl alike. During the quiet timeswhen here were no cars going by we could hear a cacophony of bird songs. Meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds, klldeer, and many others. Sometimes the killdeer, and a large bird called a grackle, would fly in circles over our heads squacking their heads off trying to drive us away(from their nests, we presumed). At times I felt like I was in Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds". We arrived in Malta early - about noon, stopped at a DQ for lunch, checked in to our motel and then walked about two blocks to a great little Dinosaur Museum. Malta is on the Montana "Dinosaur Trail". Many dinosaur remains have been found around this area, including entire skeletons.
Yesterday we biked from Malta to a tiny town just off the highway called Harlem. We had a homestay here with an older widowed woman who had been dumbfounded when a friend from the town's senior center called her and asked if she would take in five bicyclists for the night. These were the Oregon cyclists that we had met in Wolf Point. One of them was familiar with Harlem and had called the senior center saying they were looking for lodging. It's about 66 miles from Malta to Chinook, and there is no lodging in between. Anyway, their schedule had changed and they wouldn't be in Harlem until the next night, so they called and asked if we could stay there the night that they had reserved. She agreed. What a trusting woman! She was quite talkative and a delightful person, so we learned a little about the area and the people in it.Besides providing us with a room for the night, she gave us dinner and breakfast, and wasn't going to take a cent for it. She agreed to take something when Bill suggested that she could donate it to the senior center or something else she would like, since she seemed to find it distasetul to accept money for her services. This day's biking was very taxing for me. I was feeling very exhausted and not well during the last fifteen miles or so of this 45 mile day.
Today we were going to go to Havre, about 42 miles, but we decided to only go here to Chinook instead so I could go to a medical clinic here and see if I could find out what was wrong with me and maybe get something to make it better. It's a good thing we did, because I started getting exhausted again after only about fifteen miles. I was getting very frustrated about this. After checking in to our motel I called the clinic and got an appointment. We had time to clean up and change clothes and walk to a cute little bakery and sandwich shop for lunch, which our homestay host last night had told us about , and also went to a very good wildlife museum which she had also told us about. The community, spearheaded by a couple who thought the old town theatre which had closed and was sitting empty, should be put to some good use, came together and created this museum which has some amazing displays of animals of the state in natural settings in dioramas. One display included an underwater exhibit, and some waterfowl flying over or floating in the "water", the surface of which was a piece of glass. Each year they have a banquet with a live and silent auction to raise money for new exhibits. Very impressive, and definiely worth a stop.
Bill went to see another museum while I went to the clinic. Turns out I have bronchitis which is aggravating my asthma, and also irritated and inflamed sinuses., so I got a corticosteroid inhaler to calm down my bronchial tubes and throat, and a nasal spray for my sinuses. Hopefully, this will cure what is ailing me so I can ride a little longer without starting to feel bad, and enjoy the ride more. Poor Bill has to grind along with me at half speed when I start to wear down.
We had a steak dinner at the motel restaurant. Just as we pigged out on pasties in Hurley, we are now pigging out on steak in Montana. It's so GOOD.
Tomorrow instead of biking we are getting a ride again from the brother of a friend of Bill's who grew up in Havre. The brother still lives there and has offered to take us to Shelby. This is about 100 miles from here and will get us past a long stretch of no facilities, a 7-mile stretch of road construction with a messy dirt and gravel detour, and give me another rest day to try and get my lungs in better shape. Obviously our bike trip has turned into an intermittent bike trip. We now have almost 1000 miles of actual biking under our belts, and legs of steel!
Will post some pictures tomorrow.
Carol
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