Start: 8:00AM

Finish: 1:30 PM

Saddle Time: 4:00 PM

Ascent: 718 feet

Descent:  954 feet

Miles: 50 miles

Total Miles: 1,350

Highlight: Decent road to ride on all day.

Lowlight: Visiting the dinosaur museum in Glendive that presents dinosaurs in a biblical context.  FYI, man and dinosaur coexisted thousands of years ago. Wow!

Cyclemeter:  Follow this link to see the data I’m collecting with the cyclemeter app. You can see gps information, speed, elevation, distance, cadence and heart rate. Better viewed on a computer where it’s easier to play around with the graphs.

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday was almost completely terrible while today just the opposite. It wasn’t fantastic but in comparison to yesterday anything is great. I started the morning with coffee and a breakfast sandwich from the gas station next door.  It didn’t open until 6:00 AM so I was in no rush to get up, since it was a short ride if I get out by 8:00 I’ll be fine.  The ride was only about 50 miles with a moderate climb to start, well I can’t really call it a climb but more of an elevation gain over about 10 miles.  Super gentle grade with some hills but net up followed by about 40 miles of gentle downhill to the Yellowstone River in Glendive.  Of course my friend the headwind returned late morning but it wasn’t all that bad, slowed my progress but I’ve experienced worse.  I’ve resigned myself to this fate, I will have headwinds for the next 1,000 miles until I get to within 1,000 miles of the east coast. I have no idea, just making that up but it seems to make sense with how this summers weather pattern is abnormal.  I’m supposed to have a tailwind by now. It’s the reason why the preferred direction for this route is west to east.  Not this summer.

Compared to yesterday the road conditions were great.  I had some kind of shoulder the whole way and strangely light traffic but it is a Saturday morning, I often loose track of days. I continued through prairie with sections of badlands like terrain.  I’m also back into grain country, seeing more fields of crops, grain elevators and such.

At one point I came across a train that went on over the horizon. I stopped to take pictures then continued on noting my odometer.  It went on for 5 miles.  The tracks had weeds growing up around the cars so I don’t think it has moved for a very long time.  Later that day while in town I started talking to a guy who worked for the railroad.  He said they park unused cars along that track, leaving breaks for side roads.

I crossed over the Yellowstone River on a bridge that dates back to the 1920’s, now just a pedestrian bridge.  Even with my somewhat late start I was getting into town pretty early around 1:00 so I stopped first for a Gatorade at a gas station followed by a food truck selling Mexican food.  Wow! Food other than steak and hamburgers.  I happily grabbed a burrito for the road.  I’m staying at the Yellowstone River Inn which sounds more quaint than it actually is.  It’s a $55 night motel but quite nice for the price.

After downing my burrito and taking a shower I went across the street to the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum.  I was looking forward to this museum.  I know nothing about it but I’m in dinosaur country so it could be interesting.  I walked in and saw a sign saying “We present dinosaurs in a biblical context”.  Strange, but I went to the desk to pay my $8 entry fee anyway. The guy said “we are having a creation day sale so admission is only $5”.  Ok. He went on to say “we present dinosaurs in a biblical context”.  I’m putting my credit card in the machine and this line is bouncing around my head, what does that mean? So I had to ask.  He said there is a lot of evidence to suggest dinosaurs and humans coexisted over the past thousands of years and they were whipped out by the great flood of Noah’s Ark.  Holy shit!  He’s serious but I went in anyway.

I have to say the museum was very nice with lots of fossils, probably casts but cool none the less.  They mixed in a lot of solid paleontology and biology with complete bullshit.  It was like watching an episode of Tucker Carlson where he asks a question that’s easily answerable with a little research by any journalist but by not providing an answer he suggests there isn’t one or that the answer is negative. 

They had a good display about the cell, it’s organelles and DNA.  They talked about how the cell has repair mechanism built in to fix errors during replication or from spontaneous mutations. Then the question: “If the cell has repair mechanisms built into it then how can DNA change over time?”.  Makes a lot of sense until you think about it.  Because all mechanisms fail from time to time.  It’s why we can track the lineage of SARS-Cov2 as it mutates while passing through human hosts.  Evolution happing before our eyes in realtime. Like Tucker this place is toxic to people who don’t or can’t think for themselves, especially kids.

I finished off my last day in Montana with a large ribeye steak, a glass of wine, and a coconut cream pie at the restaurant attached to my motel.  You wouldn’t expect motel food to be good but this was outstanding.  They are open 24 hours so I’ll get a real breakfast in the morning.

Tomorrow I leave Montana after 2 weeks and enter North Dakota.  I’m also camping for the first time in almost 2 weeks.