Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road

Forsyth to Miles City (still in Montana) – 45 miles
Average Speed – 12.6

“Well, that’s not so far.” I wanted to offer the cleaning lady my bicycle and have her bike back to Forsyth when she made this comment after asking us where we had come from. Yet another hilly day makes me feel the burn in my thighs. I can’t figure out why the hills never seem to get any easier. At least today, they were longer and more gradual than the hills of yesterday, but I don’t like them anymore than I did before.

Climbing toward the mountains. Well, it feels like it, but these are just clouds.

Some people have no clue about what it’s like to bicycle for more than a block or two. Doing just ten more miles is easy in a car, but not necessarily an easy feat especially after a long day of uphills, headwinds and unpleasant weather.

Some claim that Eastern Montana is flat. I have heard the same about Ohio. Yes, Northwest Ohio really is pretty flat. The highway overpasses are big hills in those parts, but that isn’t true in the rest of the state, nor is it true of Eastern Montana and I can lend you a bike if you don’t believe it.

The landscape today

We made a change in our itinerary and will add 70 miles to the itinerary just to avoid a long stretch of nothingness between here and Baker. It’s more a psychological thing because the distance without services would be the same as it was between Lowell and Powell, but we seemed less vulnerable in the woods than we do on the plains especially in terms of weather. In the case of stormy weather, which is predicted for tomorrow, we have no place to seek refuge. There aren’t lots of trees around here.

Approaching Miles City

Tomorrow, we will head toward Terry, just 38 miles from Miles City. We hope to visit the Evelyn Cameron Gallery and Prairie Unique. After Terry, we head to Wibau, which sounds like the things that wobble, but never fall down. We hear that we will be near the Badlands of Montana.

Besides the dead skunks that blocked our path today, we also saw what looked like parrots also dead in the shoulder. Now I am only an accidental bird watcher, which means if somebody points something out to me, it can go on my life list, which I keep in my head. I don’t purposely seek out birds. I need to do some investigation and see if there is a parrot in Montana. Why not? This state has a state dinosaur and I thought it was funny that Idaho had a state dance.

We are in Custer Country now and that should never, ever be confused with Custer County, which is in Custer Country, but is not the same.

Miles City is probably best known for its Bucking Horse Sale, which happened last week, but is it also known as the “Cowboy Capital of Montana”. Yee haw. Just what I was thinking when I walked by the Wal-Mart.

We’ve been lucky as far as internet access goes, but don’t know if we have internet access the next few days.