The Northern Tier: Days 15-17

Day 15: Rest day in Havre Montana

Warmshowers.org is a website designed to allow people (usually bicyclists not on tour) to connect to touring cyclists and allow them a spot to stay for the night.  I found John Paul Schmidt on there and he was gracious enough to let me stay for two nights while I took a bona fide no-cycling-at-all rest day in Havre MT.

Havre is a pretty interesting town, and fairly typical of a lot of the towns that sprang up while servicing the constructiong of the Hi-Line.  I spent a lot of the rest day running errands, laundry, stocking up on fuel for my stove and for my legs. The rest of the day I spent sightseeing everything I could in town. First of was the buffalo jump.

2000 years of buffalo bones and butchered remains lie underneath those buildings. Fragments of a lost way of life.

A buffalo jump is a site where Native Americans would stampede buffalo off of a cliff, killing or maiming many, where they then descended and harvested meat, bones, hide, sinew, everything the buffalo had to offer. They stocked up for months in a single jump. This particular site just bordering Havre had been used for at least 2,000 years before European settlers decimated the herds.  The buildings in the photo above house excavation sites where piles of bones were discovered, along with butchering tools, arrowheads, atlotls and a few bits of pottery.  This site is so old, at least three seperate civilization groups used the site, all for running buffalo to their deaths.  Now there is a strip mall on the cliff, and a small museum commemorating the place.

This skeleton came from a buffalo that wandered out of Yellowstone. They used beetles to clean the bones.
This is the Milk River. The Missouri used to flow through this river valley, but was rerouted by an ice dam during the last ice age. The Milk River now follows it’s ancient course.

Havre has some more interesting exhibits.  In 1906, if I remember correctly, there was a fire that destroyed a large part of the city’s business section.  Most of the businesses still had their basements, so they moved their trades underground.  While the city waited for a brick factory to be built, life carried on underneath the streets.  When the builings were eventually rebuilt, ilicit businesses (a bordello, opium den, bars, etc) remained underground, lit during the day by glass embedded in the sidewalk.

The glass “windows” allowing light into the underground of Havre.
The windows from below. Apparently they used to be clear, but sunlight has changed the chemical nature of some minerals inside the glass causing a shift to purple. It’s eerie underneath.
“Legit” businesses like dentists were forced to operate underground for a while.
Seedier businesses stayed after rebuilding. Here is the Madame’s room from the bordello. Underground passageways linked this brothel to the bar across the highway.
An underground bar.
Blacksmith.
Pharmacy.
Noteworthy old-timey medicines.
Our lovely tourguide Tamy

The tour was fascinating, and current day businesses still operate above the Beneath the Streets Museum.  Apparently the original fire that forced the town underground was started by a few rufians who, having been kicked out of a bar for disorderly conduct, achieved their revenge on the barkeep by burning down the bar.  The fire subsequently burned down the rest of 1906 downtown Havre.  A true wild west story.

John Paul and I played videogames and ate dinner, chillin as young men do.  I was happy to have clean clothes and clean skin and hair.  Throughout the day thunderheads would drift over the town, dropping torrential downpours for twenty minutes as they passed, leaving with a few claps of thunder and disappearing into the distance.   I ate a lot of ice cream that day.

Mileage: 0

Day 15: Boredom Punctuated by Flat Tires

     The road from Havre to Malta was mostly flat, mostly straight and mostly unexciting. I don’t have a lot to say about this day other than that patching tires in the rain is infuriating and that I decided I needed a book on tape.

I was lucky to still have tailwinds and to have narrowly avoided thudnerstorms the entire day.

Nightmares on the left, daydreams on the right.
These roads go on forever.

Mileage: 90

Day 17: Chasing Thunderstorms

     I woke up in a public park in Malta MT.  I was vaguely planning a large day, the winds were still blowing from the west, although not as strongly, so I was hoping for a century.  The entire day however, I chased a thunderhead across the plains.  I could see lightning striking the ground and the closer I got, for I was actually gaining on the system, the more worried I got for my safety.  Riding a steel bicycle completely unprotected is not the best way to travel through that sort of weather.

Lightning struck this field. That puff of smoke is evidence if I’m not mistaken. Spooky stuff
Grain elevators are everywhere.
Sometimes the cows come to check out the lunatic on a bike. Sometimes the run away.

So I stopped in a convenience store about 50 miles into my ride and waited for the storm to get ahead of me.  Despite how much I wanted to crush the miles, seeing fires start in fields next to me gave me the heebie jeebies and I decided to wait things out.

Once things had cleared a bit I rode on towards Glasgow MT, got another flat along the way, patched it badly, after which it ran flat again.  I was 3 miles from the RV park I was set to camp at and frustrated beyond sensibility.   I finally pulled out a previosly busted tube, managed to patch it adequately and made my careful way into the park.  Flat tires are the worst.

Mileage: 70

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