Montana, after 17 days, 16 nights, and roughly 1000km, is a thing of the past.
The headwinds intensified to about 20mph so we took a day of zero progress in Glasgow. This coincided with Emi's birthday! We went out to what appeared to be the nicest restaurant in town to get a decent birthday dinner. Comedy ensued. They tried hard, but came up short. The two servers were running around like bumper cars. Matt ordered a burger, which came to the table on a 12" square plate, completely alone and unaccompanied, and slightly offset. The side of fries followed on a separate plate, taking up half the table. We were given the bill shortly after we started eating. Dessert was a bannoffee pie, with crust made of something similar in texture and taste to drywall compound.
Like I said, they tried. It was probably the best poor Glasgow had to offer.
Back to our tent plot we went. We were moved from a crappy RV hookup site to a narrow grass patch where other campers took their dogs to do bowel related business. I sacrificed a plastic bag to improve our situation.
By morning, the wind had died down to a mere category 3 hurricane in our faces, and we were off. We also ignored the thunderstorm warnings... which in the end were bunk anyhow.
Our destination was Wolf Point at 80km, where we would spend our last night along the "Hi-Line," the name given to the towns along US-2 and the corresponding rail line.
We had received advice from cyclists headed west; Wolf Point is a horrible place (local code for "Indian Reservation"). They said camping was sparse, low quality, and our best bet was in the city park atop the hill. We went up the hill, high above town, came to the city park and found a closed pool with padlocks on the washrooms. Not going to cut it. We called police, city clerk, sherrif's office, none of which were any help. Finally we went into the hospital hoping it would have someone local who could direct us the right way. We met Tacy, an employee of the hospital who ever so graciously offered to let us sleep in her yard.
We biked down to her house across town, where we met her husband Troy, who within no time had barbecued us some steaks and opened up their basement with two spare beds to spend the night. What was everyone saying about Wolf Point?
After a huge breakfast courtesy of our hosts, we got back on the road and made our southward turn to head towards Circle, about 85km to the south. The wind? It was at our backs. Despite the highway doing an up-a-mile/down-a-mile routine for most of the day, we made great time and found ourselves in Circle, the city of anti-meth murals.
It had an odd selection of camping choices. We settled on the questionable spider patch behind the laundromat at the edge of town. The owner seemed nonchalant about paying... Said $10 should be fine, and pay in the morning.
The "campground" was sparse to say the least. We foraged through construction waste and fashioned ourselves a table and some chairs. I also found as life-sized bull head made of plastic which has been attached to my rear rack. He has been named "Maltana," in honour of the clever hotel we saw in Malta, Montana.
The night was awful. 2:37am was the time on my phone display when the flash of light and instant boom woke us up and had us seeking cover in the laundromat. Two inches of rain and hours of lightning and thunder later, we were under slept and in possession of many very wet things.
We set off cranky the next morning, on our way up some mini mountain range thee locals have coined "The Divide," properly named "Big Sheep Mountains." 1000ft of climbing later, the skies cleared a little and we coasted our way down into Glendive for our last Montana night. We spent it in the stunning Makoshika State Park, which is filled with beautiful rock formations made of limestone remaining from the dinosaur age. Void of any sort of services, and a mile or two off our path, but entirely worth it.
We woke up in much better spirits, and set off with one thing in mind: Getting Montana behind us. The highway leading out of Glendive happens to be the I94, a controlled access freeway, which had us uneasy. Until we got on it. Huge shoulders, gentle slopes, and smooth road had us flying. 108km in a snap. Now we are in the cute albeit touristy town of Medora, well fed after our first all-you-can-eat buffet, and ready to tackle the much less daunting state of North Dakota.
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