In my last post I had just arrived in Butte, pronounced b-you-t. However there are plenty of reasons to pronounce it the other way, which I will touch on, but despite what I'm about to say let me also express that the city has some real character and an interesting old part of town, left over from its days of, in its own words, "hell roarin".
However it's also home to Berkley pit. Essentially Butte made its money from mining. A lot of money. Indeed the town sign welcomes you to the richest hill on earth. However most of that hill is now Berkley pit. And that is something worth seeing even though it is the antithesis of why I was so excited to do this ride.
Berkley pit is an open mine, that was flooded when mining ceased, producing an enormous toxic lake well over a mile wide and several thousand feet deep, right next to the town. The scary part is the water is rising, so they need to make sure they have water treatment facilities in place before it reaches the critical level and contaminates their local groundwater resources. The lake is about as acidic as vinegar, and for all you serial killers out there apparently an excellent place to dump a body.
However Butte is four nights of camping out in the back country behind me now. The country has been varied, and changing. This included riding fleecer ridge, which is infamous on the route as being the hardest downhill on the whole route. But actually it's not all that. Nothing you might not find in good old Blighty out in the peak district, and not as technical as the previous boulder strewn descent on lava trail I talked about. It's just very steep and loose. Now for those who are dragging a trailer round with them I can see why it would be terrifying, as the slightest mistake and you would be turned around backwards and probably not stop rolling and somersaulting till you hit the bottom a quarter of a mile below.
The campsites along the way have generally been great. I have to give a big thanks to two guys separately (Terry and Paul). These guys at seperate campsites saw us roll in sweaty and tired, and just came up and gave us a couple of cold beers, which was mighty generous and tasted mighty fine. I also should say thanks to the Scottish owner of the wise river club who as we were brits gave us free ice cream, yum. The other highlight of camping is I'm still riding with Chris until he has to go back to California, and he has his iPad with him. So we have been having outdoor evening cinema showings of Monty python films. We are the bike riders who say nih!
The forest fires out here have continued to be pretty bad though. I have tried to show a picture of it but I'm not sure you can really see. Most of the fires are actually in Idaho, but the smoke a couple of days ago was just blowing right into Montana, and obscuring the views dramatically, with everywhere smelling of smoke, and a fine dusting of ash on your tent in the morning. The strange thing was riding all day in what felt like a constant sunset.
And in a smoky prolonged sunset we rode into Bannack, a true ghost town. Bannack was the state capitol founded on a gold rush, and is straight out of the westerns you watched as a kid, frozen in time. Wandering round there is just surreal, especially reading the stories of the real outlaws who frequented and frequently murdered each other in the saloon, with its bar and barber's chair in the corner still remaining. What did make me laugh though as we stayed in the adjacent campground, was the discovery in the morning just before we left that despite no one having lived there for decades if not a hundred years or more is that Bannack does however have WiFi!
The next couple of days riding took us into some very remote country. So different from the verdant trails of Canada, this part of Montana has endless mountain ranges and plains full of arid sage brush. Cowboy country if ever I saw it. Today after being chased off our mountain campsite by the first real storm I have encountered out here (i have put pictures on showing the rain we were escaping from and the almost dawn like sun covered vista we were running to) we rode through some stunning canyons, filled with caves. The trail was in fact the route for the long gone Bannack stage coach. In my head I could still hear it rattling along, and imagine every cave in the canyon as a perfect hide out for ambushing bandits.
And then we popped right out of the canyon into the present day and onto interstate 15. And on it we have added an additional 16 miles to the day between finding a motel to take us here in Dell, and a laundry to do our clothes further up the route in Lima where the motel is full.
Speaking to my brother the other day he said he was enjoying the blogs as they were very 'Shannon family', meaning that there was a focus on food. Well he should love the laughably named calf-a here in Dell, I ordered a cheese burger with a side of chili. But despite nearly passing out from hunger and exhaustion at the end of yesterday there was no way I could eat all of what they brought out. The side of chili was a meal in itself. It all tasted great though... And we did sneak back in the evening for pie!
My motel is something a bit special too. All the rooms are themed, and as the owner showed me the huge colt revolver he keeps behind the bar (yep very definitely in Montana still), and my room is called trapper, I shouldn't have been surprised to find a wolf staring down onto my bed from the wall. In fact looking round there are furry things everywhere in here. I'm not sure if all the howling last night at the campsite was my room mates long lost buddies celebrating a kill or coyotes, but I feel a little for him.
So what does the title of this post have to do with anything. Well yesterday was a pretty tough day. Head winds meant that even though 46 miles is not the longest day I have done, nor by any means was it the steepest, the constant effort left me with nothing in the tank, and once off the bike I was pretty unsteady on my feet until I managed to get my dinner down me. However just the incredible views and sense of isolation and remoteness of our campsite (read small patch of flat ground on the side of a mountain by a small stream) made it worth while. I can't remember if I mentioned him but Kyle was a guy I met on my first day out for all of five minutes. He was on his last day having done the route in the opposite direction. It didn't mean much at the time, but he told me you will have some great days and some bad days, but in the end they will all be great days. Now with more or less a third of the miles done I think I'm just beginning to really understand what he meant.
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