Mostly gentle headwind today which built up through the day to about 15-20mph. Circle is the next town east from Jordan, MT. There aren’t really that many towns in this part of the world. There are about 20 cows per person and less than 1 person per square mile. It wasn’t always like this and many of the folks here regret the passing of the life they knew as children.

The ride itself though was constantly hilly but beautiful. It looked much flatter on the digital elevation profile but I guess that’s always the case.

About Circle, the people here are super friendly and people have been going out of their way to chat and offer help.

My camp site is nice and overlooks a small river. It’s very informal at the campground, like no other campground I’ve been to. It’s very chill and non pretentious.

Note to get some snacks and ice cream.

When I turned on my Garmin bicycle computer this morning, a message appeared which said “Dangerous Wind Advisory”. This meant monstrous tailwind, Woohoo!!! The ride started with a 1000 foot climb out of Lewistown Montana so it was slow going initially for the first hour. Near the top, it started raining so I put on my big orange rain shell, and wind pants. As the wind picked up near the top, my orange rain jacket inflated into a giant pumpkin with big fat wind pant legs that acted like giant sails, and I was on my way. Between the gradual downhill and my big sail pumpkin outfit, my bike and I went screaming down the mountain at speeds up to 45mph, and this is on a loaded touring bike. Couldn’t help feeling that this is what a Nantucket sleigh ride must have felt like.

While it was really raining and blowing, I met two bicyclists who had come from Bar Harbor, Maine and were traveling westbound so the wind and stinging rain was right in their faces. They had given up on their original plan of making it all the way to Winnett and were just trying to find any place they could park it and get some shelter. I think I would’ve stayed in my sleeping bag if I was heading eastbound today.

For one 5 to 10 mile stretch, I don’t think that I peddled at all and still maintained a speed of between 25 and 35 mph. Through the course of the day, however, the wind direction started to shift and the mostly flat roads moved into rolling hills. The crazy tailwind became a cruel crosswind during the last 40 miles.where you had to lean your bicycle sideways to keep from being blown over occasionally, or be blown into the ditch on the side of the road. Well, at least the first 70 miles were glorious.

The private campground in Jordan MT seemed to be abandoned but I was able to find a cabin in town which felt really indulgent, but since it was still raining it was probably a good choice. So I have my Cozy home for the night.

So grand tally on the day was 130 miles. It was definitely a tailwind day.

The weather forecast was for a nice tailwind today and the chances of precipitation has decreased. Maybe I would actually stay dry, yay! It looked to be a good day to be on the bike. Unfortunately, soon after starting at about 6:20A, it started to rain and continued for the next several hours and that tailwind never showed up until after my ride had finished for the day. At one point, in the rain, my Garmin bike computer glitched and turned itself off and I wasn’t able to get it started again no matter which permutation of button presses I used. Damn, that bike computer was how I was navigating and my phone just uses too much juice to be sustainable in this role. While grabbing some lunch in Denton, I tried just powering it up by attaching it to a power bank and that worked! It wasn’t low on power, it just needed to be defibrillated.

With the rain, I finally had an excuse to wear my foul weather gear. My giant orange jacket tends to blow up like an enormous orange when you ride in it but it has great pit zips and doesn’t wet through. It worked fine but I wouldn’t want to wear it in a stiff headwind.

My home tonight is at a private campground in Lewistown MT. Unfortunately, the tent sites are right next to a busy road and a street light is over my tent so I’ll need to wear a buff over my ears and earplugs so I have a chance of sleeping. On the plus side, the showers were clean and they have a laundry.

I had a delicious quinoa salad for dinner and a very nice dinner companion, have clean clothes after two weeks on this adventure, have a safe place to stay for the night, and am 100 miles closer to home. Altogether, a good day (if I can get a good night’s sleep).



The road from Great Falls to Fort Benton makes a rough line traveling to the north east. Today the winds are building throughout the day until by about noon running close to 20 mph from the southeast. Unfortunately, the road turns directly to the south east from Fort Benton. I decided to do a short day at about 55 miles and camp here as opposed to fighting the wind and heat for another 15 to 20 miles then sleeping in a ditch on the side of the road. In retrospect, it should’ve been a pretty easy decision. Fort Benton was a nice place to hang out. There may be thunderstorms tomorrow, but at least there will be a tailwind.

A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, first sentence of ‘Southern Mail,’ 1929.

The stars last night were amazing! I had forgotten how great cowboy camping was and have been mostly hiding inside my tent for the last couple weeks. That being said, I did wake up to some bug crawling deep into one of my ear canals. Afraid to scare him further by trying to fish him out, I let him be, and after about five minutes he crawled out again. Lesson learned. Next time I cowboy camp I’m using the bug screen over my head.

The landscape had changed dramatically in just a couple hours of bicycling. Just a few scattered trees now and the hills were winding down. I had popped out of the other side of the Rockies and I n a couple of hours, I crossed the Missouri river for the first time.

The rest of the ride followed the Missouri River along quiet roads all the way to Great Falls, Montana.

The only kink in the ride today was when Komoot navigated me down a steep and embankment into a drainage ditch. What the heck! I tried Google maps to get around this, but the detour would cost me 7 miles… so down the deep drainage ditch I went with my bike. In the end, it all worked out.

Bicycle touring is an adventure, or nothing.

Shut up legs!

-Jens Voigt on the Col de Madelaine TDF2010

The day started in Drummond MT. The climb at the start of the day had me scared: 1000’ straight up with a sustained stretch at a 9-11% grade. The alternative, was to divert all the way to Helena and then head north. I wasn’t about to do that, so time to man up and get pedaling. There is always pushing of need be.

Like most things, the anticipation was scarier than the doing. The gorge was beautiful as I moved through it in slow motion, but I definitely used all my gears (well mainly just one), and I did stop once when my heartbeat was red lining. Cape Breton was worse.

On the ride to Lincoln MT, I caught up with another couple of bicycle tourists, Doug and Diane from Ohio who also planned to follow the Northern Tier Bicycle Route to North Dakota. Diane was using a super lightweight electric bike so she could keep up with Doug. It seems like e-bikes have opened up bicycle touring to a lot more people.

The route took me through Roger’s Pass. At 5610’, this would likely be my highest elevation on the tour. It was a bit of a homecoming for me as I was here with Cricket and Chip, in this exact spot, three years ago when I hiked the CDT.

The landscape was changing dramatically from Alpine to open rangeland by the end of the day. At 4 PM, by the side of a quiet dirt road, I parked my bike against a chain-link fence, behind one of the few trees that I found, had dinner, and decided to cowboy camp for the night.

During dinner, I was treated to aerobatic show from a local airport. Tail slides, flat spins, falling leaves, hammerheads, and many other maneuvers I’ve never seen before, which showed a complete delight in unconstrained flying. A good day.

Today was a rest and catch up day. The goal was to make in to Drummond MT which was only 46 miles away. This was a decision point on whether to head toward Great Falls and steer toward North Dakota, or to head south toward Helena and towards Wyoming or South Dakota.

To navigate to Drummond, I ended up using Komoot. Well… Sometimes Komoot doesn’t have a clear idea of what the road surface is like. In this case, the road I was on simply ended and Komoot was telling me to get onto a gravel path which was a service “road” for a rail line (Komoot thought it was paved). Gravel is generous. In general it consisted of sharp little rocks from gum-balls to golf ball size. Me and my bicycle tolerated this for maybe a half to a mile and then decided on a Plan B. I lifted my bicycle over a Barbwire fence, then crawled through the fence myself and climbed the embankment onto interstate 90E. Out west it’s legal for bicyclists to pedal on the highway, so off I went.

It actually wasn’t too bad. The breakdown lane is as wide as a regular lane and if a vehicle somehow goes into the breakdown lane, it would bounce over the rumble strips making a huge amount of noise and you could swerve and tumble into the weeds before it hits you. It actually wasn’t scary at all. The main problem was that there was absolutely no shade and no water to cool off with. After 20 miles on the highway, I was able to once again get back onto side roads. By this time, it had gotten really hot, so being able to dunk my shirt and my head into a cool meandering stream was a little piece of heaven.

In Drummond, I stopped at Swedes Bar and had a great pizza, about four tall glasses of cold water, and found it an inexpensive hotel room for the night. Right now, I’m looking forward to an early bed time and an early start. Great Falls and the Great North it is. Once again, the mountains await.

Today was a lot of climbing and I used all my gears. After about a 25 mi gentle climb, the grade went straight up… for miles…. and it was getting hotter. No nice cool river to cool off in, just me, my two water bottles, and a pocketful of candy bars. The reward was crossing over the Continental Divide and into Montana, woohoo! At Lolo Pass, I met only my second and third bicycle tourists, Jake and Adam. Very nice folks. It would have been nice to spend a few days with them but after I passed them in a tuck on the subsequent steep 12 mile downhill, I never saw them again.

My drive system had been making noise so I decided to check its chain stretch: 7.5% yikes!!!!! The chain was only a little over a week and a half old and it was completely worn out. That explained the noise though. Fortunately, in Missoula, the Bicycle Hanger Bike shop took care of me and sold me a new chain. Yay!!! This was only the first bicycle shop I’d seen in about 300 miles and they were great.

The next problem was finding a place to stay. Hotels were pretty much booked up in Missoula and the rooms that were available were $250+. Ouch! The local campgrounds were all booked up. I called the police and they said that there was no camping in the city parks. Warmshowers was coming up zilch. Damn, I was exhausted! I wanted Missoula but Missoula didn’t want me. Nothing to it. I found a campground 14 miles out of town with open spaces, filled myself with pizza and sugary drinks, and was on my way. Grand total today: 89 miles.

“To us, the Earth is more than the land. streams and rivers, soils, rocks, and all the living things upon the landscape – trees, shrubs, grass, root foods, and berries. This is Wetes. The animals – birds, fish, mammals, insects – they all have their place as rightful owners.” – Diane Mallickan (Nimiipuu / Nez Perce)

Maybe camping in the Kooskia City Park wasn’t the best idea. I called ahead and was instructed exactly where the designated camping area was which was behind the backstop for the Little League field. Supposedly, this was one of the few dry spots in the park that was also flat To keep it low key, I held off putting up my tent until after everyone had stopped using the field. After T-Ball was over, a family started using it for batting practice and the adults were screaming in even higher pitched and louder voices than their kids until well past sunset. The tent went up in the twilight. In the middle of the night, I woke to the unmistakable pssst, pssst, pssst, of the sprinkler system followed by an intermittent rainstorm on my tent. Oh well, guess I’m packing my gear away wet in the morning. In went the earplugs, and I went back to sleep. Nothing to be done. In the morning, as I was getting out of my tent, a duck came flying right at me. By the look on his face and his wings thrashing about in full braking avoidance, it was clear that he was new to this flying thing. He missed my head by about a foot then went crashing into the baseball backstop in full front flop only to fly away again. Good morning to you too.

After packing away my wet gear, I finally got an early start with the plan of getting most of the miles in before noon to avoid the hottest part of the day. I’d be following US12 and the Middle Fork of the Clearwater much of the way to Lolo Pass.

This was by far the beautiful day so far on the tour. As the terrain became steeper, the Clearwater became faster flowing, with more and more rapids. To cool down, I’d either dunk my head and shirt in the river or go swimming to get another 10-20 miles down the road.

By 3p, I arrived at Colgate Camp with a site right next to the river. It really feels like my own little corner of Paradise.

I didn’t get much sleep last night. Between all the in-town catch up and struggling with a Verizon data plan issue, I only got about 5 hours. Can’t be doing that! Sleep is what your body needs to recover for the next day and I paid for it today.

Lewiston ID is right next to Clarkston WA and there are Lewis and Clark themed plaques everywhere for the next couple hundred miles. My road follows their path here where I abandon the Snake River and start following the beautiful Clearwater.

It will be about 220 miles to get to Lolo MT and I’ll be heading right into the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Today, though, it was a nice gentle climb following the banks of the Clearwater. If only there weren’t the headwinds and the heat. Lots of lessons for tomorrow.

Tonight, I’m camping at the Kooskia City Park. There’s some flat spots next to the grandstand that the sprinklers don’t touch and where the little ones are currently playing t-ball. It’s absolutely hilarious watching the semi chaos! Kids running around in every direction. I hope they don’t play too late though. I need to set up my tent and clean up.