8/15/15
Didn’t sleep too well being just a couple hundred yards off the busy I-15. Not to mention the small business adjacent to the tiny park was busy early this morning. Does everybody in Montana just let their trucks idle forever? Poked my head of the tent this morning to discover the valley was filled with smoke from wildfires out west. Could not see the mountains that were clearly visible yesterday and there was a faint smell of smoke in the air.
I had to peddle my way to Lima MT by way of the I-15 service drive which had a slight downhill making for an easy peddle to start the day. For one of the first times, I decided it would be nice to have some traveling music so I got out the headphones and plugged them into my phone to listen to Pandora. Funny how with just a simple channel selection I can find music from my childhood and be transported back to that time.
Just a few miles from Lima I met a couple biking the other direction. From the style of bikes they were riding I knew they were not Divide riders. Stopped and talked for a bit and learned they were from the Czech Republic and started biking in Argentina. Told me that come this November they will have been biking for 2 years. Holy Crap!
A quick stop in Lima to use the restroom and buy a Gatorade I headed out-of-town. Had to use the GPS track to find my way out-of-town as I was a little skeptical that this little road was actually going to lead somewhere and not into a dead-end. Not too many miles outside of Lima heading easterly I lost my Pandora connection and switched to the iPad which had my entire music library. For most of the day I jammed out to the best of Van Halen.
At one point the sun was getting warm and I decided to get some sun on my shoulders and removed my shirt. I have a habit of keeping my reading glasses close by hooking them on the front collar of my shirt. Well, I forgot about that little fact and lost the glasses when I took the shirt off. Didn’t discover my only means to reading a map were long gone until many miles later. Good thing they were just cheap dollar store readers.
Since it had been a couple of hours since I’ve seen another soul on this road and it was getting warmer I decided to cool down even more and removed the outer shell of my cycling shorts. Essentially it’s like riding in just my underwear, but anybody passing in a car wouldn’t know the difference, just looks like I’m riding in Lycia riding shorts. Of course about half an hour later I look over my shoulder to see another south bound divide rider about half a mile back. I saw the wave of a hand and stopped to wait, hoping it’s a guy and not a girl rider.
It was indeed a guy and we only talked for a few minutes since he was wanting to travel further much than me for the day. He intended to make campground 20 miles beyond my intended camp spot and had to be there before they closed the office at 6:00. I’m doubting he made it by 6:00 because I could see he was only about half a mile ahead of me when I stopped for the day and he needed to climb over Red Rock Pass in those 20 miles as well.
When I got to my intended camp spot at the Upper Lake Campground in the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge there were two couples having a picnic. They invited me for some lunch, and being from Idaho they gave me some good info and some ‘must see’ attractions if I have the chance.
When they left I set up camp, meeting and talking with others also using this area to camp for the night. One couple had a nice camper that fits in the back of a pickup truck. They travel the country while working on the road, logging in daily to do whatever they do. Later I found out just how they take care of business way out in the wild as I watched this rather large satellite automatically rise up off the top of the camper and orient itself to an ambiguous point in the sky.
Camp spot at Upper Lake Campground
Just before I decided to crawl into my tent for the night it became extremely windy. Decided to reorient the tie-downs on my tent as to make them all resist a pull from the direction of the wind. The winds stayed strong for most of the night and miraculously I was able to get some sleep. Fully expected to find some of the tie-downs ripped off my tent when I woke in the morning.
