EnRouteTransport

Bill wrote one day, reclaiming some past research he’d done on Wyoming in preparation to write “Getting High on Wyoming: A Pilot’s Guide to the History and Geology of Wyoming.” He says the book never made it to press, but it really ought to have with a title like that. Anyway, he gave me days of features and finds to run after.

Outside of Dubois, I saw Pronghorn Antelope for the first time on the trip.
“Dorothy, you’re in Wyoming now, as if you couldn’t tell from the wind and sagebrush. Tornado dropped you in the dry, high plains.” No wonder one can find cowboy poets here.

“….start looking for huge red sandstone cliffs…the formation extends from Arizona up through Wyoming…150 million years old…was deposited as sand dunes during one of the cycles where the inland sea receded”
“Check.”

“…..Chief Washakie is buried at Fort Washakie…he is one of the few Native American leaders with whom the US government honored a treaty.. .I went looking for his grave and was being watched through binoculars by tribal police……spooky…some claim Sakajewa….is buried there too…contested by historians…”
I saw the sign “Sacajawea’s Grave Site” and turned, following the arrow, knowing that I might be following an arrow to nowhere. Since there wasn’t another sign, I decided to loop back to the highway on the bike path. Ft. Washakie has a population of 300, and I could hardly believe they had a designated bike path. I like to use the facilities when they are there.

Perhaps for some of us, we need the sign that says, “Sacajawea was buried here.” For others of us, it might be enough to know that she rests with her people, the Shoshone, no matter where her physical remains may be. American Indians didn’t believe people could own land they way people of European descent did. What you figure we understand “grave” or “burial” differently too?
The bike path had an almost comical feel to it, but still nice that it was there, even the part where a bunch of soil and large rocks scattered across the whole width of it behind a building. I pulled in to the convenience store. There were a couple of bikes on the bike rack, kids bikes. Three kids hung out at a picnic table in the shade of a tree. As soon as I pulled up, a young guy in a white truck asked, “Where you coming from?”
“Today or generally?” People always ask me this question coupled with the “Where are you going?” I never know what they want to know. They mostly want to know both, but when they’re just asking for the day, saying Eugene, Oregon, is a bit far-fetched (I’m far away enough from Oregon now that I need to add Oregon when I say Eugene).
He shrugged.
“I rode in from Dubois, but I left from Eugene, Oregon.”
“You rode the whole way on that?!”
“Yeah.”
“Wow! I see lots of people coming through here on bikes.”
“You’re on a major cross-country bicycle route.”
“We’re doing the Sun Dance. You should come and check it out.”
“It would be ok for me to go?”
“Yeah, but not when they’re dancing. No bikes are allowed during the dance.”
“That’s because it’s ceremonial.”
“It’s sacred. The kids bring bikes and stuff…during the dance, there are no cameras, no cell phones, no bikes. If you want to come, go down to the four-way. You can ride the bike path all the way out there.”
“I might.”
“I’m Sam,” he extended his hand out the window.
“Heidi.” We shook.
On a chair in the back of the pick up bed sat a young girl about 10. She had a puppy under the chair with her.
To Sam I said, “You have a cute puppy back there.”
“Yeah,” he sort of scoffed, “you want it?”
‘Puppy soup’ came to mind. I’d been thinking about it further up the road. When I entered the Reservation I flashed back to a writer’s retreat I went to years ago up the coast of northern Oregon. One of the “writers” at the retreat read her piece titled “Puppy Soup” a humorous twist on something that generally strikes many people as appalling. I liked her because of it. At the time, I wanted to write about desire in a way that entangled other people. Even though I didn’t get anywhere with that particular writing, the process took me somewhere. I remember sitting down with Ms. Puppy Soup during my one-on-one editing time and asked her something to the effect of: “How do you write?” or “How do you revise?” Probably the latter since I had over 200 pages of hot water story.
Later, I finally grasped that the kind of revision help I needed came from starting with A Story, not from trying to make a story out of hundreds of pages of loosely related hot water episodes.
The driver of the white truck returned, and away went Sam, the girl in back, and the puppy.
I watched other people drive up. One guy drove up in his big brown truck, parked, left the engine running, and went inside.
“Lots of people in rural communities talk about safety and not locking doors or taking keys out of the ignition, but this is the first I’ve seen people leave the vehicle on while they’re inside.”
No one looked at me weird when I said that. But maybe that’s because they’d already been looking at me weird, my biking clothes I assumed.

I decided to follow Sam’s directions to the Sun Dance.
At the four-way, a path paralleled the road on the north side. I took it. To my pleasant surprise, the path went past the school and cultural center. I immediately started thinking about Safe Routes to School and this anomalous town of 300 with its extensive miles of bike path, all to serve the children, I assume.

I rode out two or three miles expecting I might see something…at least the end of the path. I saw nothing that led me to expect taking the path “all the way out there” would be less than 10 miles. I didn’t want to fight the wind on the way back any more than I needed to, and I wanted to make it to Lander during business hours, so I turned back. I made a brief stop at the Ft. Washakie bank drive through and watched the sagebrush give way to slough as I pedaled downhill.

We rode Craig Pass.
The map profile indicated elevation gain and loss not too severe. After some of the hills I’ve climbed, seemed like it’d be a pretty enjoyable ride. Pretty much right away I fell behind on the climbs, but I always made up for it on the down hills. Then came the first cross on the Divide. We took pictures for each other. Those portraits don’t usually capture any of the context. Could be a sign out in the field for as much as anyone knew. And they don’t quite capture the staging of the shot. While JC waited for me to arrive, he’d parked his bike right on the sign (it’s two-sided) and was slathering sunscreen all over his arms. A family wanted a picture, so he ducked behind the sign “out of view” for their portrait of the other side. When I went for the obligatory put my bike in front of the sign shot, the front end went “TIP,” which it does because it’s friggin heavy with all that weight there. I like the mishap captured better than the one that “says it all.”

At the second pass of the Divide, we snapped pics without the bikes. The elevation change was pretty minimal, the distance between not so great. The third pass, we didn’t even take pictures.
“Can it really be a pass when you go downhill to get there?” Of course, we did have to climb a bit before we went downhill. Still.
We examined the route profile, not really sure where either of us were going for the day.
“There’s a little bump out there. We could catch some air on it!”
“Totally.”
Well, we we did reach that little bump…I just took it slow. No air for me.
When I caught up to JC, he’d parked his bike against a dumpster at one of the pull outs and was munching on a Larabar-esque snack a friend of his made for him.
“You want one?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
I sat next to him and followed suit and lay down on the pavement. Danger. You might not get up. I was feeling pretty saddle sore and ready to stop for the day.
I chuckled, recalling the day’s earlier caution that we were wildlife on the roadway, “We did see wildlife!”
We got up and headed back down the John D Rockefeller Parkway.
JC seemed like a smarty pants about the area. “Why do they call it the Rockefeller Parkway? Did he pay to build the road or something?”
“He owned a lot of the land out here and donated it. I guess one of the conditions of the gift was name recognition. It’s so pretty out here.”
“Doesn’t look like Wyoming to me. It’s green.”

Not more than a half mile past where we stopped at the dumpster, we came to Colter Bay.
“Camp.”
We turned in.
Hiker-biker camp, $14.
We made our way to J, passed Mike at A and sundry other hiker-biker campers.
We set up camp.
“You take the bigger spot since you have a tent.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I just have a bivy bag.”

I emerged from my shelter dressed in double layers to fend off the mosquitoes.
“Let’s make dinner, find something at the store. I have some rice.”
“Ok. Walk will be good.”
After a long time at the store, we settled on some workable solution for the rice. I borrowed a can opener from our camping neighbors, and we were good: rice with vegetable medley, sausage, tomatoes, onions. The right combo of everything, and he adeptly sequenced all the cooking over a Pocket Rocket and one small titanium pot.

The next morning I emerged swollen from my shelter. Mosquitoes had bitten my eyebrows in the night, and I think probably one got me on the eyelid during the night. My right eye was half swollen shut. Wow.
“Why do I feel like yesterday was a long day?”
I checked the map, trying to add the miles. “88 miles. Oh, it was a long day.”

Mike stopped by camp, all ready to go.
“I’m gonna take the pass slow, stop a lot, take pictures.”
“Cool, see you down the road.”

JC & I packed up and headed out. His route split off six miles from Colter Bay. He told me his “ghost dog” ghost story on the way. He offered to tell it after we had dinner, but I couldn’t handle another ghost story before bed. We stopped at a view point to get a pic of the Tetons. We hadn’t gotten any pics at Colter Bay. I was too tired and spaced out to do anything other than try to keep the mosquitoes away and put some calories back in my body.

Less than a quarter mile down the road, Teton Park Road split from 287.
“See you down the dusty road.”
Away we went: he to Jackson, me to Togwotee Pass.

Not a mile down the road, I caught up to Mike.
He and I rode together for a little while.
“Look, it’s a bald eagle!” and it stayed in its nest. He stopped for some pics, and I went on.
“Elk!” I took a picture in motion. Not sure what I wanted to capture.
At Togwotee Lodge, Mike rolled up again. We rode the next segments together.
“Here, I stopped at the Ranger Station to get some information on camping in Wyoming. I got a map for you.”
“Thanks!”
“Did you hear about the road?”
“No.”
“It’s under construction. There are some segments of gravel, and we may have to get a ride in the pilot car.”
I’d been wondering what the circumstances would be that would see me accepting a ride.
We got to the first traffic stop. We put our bikes in the back. Mike sat back with them, and I rode in front.
When we got riding again we joked, “That was a downhill section. Do you figure they’re going to drop us at the bottom of a wall and make us ride up that?”
“Most certainly.”

We came to the gravel, passed two cyclists going the other direction.
Then the second pilot car ride. There wasn’t room up front for me.
Mike must have been calculating, “How many miles is this segment?”
“Oh, about two.”
We stacked up in the back of the truck. “Look,” he said, “more downhill and the flats.”
We rode again over some really rough road. The other side still had pavement on, so we rode there climbing the last bit of elevation to the summit. The summit kept faking us out. Every time we thought we were at the top, the road would curve, and there would be another segment to climb after that. When we reached the top, there wasn’t any sign, probably because of the road construction that appeared to maul the mountainside. We didn’t stop, didn’t take a picture.
Then we came to a third pilot car, got a ride downhill.
When we got out, we checked in with each other about where we were headed.
“You’re stopping in Dubois.”
“Yeah. And you?”
“I think I might try to get further than that.”
“Ok, see you out there.”

The intense tailwind made the 15 miles into Dubois the quickest in my book (so it seemed). When I got to town, I wasn’t sure I was in town, but I didn’t want to go further down the road only to find out I had to fight the wind on the way back.
“There’s more town around the bend?” I asked the waitress.
“Yeah.” She was super talkative.

In Dubois, I rode around trying to find a good place to stop.
I ended up in a motel for more money than I wanted to spend, but they did have a “Biker’s Welcome” message on their sign along with the wifi lure. It was also across the street from the Laundromat. I bit hard.
“Did you see our sign?”
“I did. I wondered if it meant motorcyclists or bicyclists, but it probably doesn’t matter.”
“Nope, doesn’t matter, we love people who come in on two wheels. The best guests, nicest people. We had the Hell’s Angels stay with us one time, and they were great!”

I let my stuff explode all over the room, took a shower, and went to the Laundromat.
This is the Wyoming I remember: hot, dry, windy, sagebrush. I got a blow dry, wondered how my hair would look….

Crossing a state border in a national park comes with notable understatement. Probably because a bigger sign would require a pullout and toilet facility. We – visitors – love to take pictures of signs. They interpret our environment in some way and, in our pictures, “prove” that we’ve been there. But, as JC pointed out when I first met him, “In national parks, the road becomes the destination. People don’t even need to get out of their cars. And somehow following along the driving tour route means that you’ve been to a place when probably you’ve hardly done anything different than watch where you’ve been on TV. Most people don’t interact with the environment, even if they get out of the car, watch Old Faithful go off, and buy an ice cream.”

The notion of road as destination intrigues me, but this was the first I heard someone critique roadways as destinations, and I wasn’t quite sure how someone out on a bicycle tour could disapprove of journeys along roadways as destinations.

I know this about national parks, the driving component. It’s like going to a museum, but since the museum is a landscape you pay your entry fee and go from exhibit to exhibit in a car. Immediately when I entered the park, I experienced this. A “Bison Jam” clogged up the traffic. Two bison grazed next to the roadway and people swarmed around them taking pictures, some of them close and watching, cars hardly pulled off the roadway. It made me wonder, “Where’s the wildness in this?” I can see why there are signs all over the place reminding people that these are “wild” animals. For some reason, they don’t follow directions, they don’t treat their encounter as if it were a wild encounter.

“How can wildness exist in a traffic jam?”

The road wound through forest that had burned and reseeded in the 1988 fire. Burned trees stood still in seas of 20-year old saplings. I remembered a large painting I made in high school titled “Yellowstone on Fire” and thought that I would have quite enjoyed seeing the place in its charcoal blanket. That would have given some relief to the wildness in this place. It would stand out in a different way, perhaps because there would be nowhere to hide, it might jar the senses because the “beauty” of a place came from the dark underbelly with its scars, bruises, and boils. We are taught to prefer the sleek, pettable fur in a sunny backdrop with a tree. Probably no one would come to my park. But, then again, I meet lots of people in my park. My park is a journey that perhaps holds together through an expression of and encounter with wildness or freedom.

From West Yellowstone to Old Faithful, I considered the road’s historicity. The road through Yellowstone would have been one of those early scenic roadways like the Columbia River Highway. I noted some of those early roadway features, in its siting and grade. I noted also that the road had obviously been widened to accommodate the growing widths and lengths of RVs and trailers. When I came through the entrance fee booth, the ranger who gave me my pass and map said, “Be careful out there with the traffic.”
“Do you mean the RVs and big vehicles because they’re not accustomed to bikes?”
“Yes.”
Shortly after leaving the gate, I observed the traffic and how it responded – or didn’t – to my presence on the road. Some gave me room, others didn’t. And I wondered, “When park rangers see big RVs come through, do they say, ‘Watch for bikes and give them lots of room.’” Probably they don’t because they’d have to say that so much compared to how infrequently they would tell bikes to be careful of the RVs. My follow up to that is, “What can a cyclist do?” or even, “What ought a cyclist do?” I can’t move the RV although I might want to. Hypothesis: an old roadway that hasn’t been modified to allow for today’s large vehicles and tour buses is more bike-friendly than an updated historic roadway. We shall see. I haven’t been hearing great things about the hills in the Ozarks.

Engaged thus in my musings, I came across Madison Campground. I passed two signs and had to return for some picture clicks. One, what are the necessary elements to camp? Of course, where would we be without wifi? Goodness knows I’m always on the hunt for it, having dispensed with most contemporary fixes but thoroughly dependent on this one.

“Where does wildness reside?”

And then I received my answer.
Wildlife = people walking & people pedaling.
“It’s not the bison and elk, silly. Those really are animated robots they brought in from Disney.”
16 miles to Old Faithful. I took my time being a tourist through the landscape. Much as I wanted to see the Morning Glory pool, the many people and then the clotted parking lot turned me off. I kept pedaling.

At more than one point along that stretch I hopped off my bike to take some pictures of the flowers. Pink Elephants. They must also be a saprophytic orchid? I’m not sure if they’re called Pink Elephants, but that’s what my brother and I named them one year backpacking in Cody country. He’s amazing with a pencil. I remember how exactly he captured in his sketchbook what the flowers look like. I cared about the color of them and always got lost in mental reruns of Fantasia when I thought about them. Pink Elephants. There they were! And pretty little yellow columbines. I was bent over and twisted in my bicycle trying to get an in-focus close up of the columbines when JC passed me. He rang his bell and said hello and continued on. As I bypassed the crowded Paint Pot parking area, I saw his bike there. Onward I went to Old Faithful.

I figured there would be some historical interest in the lodge. People swarmed all over the place, and it’s much bigger than I remember. I don’t remember much from when I was there as a kid. Must have been between five and eight. We stayed in the lodge. Knotty pine. Old Faithful in the back yard. Walking on the plank walkways. That’s about all I remember. I couldn’t see in the lodge. They’ve kept a low light “candle lit” atmosphere inside with small, electric candle clusters on the main uprights, but mostly it’s like being in a cave. The bright light and reflective surfaces in the bathroom jarred me also, and I thought I was going to fall into the room as soon as I stepped in. Outside was better. I got a tea and found a place to perch on an upper patio seat.
“How much longer until it goes off?” I asked the man on the bench next to me.
“In about 20 minutes.”
I hadn’t consciously decided to watch Old Faithful, but I suppose one ought to. Hadn’t seen it since I was a kid and couldn’t remember.

I tried to talk to him. He’s a cardiac surgeon from Nebraska, and he kept talking about how he needed vacation and the intensity of his work.
“What does it take for you to really be on vacation?”
He launched into a discourse on what wasn’t vacation. I wonder if he could grasp that he wasn’t in Nebraska, wouldn’t be paged, and that his job was to be here, watch the earth disgorge some really hot water in the air.

“Hey, I’m not following you.”
“Hi!” The cyclist who’d passed me earlier was there again.
“Are you going to Craig or West Thumb?”
I had no idea. I couldn’t even understand what he was saying, like I couldn’t see inside. As much as I’d looked at the map, my plan was to ride through the park. I pulled my map out. “Where?”
“Craig, the first big pass.”

That conversation rolled out with ease. And while he wasn’t sure he would stay to watch Old Faithful do its thing, JC and I maintained our conversation for more than the 20 minutes it took to see the show. He had this perplexing thing to say about roadways….
We decided to ride together. I wasn’t sure how it would go. Young guy with a big-geared bike. As we pedaled away from the lodge, we made some agreement about going at a pace that worked for both of us…that might mean we rode together or maybe that it wouldn’t work and we’d go our separate ways.

Postcards. I’m perhaps overly interested in ‘em. I write them at home with regularity, even spend time making them. Out on the road, I hunt for souvenir type postcards. I keep my eye out. I thought postcards would be easy to find, but it’s more difficult than one would expect. Even though wifi can be challenging to locate or access, it seems easier to find that than postcards.

When I stopped in Virginia City, I had no intention of buying anything. The town looked like it had a substantially healthy flow of tourists. I bought things here and there down the Ruby Valley. I sat in the shade of the monstrous porch on the Elks Lodge watching the street scene, having a snack and taking a water break. A short but steep climb brings you into Virginia City from the Nevada City ghost town. A steeper, longer but still shortish climb takes you out of Virginia City and then down into Ennis.
Sun.
“I should get some water, never hurts to fill up when there’s an opportunity. Look, the sign across the street says Restrooms. Try that.”
I went in the gift shop and headed toward the back of the shop.
“You’re not going to drink Virginia City water??!”
“Should I not?”
“I wouldn’t. They found E.Coli in it, and no one’s said it’s safe to drink yet. I bring my water from Ennis, where I live. Here, you want some of mine?,” she poured a pint of water into one of my bottles. “We have more for sale.”
I looked around quickly and saw they had postcards.
“Yeah, I’ll get some water. You know, it’s hard to find postcards. Why do you think that is?”
“Everyone has email now. Virginia City just got cellular service two months ago. The water tank is spring fed, old, made out of wood. I think they found a dead snake in it or something. It needs to be updated.”
I had my nose in the postcards, “They don’t have updating the water system on the priority list to be paid for with all the tourist revenues?”
She clucked. “No.”
“I’ll get these and a quart of water.”

I stopped numerous times before reaching Virginia City. I kept finding things that caught my eye and fancy. Before Nevada City, it was road kill of the sort that stopped me in my tracks. A small saw-whet owl. Right as I stopped, three cyclists from Oklahoma City rolled up on the opposite side of the road to chat a little. They could see it was an owl from across the street.
“An owl. That just ain’t right. It’s a baby.”
“It’s a saw-whet. They’re pretty small to begin with. I feel like I should move it off the road.”
“Coyote might get it.”
I laid my bike down on the gravel slope off the road and picked up the owl. When I first saw it, the breeze in its feathers made me think it was alive, but after I looked at it more closely, I could see it was dead. The little owl fit easily in my hands, so small and soft. Its yellow breast feathers – I later rediscovered – signaled that it was a juvenile and caught the breeze. Its tiny taloned feet covered in feathers made me think of hobbits. Healthy little owl feet. Tiny black beak, flare of white across the face and those incredible black eyelashes. Left wing broken. Must have collided with a car. I carried it just off the road and found a spot for it among the stones. If Coyote would come, that was ok. I came back up to the roadway, and two of the cyclists had gone on. The remaining one said, “I hope you don’t mind, I took your picture.”
I wonder what he captured.

Before finding the owl, I made a quick stop and detour through Laurin because of a sign on the highway that mentioned there was a National Register of Historic Places church one block in. On leaving town, I noticed the old rail line. Back in Twin Bridges, Bill had mentioned them, “They end right there. It’d be perfect to do a Rail Trail here, but nobody would go for it. The only thing they want to do is something they can ride ATVs on.” More musing on the historic transportation system. They keep a mile of track operational between Nevada City and Virginia City for tourist rides. Nothing connects to anywhere. In Dillon, the Union Pacific has a prominent location in the downtown area.
“Is it just freight service?”
“Yeah. The closest to get to Amtrak is in Shelby.”
“How far away is that?”
“About four hours.”
“And this is a college town?”
“Yep.”

Sheridan lies between Laurin and Twin Bridges. I got a chocolate bar at the corner bakery and was going to eat it out on the street when I noticed an office and shipping store next door. I went in and immediately had the shopkeeper on a hunt for something I could use for business cards. I picked up some tags in Baker City that I really like, and I was curious what they might have in Sheridan. The town had a lot of appeal, and I like office shops and stationers. I keep thinking they’ll have postcards, but they don’t. We couldn’t find the right kind of tag or card to suit my fancy, but I bought a sharpie. I’d been wanting an indelible marker, and it was one thing I didn’t have with me yet.
I got to chatting with Brian. He came to Sheridan from Portland 11 years ago. “It’s a great place to raise kids. We never lock our doors. And there are quite a few professionals who work in town telecommuting. As it works out, they can live wherever they want and then go travel for work when they need to.” I was messing with the “Buy Local” decals on the counter.

“It’s great that you have Buy Local here. I noticed the decal on The Shack in Twin Bridges, and that made me all the happier to have dinner there.”
“I designed those. You can have one.”
“Nice job. Really?”
“Buy Local is done through the Ruby Valley Chamber of Commerce. It’s a collection of communities along the river here.”
“Does it include Virginia City?”
“No, they have their own Chamber, but it goes from Twin Bridges to Alder. About 1500 people live in these communities.”

Back in Twin Bridges before Bill and I went flying, we chatted more about the Bike Camp.
“Do you mind sitting here a minute while I eat this…unless that’s the wrong thing to do before going flying?”
“You should be fine.”
“Mike, the guy who came to stay at the camp while we were talking, asked how it got funded. I was looking around at the info there and couldn’t really tell. How did it get funded?”
“We had some grants lined up and then they fell through at the last minute. After all the publicity we’d done, we couldn’t just not do it, and no one in town would contribute.”
“So you paid for it and the donations go toward paying for it and maintenance?”
“Yeah.”
“How much do you still need to cover it?”
“$5500.”
“How much do people contribute to stay there?”
“Last year the average donation to the number of people was $3.12. This year we’ve had more people using it. Guess what the average donation is? $3.12.”
I felt badly. I donated $5 because that seems to be the going rate for hiker-biker camps. Happily, I’d written that I also donated in town, thinking that part of the camp purpose was to generate spending in town too. I didn’t realize that the camp still had an outstanding debt on it.
“Someone donated $100 once, and that was amazing!”
Seems like it should be easy enough to raise $5500 in the cycling community for such a wonderful resource. Mike and I both chose to stay in the camp because we wanted to check out the facilities. It has a unique logo on the Adventure Cycling maps. I really felt welcome in Twin Bridges because of the camp. When I like a place, I spend money there and linger. When I don’t like it, I leave.
“It’s a unique thing in the area. Lots of other communities are interested in them. We didn’t know what we were doing when we started. Now we’re trying to help other communities set them up. Are you ready?”
“Yep.”
“Let’s roll.”

Bill opened the hangar doors and pulled the plane out. I almost put my head in the way of the wing while I took pictures. Perhaps honing my instincts from the raptor buzzing, I ducked in time. He directed me into the seat and fastened me in. I felt a little bit like a kid in a car seat…’cept I’m a big kid in a little plane seat.

“To undo the straps, just pull up on the buckle like normal. I’m going to lock you in from the other side, but back on the handle is lock and forward is open. Should something happen and you need to get out, push the handle forward.”
He came around the other side of the plane and handed me a headset. “Here, you need to wear this.”
Everything he said after that was a little muffled, but I could still follow. He got in, fastened his seatbelt, put his headset on, and away we went. He told me what he was doing the whole time through the scratchy radio frequency in the headset.
“Basically, we’re flying on 1936 technology.”
At the end of the runway, he ran through his checks, called the air traffic controller, scanned the sky for other planes that he might not have immediately seen.
“We don’t want to trade paint with anyone. When we return to where we started going around, we look to see if there’s any oil on the ground. It’s better to find out if something isn’t working down here than up there.”
Everything checked out, and we took off.
We made a wide sweep around Twin Bridges. He pointed out the different rivers and where they came together. “In Twin Bridges, the Ruby, Madison, and Big Hole come together. The Ruby has incredible oxbows in it from changing course. They say that you can float the Ruby all day and never get more than .5 mile from where you started, and you can still see your truck there are so many bends and loops in it. Over there you can see how the river is silty. That’s bad for fishing, but it’ll clear up soon.”
We flew back around by the Bike Camp. I forgot to take a picture earlier in the morning. Oops. Might as well get one from the air!
“Let’s fly over the route you’re going to take today. You’ll get a sense of what it’s like.”
After we flew over Sheridan, he gave me the controls. “It’s all yours. Most people think you have to use the controls hard. Just a light touch.”
I tried it out. We went right, then left, kinda over here. Up. How do I get it going back up, feels like we’re falling.
“See this bug spot on the windshield? Keep that on the horizon and you should stay level. But if you want me to drive so you can look, that’s fine.”
“As you go through this area you’ll see all these gravel piles. They’re what’s left from dredging for gold. Now people go through there to reclaim garnets. They use the garnets in sand paper. What they’re really after is the gold that’s left. Down there is Nevada City. Some quirky millionaire had all these buildings moved there with all the old cans and bottles and things. You have to pay to go in there, or you can go up the road a little ways and get pretty much the same thing for free. Once you cross over the pass, everything changes. I call this the Montana slums. Bunch of rich people buy homes out here so they can live off a dirt road for about a month or two a year. There’s no zoning out here. No building permits. We should get you back so you can go?”
I nodded. It looked like a simple enough ride. Partly, flying it first made it seem far. Partly, it gave me a much better sense of how far I travel in a day.
“We’re going 160 mph. Doesn’t seem like it, does it?”
Made me feel like I was time traveling again.
Back on the ground, he left his Mistress out so he could ready her for the next trip. “Let’s get you back to your bike.”

July 10. Happy Birthday Brother.
We grew up in Wyoming, and my brother shared his birthday with our home state. Every four years, I share my birthday with Inauguration day, but every summer, if he wanted, my brother could have a red-white-and-blue celebration. In 1990, there was a big to-do because Wyoming turned 100, and the community put on a massive fireworks display that year for my brother’s birthday.

Some years later, I called my brother at 5 p.m. from the top of Mt. Whitney in California, the tallest mountain peak in the lower 48, to wish him a happy birthday. Right before I called him, I snapped some pictures of myself on the summit. They’re amusing summit shots looking back on it. I used film back then, and I couldn’t get my camera to work, so my face bears a funny puzzlement contortion. Far from sea to shining sea views, the sky looms ominously and within arm’s reach. You might say that the look on my face expresses not puzzlement or frustration but concern, possibly even fright. Of course, I was by myself, and anyone else on the mountain who had any sense about them was nowhere to be seen that high up at that hour…because of lightning danger. Nonetheless, in remote California, the only place to get cell reception – as is often the case in many wilderness areas – is on mountain summits. I called my brother. Immediately it began to storm, and I took refuge in the rock hut built at the summit. We hadn’t talked long when he asked, “What’s all the noise?”
“Oh, looks like I’m in the middle of an electrical storm, and it’s snowing.”
“Kid, thanks for calling, but I don’t think you should be on the phone right now.”
“I wanted to wish you a happy birthday, but yeah, I should get the hell out of here fast.”
We hung up and I got off the ridge like lightning. But it took me a while.
In the end, I made the 22-mile round trip hike from the trailhead to summit and back on July 10 and broke in a new pair of hiking boots in the process.

I remember another July 10 when I was at the Oregon Country Fair and didn’t call my brother because there is no cell reception out in that crazy and colorful celebration. This year also, I think of my friends wandering the Eight in their costumes and Fair regalia, indulging creative spirits, listening to great music, and being totally transported to other realms. Happy Fair!

This year, I started July 10 waking at a rest area halfway between Ennis and West Yellowstone, Montana. I had my big meal in Ennis at about 3 p.m. and watched some storms move through the area. As I left the café, I chatted with Bob and Maryola, sweet folks who live in Alder (in the Ruby Valley) for six years now. When Maryola found out I was solo she said, “There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity.”
“Yes, I agree. I dance that line all the time.”
“We’ll pray for you.”
“Thank you. Really.”
Despite Maryola’s concern over the lightning in my intended direction, I decided to push on, thinking I could still make it to my hoped for evening destination, a place called Missouri Flats – not a town, but a place with some food options and sleeping options.

With the storms, I had the pleasure of pedaling through headwinds and crosswinds. I figured that was the trade off for riding in the shade of cloud cover. The long, straight roads with rumble strips eating up half the bike lane left me with about two feet of travel lane width. Because my bike is front-loaded, that required continual attention to stay within the lines. I passed a team of four bicycle tourers headed to Ennis, and at that moment realized that I had to be my own windbreak the whole way. The hours slipped away but the miles didn’t. I figured I would stop at the first campground I came to…forget Missouri Flats…I didn’t see how I would get there before dark. Also, I was out of water.

I turned down the dirt road to the campground. At the fishing hole the sign said two miles further to the campground. The fishing hole had that uber-primitive look, a pit toilet and nothing else. I pulled up to the fishers who were packing up for the day, “Do you know if there’s water at the campground?”
“I don’t know. Do you need water? We can give you some.”
“Thank you!”
“I don’t know if there’s water at this campground, but down here,” he said pointing to my map, “there’s water here.”
“Ok, I’ll go there. Thank you so much for the water!”
20 miles, “How long does it take?” I figured two hours, which would be 8 p.m.

The sky continued cloudy, the wind in my face or pushing against my gear in front. I could see the sun still high in the sky, but the light read more like a minute before dark. I kept on, there wasn’t anything else to do. At 8 p.m. I still hadn’t come across anything but the grass and some private residences. The ditches on the side of the road looked more and more appealing except for the mosquitoes that would swarm around me when I stopped. The road followed the river.
“It should be right about here. I’ll ride until 8:30, and if I haven’t come to the campground, I’m going to find somewhere to stop.”
Ten minutes later I came to the long-awaited rest area sign. “One more mile. I can make it.”
The rest area appeared as the most dismal one of its kind I’ve seen yet, with a few semis already parked for the night, engines kept idling. At that point, I didn’t care. My strategy was to do what everyone else was doing there and what I’d done in years gone by when I went road tripping: sleep in my car. My sag wagon can accommodate only my big toe, and unfortunately the car doesn’t grow when you add water. So, I pitched my shelter quickly in the wind, half under a bettle-pocked pine next to the covered picnic tables. The bathrooms had water, thankfully. Yet, when I washed my hands I noticed: “Water unsafe to drink. High Fluoride levels.”
“Bugger.”

I started clearing the pinecones from under my shelter to de-lump my sleeping surface.
“Ow! What the…?”
I looked closely at the ground and discovered I pitched my shelter in a thorn patch.
“They probably have them growing here on purpose. It’s not sprinklers this time, it’s prickers.”
People told me earlier about “puncture weed.” “I wonder if this is puncture weed.” I threw the big, sharp pieces out with the pinecones. The older ones didn’t seem like they would hurt as much. I spread out my ground cloth and realized they were going to poke through anyway. I sat on my rain jacket on top of the ground cloth and considered my options.
“If I use my sleeping pad, I might puncture it, and that would be bad. Even though it’s windy and gray, it’s not cold. Hmmm. I’m sleeping in my car. Ok, here’s the deal. No sleeping pad, don’t unpack. Just go to sleep, get up early in the morning, and take care of the rest when you get to West Yellowstone. Ok. Deal.”
I shook on it and promptly went to sleep still in my cycling clothes gloves and all on the hard ground with metal halide lights shining in and all.

By morning, the wind had mostly abated and the clouds mostly dissipated. I didn’t seem to make any quicker time than I had the previous day but at least the rumble strips went away after the first ten miles. My abs are sore today…that from fighting the wind and staying straight? On the first rise to Earthquake Lake, I saw five big horned sheep. Not bad way to start the day.

Kinda like the slide in eastern Oregon, three miles of historic highway 287 are under water. In 1959, half of the mountainside on the Madison River slid, damming the river. Within six hours, the campground along the river flooded. People died. Gruesome. Drowned trees still stand in the lake’s shallow shores – it’s depths reach 120 feet.

I made West Yellowstone for a late breakfast. Keep hearing different things about the camping options, not sure how to catch up.
“Take a rest. Check out the hostel.”
Sounded appealing. I took a shower and passed out on a smooshy bed.

Dear Sonora,

I remember when you and I were climbing up that really steep, slippery slope on Spencer’s Butte in Eugene talking about being the little sister and being tough. I wanted to share my day with you because I thought it was a good example of that. And, selfishly, I wish you were here with me because I really think you too would love it out here. And, somehow, being your Aunt but also sharing little sisterness to big brothers and doing this really tough thing made me think back to our conversation on that dirt slope.

Oh, I’m also including a collection of images I saw out there that made me think of you.

Yesterday I met a really tough woman. She hiked all the way from Mexico to Canada in the mountains last year and carried all her own stuff. This year she’s doing it again except through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and all these places you’ve been. That is tough! You can see a picture of her in the “Big Hole” post.

I also saw a big snake, and that made me think of the creepy thing we made with your wax, the mouse eating a snake. You can also see the snake at “Big Hole.”

So I was thinking that it takes a pretty tough girl to ride her bike all the way across the country by herself and carry all her stuff. And for sure that’s something my big brother hasn’t done. Not that I’m doing it to prove how tough I am to him. It’s strange that somehow it’s a matter of proving how tough I am to myself. It’s not that I didn’t already think this way of myself. As you pointed out on that slope, we were both tough, and I agree. We still are. But when I’m out riding, sometimes it’s so hard that the work is all I can think about. And then I think about ice cream, and it’s ok. Well, maybe it’s not necessarily ice cream that I want, but I’ll bet that would be a great thing to get for you after a long day on the saddle.

I left the town I was in early this morning and thought I would ride to the next town for breakfast and whatever. As soon as I got out on the road, the sign said 48 miles to the next town! Oh geez. And it wasn’t just flat riding like in town. I had two mountains to climb over with all my stuff. Ugh.

At the top of the first mountain, there was a sign, “Cows Ahead.” The day before I rode my bike through a bunch of cows on the road. Hadn’t done that before. They got out of my way though. In fact, they got out of my way faster than they got out of the way of the cars in the other direction. They’re kinda slobbery and snotty, those cows, and I had to ride my bike through some of their poop. I’m glad I have fenders on my bike so the poo didn’t fly up into my face. Real cowboys with herding dogs moved those cows. Pretty cool.

So, I was looking down the road, eating a bar because I wasn’t going to be able to ride 50 miles for breakfast…but maybe lunch. A big truck hauling a trailed pulled up next to me. In it was a woman and her daughter. The girl was a little older than you; she had braces…maybe 4 or 5 years older. I could barely hear the woman over the noise from her truck engine, “Do you want a ride through the cows?”
“I rode through them yesterday, and it seemed ok. But they’re not going to charge me, are they?” I couldn’t help but remember that I hadn’t heard of hawks dive bombing humans, but that happened to me the day before, and I didn’t want to take anything for granted.
“No. You’ll be fine. And if you need help, just ask the cowboys.”
I rode through the cows, and it wasn’t a big deal. Kinda like I was a cowgirl yelling at the cows from my trusty steed, “Hey Cows, comin through. Git out the way cows, comin through. Hi Cows.” All the little baby cows were white or blond, and all the mama cows were black. I figure the babies must change color when they get older. Do you think they’d ever turn purple or color changing like in the Wizard of Oz?

I made it into the town right at lunch time. I found a cute coffee shop that seemed to attract mostly women and girls. It felt sorta frillier than I did, but I’m a girl and belong in a coffee shop even if my skirt was packed away in my bag and I was all sweaty from climbing mountains on my bike. I felt like a badass among all the other women. I think maybe I scared them. I didn’t go to the Bad Ass coffee shop. Maybe I should have. Instead I went to Sweetwater. The names imply the difference. One woman did talk to me at the coffee shop. I couldn’t get the internet to work on my computer, and that’s a big part of why I was there – certainly wasn’t because I got a bad ass portion of food to feed my “tough girl” appetite (but it was still a yummy salad even if it came in “girl” portions). So I asked one of the girls behind the counter, “Is there a trick to getting on the internet?”
“No, sometimes it works if I restart it. I’ll go do that.”
Not long after that, a woman asked me, “Are you getting internet?”
“Yeah, but I just had to ask them to reset it.”
“Oh, I thought something was wrong with my computer.”
Doesn’t hurt to ask, especially after running a quick diagnostic.

I had 26 miles to ride to the next town where there was a cyclist only campground I wanted to check out. On the way, I passed Beaver Rock.

Sacajawea remembered this rock well from her childhood when she guided Lewis & Clark through here. The Indians had long used the rock as a landmark and summer camp. Hundreds of Indian communities gathered here. One of the interpretive signs talked about how the area “was first settled” in the 1860s as a stage stop. Even though I like all this historic transportation, I have difficulty with stories that completely ignore that the Indians lived here long before the area “settled.” But I guess since Indians didn’t really write – in the way we understand writing – they had no history. Therefore, when we talk about history, we don’t talk about the Indians’ history; we talk about white people’s history. I’m generalizing, but I notice this tendency in other places, other signs I read. Like “Trapper Peak.” Big mountain, distinguishing landmark. In the mid-1860s someone named it “Trapper Peak.” I don’t believe it was a mountain without a name before that. Anyway, even though the Indians didn’t speak English when they named this rock Beaver Rock, that’s basically what they called it in their language.

I made it to Twin Bridges and had a really yummy and filling dinner at a place called The Shack. I particularly liked that their menu says, “We don’t fry everything here.” You’d be surprised at how difficult it is to find something to eat that isn’t fried. Actually, you would have a really hard time because more so than everything being fried, absolutely everything has wheat in it. It’s really hard to figure out how to carbo load without eating wheat. I think that’s why I’m carrying more and more food with me now. But since I sent a couple pounds of stuff home that I wasn’t using, I have room for more food items in my panniers. And it’s kind of fun to look through the grocery stores. I look at everything. You never know what you’ll find.

The Biker Camp is awesome. It’s an enclosed porch house (keep the bugs out, yeah!) with picnic tables and benches inside. Outside there’s a sink…for kitchen or bathroom use, and on the other side of the building in a little courtyard are two rooms: a bathroom and a shower room. I even found a floor pump and used it to pump up my tires. And it’s donation rate, which is perfect.

I met a really nice man named Bill at the Camp. Sounds like it was his idea to build this Camp because after two years of talking to cyclists, he thought they were really interesting people and the community ought to do something nice for them. So, now there’s this great place to stay, which makes me like the place even better. I liked talking to Bill. I told him my whole butt is a giant mosquito bite because they were eating on me all day. No joke. Now I have Itchy Butt but not in the place people usually get Itchy Butt. Anyway, as he was leaving, he invited me to check out the lay of the land from his little airplane in the morning, so I’m gonna do it. You never know what kind of adventures come of talking to people. And even though I feel I ought to push on in the morning instead of ride in an airplane, I think this place is really neat, and I want to learn as much about it as I can.

I hope you’re having an awesome summer and that you enjoyed spending time with grandma and grandpa at the farm.

Practice riding your bike so we can go places on bike together. Maybe you need to remind Mom and Dad that Albuquerque is ranked #17 as best places in the country to ride a bike. You can try it anyway. I’m not sure myself how it gets that rating.

See you soon!

Love,
Aunt Heidi