Hardin to Forsyth, 76 miles, 1600 feet of climbing - in temperatures around 100+ degrees.
The easiest way for us to cover our latest route plan is to go back and delete all of the discussion about poring over maps, etc. from yesterday’s blog entry. However, in the spirit of full disclosure, we will leave as is and try to provide a brief explanation. Yesterday morning, we planned to ride into South Dakota by way of a few 100+ mile days which would also include a few big climbs. We were also attracted to the possibility of stopping at Little Big Horn. All looked good until the forecasted warm weather shifted up 10+ degrees to a few days with highs exceeding 100. We also took a closer look at the road gradients in Wyoming and realized that it might be a little too much, even bordering on dangerous. So cooler (no pun intended) heads prevailed and we made a course correction.
It didn’t inconvenience us all that much as there was a road (flat and fast) that brought us up to a more northerly corridor, eventually bringing us up to North Dakota. We’re sure it will be great and, besides, we stayed in Big Horn County last night and the Big Horn County Sheriff stopped by (as we were riding) yesterday to make sure we were okay. But we are a little disappointed that we won’t see Little Big Horn on this trip.
Today’s ride started out fast on a little traveled connector road. We then turned onto a quiet back road which we enjoyed until it completely fell apart (like our earlier plans), eventually with a gate strongly suggesting that vehicular traffic stay away. We navigated our way back to more traveled roads including a stretch on I-94. We know, that sounds pretty scary and even illegal - but it was neither. First, bicycle travel is allowed on interstates in Montana, and second (and more relevant here), the volume of traffic on I-94 is pretty low in this part of Montana. You can easily be lulled into thinking that it is a country road, albeit with the occasional semi whizzing by at 80 mph.
Today, we had a series of climbs and lots of ups and downs. But by far the biggest issue of the day was the heat. One hundred degrees is hot no matter how you cut it, especially when there are no trees or shade to be found. We took refuge under the occasional tree when it presented itself and even stopped under an overpass - an unexpected but nonetheless welcome reprieve from the sun as we had not come across an overpass in the last several hundred miles.
Changing routes to one that now takes us through North Dakota versus South Dakota allowed us to cut our miles back a bit so we could get out of the sun a little earlier than usual. That worked for us today. We’re going to try to start out earlier tomorrow that we hope will get us out of the heat by early afternoon. It is a change from our prior mode of clocking as many miles as logistics allow but it makes a lot of sense to take this approach in this heat. Perhaps we’re growing up and starting to think like adults. Or not.
You might as well just stay north of the great Lakes as well, eh?
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