Day 15, Monday, July 14.
Malta, MT to Wolf Point, MT
Daily Mileage: 120.81 miles
Total Mileage: 1,319.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:04 hours
Average Speed: 17.0 mph
Maximum Speed: 37.1 mph
Mosquito Hell! I have never seen more mosquitoes in my life. My legs and arms are all swollen with bites. I can't believe the amount of mosquitoes in this area. We started this morning at the campground in Malta, with a breakfast of Hostess Fruit Pies, Pop Tarts and Gatorade. Then we started packing our bikes. The camp bathrooms were really in poor condition so we used the restaurant’s ones down the road. After stretching and fielding questions from travelers we started down the road.
Our first leg was twenty-seven miles, a slow, heavy twenty-seven miles. You knew it was morning by the way we were riding. It always takes that first leg of the day to resign yourself to sitting on your bike for another day and loosening up. We stopped in a really small town with a nice grocery to get some more Gatorade, cottage cheese and a Whatchamacallit candy bar (one of my favorite foods of the trip). When the mosquitoes started picking up we split.
Our middle leg for the day was to Glasgow. The wind kept blowing east, but U.S. 2 was winding all over the place, not giving us a straight shot east. We stopped at a rest area for water and met a couple with their daughter who are riding from their home in Seattle to Virginia. They left in late June and need to be finished by October 1. They were riding with a tandem and single bike and were traveling about 50 miles a day. While we were in Glasgow at the Pizza Hut, we saw members of the Michigan group ride through, as well as the Seattle family.
Today marks the beginning of week three—two whole weeks of camping and getting up to ride one hundred miles. The plains seem to be taking a greater toll on our bodies then the mountains. Our bodies are aching more and our butts (and other areas) are sore and chaffing. Hopefully these things will work themselves out.
We made it, barely, to this town of Wolf Point. My legs were really tight and tired. We ate for the third night in a row at Subway. During dinner we took a moment to look at the map to see where we've been and how large North Dakota looks, ouch. A really nice lady helped us locate a place to camp about two miles back up the road that we knew was open and had showers. As soon as we arrived at the campsite the mosquitoes swarmed us. With rain jacket and pants on, we hurried to set up camp while talking to this nice guy from Great Britain, now of New Jersey, who is camping next to us and also biking across the country. To end the day, I took a half-hour shower in water that reeked of sulfur.
(Photo: One of the many beautiful sunsets we saw in Montana.)
Daily Mileage: 120.81 miles
Total Mileage: 1,319.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:04 hours
Average Speed: 17.0 mph
Maximum Speed: 37.1 mph
Mosquito Hell! I have never seen more mosquitoes in my life. My legs and arms are all swollen with bites. I can't believe the amount of mosquitoes in this area. We started this morning at the campground in Malta, with a breakfast of Hostess Fruit Pies, Pop Tarts and Gatorade. Then we started packing our bikes. The camp bathrooms were really in poor condition so we used the restaurant’s ones down the road. After stretching and fielding questions from travelers we started down the road.
Our first leg was twenty-seven miles, a slow, heavy twenty-seven miles. You knew it was morning by the way we were riding. It always takes that first leg of the day to resign yourself to sitting on your bike for another day and loosening up. We stopped in a really small town with a nice grocery to get some more Gatorade, cottage cheese and a Whatchamacallit candy bar (one of my favorite foods of the trip). When the mosquitoes started picking up we split.
Our middle leg for the day was to Glasgow. The wind kept blowing east, but U.S. 2 was winding all over the place, not giving us a straight shot east. We stopped at a rest area for water and met a couple with their daughter who are riding from their home in Seattle to Virginia. They left in late June and need to be finished by October 1. They were riding with a tandem and single bike and were traveling about 50 miles a day. While we were in Glasgow at the Pizza Hut, we saw members of the Michigan group ride through, as well as the Seattle family.
Today marks the beginning of week three—two whole weeks of camping and getting up to ride one hundred miles. The plains seem to be taking a greater toll on our bodies then the mountains. Our bodies are aching more and our butts (and other areas) are sore and chaffing. Hopefully these things will work themselves out.
We made it, barely, to this town of Wolf Point. My legs were really tight and tired. We ate for the third night in a row at Subway. During dinner we took a moment to look at the map to see where we've been and how large North Dakota looks, ouch. A really nice lady helped us locate a place to camp about two miles back up the road that we knew was open and had showers. As soon as we arrived at the campsite the mosquitoes swarmed us. With rain jacket and pants on, we hurried to set up camp while talking to this nice guy from Great Britain, now of New Jersey, who is camping next to us and also biking across the country. To end the day, I took a half-hour shower in water that reeked of sulfur.
(Photo: One of the many beautiful sunsets we saw in Montana.)
