June 26, 2011 Forysth, Montana

For some of my friends, this blog may be a geography lesson as well as a lesson in patience.  My passport arrived, and I headed east from Whidby Island, WA on Hwy 20 across the Cascades – amazing!  Hwy 20 is closed during the winter because of snow but has been open a couple of weeks.  At higher elevations, though the road was clear and cleaned, the snow was piled higher than my head along the shoulders.  I learned that Hwy 20 east is fairly new – opened in 1972, I think.  Before that if you wanted to go to the small communities of Winthrop or Twist, you came east from Seattle on Interstate 90, then north through Wenatchee up to the canyon cul-de-sac of Twisp/Winthrop/Methow – and the natives liked it that way.  Once Hwy 20 opened as an east/west corridor through the Cascades, development ran away with much of the quiet remoteness – but it remains a beautiful, serene place.  Changing plans is an art, and I work hard at developing my skills.  So I stayed with Shellia and Curt, friends of my friend Jim, at their home in Winthrop – ended up staying two nights because it was a beautiful place with intriguing and kind people.

But by Saturday I had run out of excuses – no more passport to wait for, no more “reasons” to dawdle in that beautiful place – so I headed east on Hwy 20, turned south at Twisp, rode over the Grand Coulee Dam, to Spokane where I got on Interstate 90 for the short but beautiful ride across the panhandle of Idaho, and then into Missoula, Montana, where I stopped for the night.  This is absolutely NOT the route I had “planned”, but … the Highway to the Sun in Glacier was closed, and I needed to get south to miss the flooding in Minot, MN.  And somewhere along the way, I stopped at a casino/restaurant/novelty shop for coffee and to look thru tourist trinkets just as a tour bus pulled up for the same reasons.  When I returned to my bike, the 32 Germans from the bus were boarding, and that meant they needed to walk right by my bike.  One of them asked and I gave her a post card.  Soon I was in the middle of the whole bunch, trying to explain myself.  They were friendly but obviously confused by me, a female riding alone on a big bike across a big country.  A few of them spoke some English; I speak no German.  One man shook his head and explained loudly, “This is a man.  Must be!”  Another looked at me sympathetically and asked, “Do you ride lonely?”  I smiled and just said, “Yes.”  Sometimes it’s hard to explain the difference between “lonely” and “alone.”

Saturday I pulled into a KOA in Missoula, 440 miles later – and the orange dry bag in which I store my sleeping bag was gone.  I walked around the bike several times, sure it was just hiding for a minute.  It was one of three bags strapped securely (meaning with 3 bungee cords) on the passenger seat.  The other bags were there, not askew, and the 3 bungee cords were still aligned.  Add to the confusion that I had checked those bags carefully in Winthrop and again further south.  When I dropped the bike in the Sequoias, the bags didn’t come off.  But one was gone now – my best guess is that when I stopped at the casino or for a late lunch, someone decided it would be funny to remove just one & carefully leave the others.  But it was 7pm and the forecast was for a low of 37.  No sleeping bag was not funny, so I got back on the bike, rode to a nearby sports store, bought a new one (on sale!)  and got back in time to set up the tent before dark.  The new bag did its job; and I slept well after I put on my hooded sweatshirt.

This morning I stopped for breakfast and called my son.  I was talking with Harper, my 4 yr old grand daughter, and explained I had seen snow yesterday.  She asked, “What is snow?”  The child was born in Florida.  I explained that it can get cold, like in the freezer, and that the rain freezes like the stuff on the sides of the freezer.  She replied,  “Like the snow balls we made!” Last winter it snowed north of their home a couple of hours, and their parents took the two kids up to a ballpark where they gathered enough snow to throw snow balls.

I left Missoula and soon found a road listed as “scenic” – Hwy 12 runs somewhat parallel to and north of Interstate 90 and it’s beautiful.  It rolls through the plains with mountains in the distance.  This is grassland; some of the area is cultivated but grass seems to grow whether “planted” or not.  And the grasses move with the wind, like waves on the ocean.  It was gusty in places; when I was heading due east with a northern wind, it was strong enough to jerk my head, repeatedly.  My head would go right; I’d bring it back center; then it would pop right again.  I hope I got a few good pictures today, but for much of the ride it would have been insane to ride with one hand while taking pictures with the other.  Remember that head thing.  Most of the rivers were obviously swollen; some were flooding pastures and barns.

I stopped for gas somewhere on Hwy 12 and then parked my bike to go inside.  When I came out a Harley was parked at the pumps, and a woman stood by the bike.  We spoke, and her friend joined us.  He moved his bike, we talked awhile, and then we rode off together.  Ruth and “Bones” rode up from their home in Mexico, are simply out enjoying the country, and like me were heading east on Hwy 12.  I followed them for maybe 150 miles, at 55 MPH, something I hadn’t tried before.  I saw an eagle (how cool is that!), and a couple of deer (still makes me very nervous).  We stopped at Forsyth  (460 mile day) where we got rooms and then had dinner together.

Tomorrow, I will cross North Dakota on Interstate 94 to avoid the flooding to the north and then head north to Duluth, MN where I’ll cross into Canada and take the “high road” over the Great Lakes.  I had Planned to take the “low road”, but the weather forecast there is for rain.  Ruth & Bones haven’t decided which way they’ll go – one option is the low road & up to Maine.  So if I’m lucky I’ll meet them again.