Day 22. Glasgow to Wolf Point, 49 miles

Riding was fun today! Having some tailwind (there was some crosswind too) helped an awful lot, and it was also relatively cool, with beautiful puffy clouds, and, for good stretches, flattish. And I appear to be out of the mosquito current (!?).

My morning started with a reminder of how far north I am. I’ve seen a fair number of these.

Do you think Canada has “USA —>” road signs? Do you think Canadians shake their heads ruefully and jerk the steering wheel in the other direction when they see them? Sorry, I have been reading the news.

I also saw this train carrying wind turbine propellers!

Most trains are a mishmash of shippers and products; they look like Frankentrains, with cars and shipping containers of all shapes and sizes, scrawled with graffiti from everywhere. The wind turbine train and the below one I saw a few days ago, which I assume is carrying oil, are the only single-item dedicated trains I’ve seen; I stopped for video of this one because it was so remarkably (and somehow ominously?) uniform. Both, of course, went on for far longer than I recorded.

Late morning (9:30 hah!), I was stopped at a historical marker contemplating the fact that I was going to arrive in Wolf Point—18 miles away—way too early and doing stuff on my phone. A motorcyclist stopped, and I ignored him thinking he’d read the marker and go away, and then I finished and put away the phone, and he raised his visor to talk to me, and it was a woman! And her name is Kelly, and she is riding to Alaska from Massachusetts and seemed way cool. We chatted for a few minutes, tripping over each other’s words to ask the other questions about her trip, and I gave her some notes on the towns ahead.

The historic marker itself was one of the saddest I’ve encountered. And relevant, even timely, it seemed.

Mostly the day looked like this:

As expected, even with a nearly hourlong break, I arrived in Wolf Point just after noon, too early to check in and drop my bike in the room.

I’d read in a blog post that Wolf Point was rough, and the women at the Glasgow gas station shook their heads forebodingly when I told them I was spending the night there and went so far as to yank out the local yellow pages to find me a motel, because they insisted I shouldn’t camp. Browning had been pretty poor, and I asked if it was comparable, and the lady said it was far worse, that at least Browning still had some good people who cared. Wolf Point is on the Fort Peck Reservation (Christ, no wonder it’s a depressed place), which they told me is particularly hopeless, plagued by meth and alcohol. She warned me not to go to one particular gas station of the three, since that’s where the bad element hung out. I didn’t know what to expect; I’m from NY, live in Chicago, and am often told to be scared of laughably tame places. I’m not going to casinos (always choose the motel option that doesn’t have an attached casino, which many do) or dedicated bars, and I’m not out at night, so I don’t worry much, but she made it sound like a hellhole.

It is not. It’s definitely depressed, and one of ladies of the Wolf Point Museum (more on that in a minute) told me the town is dying because all the young people are moving where there are opportunities and also warned me against camping. And the small, open park as I entered town was reminiscent of other public spaces that have been given over to drunks and rowdies (Verdi Square in NY comes to mind). There were maybe a dozen men hanging out, one on a makeshift tire swing. But the town had commerce, people out doing their business, a nice diner where I had lunch, and a Wolf Point history museum of sorts right next door to my motel.

The museum! I loved it. It was a mess of stuff, some junk, some quality, all fascinating; the items were mostly donated by or on loan from local families. The older gentleman running it was constitutionally incapable of allowing me to just wander the place, so every few minutes he’d come over and point out something else I needed to see. It was kind of charming, and I think it also got him out of making plastic cutlery napkin rolls for upcoming Pancake Days with a klatch of ladies in the back.

My favorite item by far was the barbed wire collection, dedicated wholesale by a fellow who clearly loved the form and variety.

I asked if there was anything else in town I should see and got uniform head shakes, so I headed next door, got my room, did some laundry, and wrote about snacks.

Tomorrow I’m back to camping! I have pre-departure reservations made through Monday night because weekend accommodations make me nervous. It’s supposed to barely break 80 today, so I’m excited to be back outside.