{"id":307,"date":"2018-07-12T00:10:49","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T04:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/?p=307"},"modified":"2018-07-12T00:42:25","modified_gmt":"2018-07-12T04:42:25","slug":"day_13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/2018\/07\/12\/day_13\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 13: Lewistown to Winnett, Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"

The reader of a travel blog and the blog\u2019s writer have very different desires.\u00a0 The reader is interested in posts that are exciting and have interesting adventures.\u00a0 The writer, especially this one, would like a day or two of boredom.\u00a0 I thought today would be a simple, boring day where I could write a short post that said something like \u201cnothing really happened.\u201d\u00a0 Unfortunately, for me, but not for you, today was not boring.<\/p>\n

I spent the night in the Calvert Hotel in Lewistown, Montana.\u00a0 The bed was large and comfy.\u00a0 The bathroom was stocked with soaps made with goat milk.\u00a0 The internet was fast and I was finally able to upload pictures.\u00a0 The hotel was quiet.\u00a0 It was heaven.<\/p>\n

Check-out time was noon and they provided a cooked breakfast buffet that was worth eating.\u00a0 I woke up early, had breakfast and went back to bed to sleep.\u00a0 It was wonderful.\u00a0 I packed up just before noon and ate a lovely lunch in the hotel lobby that I procured at the local grocery store.<\/p>\n

The ride for today was expected to be just 54 miles to Winnett, Montana.\u00a0 Google maps said there were two ways to go.\u00a0 One was to continue on Route 200.\u00a0 The second was just two miles longer and went via Route 238 through the town of Grass Range.\u00a0 I was skeptical of the second route since Google Street View was not available.\u00a0 This meant part of the second route was on an unpaved road.<\/p>\n

I then used the satellite image to check out the road.\u00a0 Modern technology gives us such amazing tools.\u00a0 The road had a painted yellow line on it!\u00a0 The Street View map was done a decade earlier.\u00a0 The satellite image was only a few months old.\u00a0 That sealed the deal.\u00a0 I would take the second route, which looked like it went through more scenic land.<\/p>\n

I started pedaling and made terrible time because the scenery was so amazing I kept stopping to take pictures.\u00a0 The weather was perfect.\u00a0 The road surface was new and hard.\u00a0 I was following a large stream and life was glorious for the first hour of pedaling.\u00a0 Suddenly the beautiful road stopped and became hard packed gravel and then the road split.\u00a0 At the split a road sign stated that route 238 was veering off in a southward direction.\u00a0 This was not right.\u00a0 Grass Range was due east.<\/p>\n

No, I did not have any cell phone reception to check a map.\u00a0 No, I forgot to download and create an offline map, like I had done on other days.\u00a0 What to do?\u00a0 I did something old fashioned.\u00a0 I asked a man sitting in his front yard for directions.<\/p>\n

It took a while for us to connect since I kept telling him that I was trying to go to \u201cGrass Land\u201d and he had never heard of the place.\u00a0 Once we figured out I was using the wrong name of the town he told me that I missed the turn-off a couple of miles back.\u00a0 He said that I could get to “Grass Range” by continuing up the same gravel road and turning left at the next fork onto Tyler Creek Road.\u00a0 I then asked his advice.\u00a0 Should I go back to the turn-off or take Tyler Creek Road?\u00a0 He smiled and said something like \u201cyou are pedaling and looking for an adventure, so go up Tyler Creek Road.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the positive side Tyler Creek Road has some amazing scenery.\u00a0 On the negative side the road was in terrible shape.\u00a0 Parts were washed out a year ago and the temporary patches were just that, temporary.\u00a0 I bounced, smashed and slid for an hour and half over rough terrain.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

To make matters more exciting the road contained cattle guards or cattle grids.\u00a0 A picture of a cattle grid is above.\u00a0 The idea is simple a rancher fences off all their land but cannot fence off the roads.\u00a0 To prevent cattle from wandering off they drop a steel grid in the ground.\u00a0 When a cow tries to walk off the property using the road they get stuck in the grid and learn not to go through the opening in the fence.<\/p>\n

While the grids are great for ranchers, they are horrible for bicyclists since they are very slippery and the bar spacing captures your wheels.\u00a0 The simplest way to handle a grid is to get off the bike and do a slip-slide walk over them.\u00a0 Grids are not placed for the convenience of cyclists either.\u00a0 There were places where I would come bouncing down a hill going too fast and realize there was a grid coming up very soon.\u00a0 There was also one grid on Tyler Creek Road which was near the top of a large hill.\u00a0 I almost pedaled to the hilltop when the grid appeared.<\/p>\n