Days 17 & 18: Lothair, MT to Havre, MT

The fickle wind gods made Alea pay for her easy ride a couple of days ago.  Luckily the wind was probably only about 10-15 mph.  For most of the day it was a sidewind or a quartering headwind, but for a significant stretch it was head on.  All-in-all, it was a lot like climbing the whole way.

Slogging against the wind.

Fortunately, we had planned a short day (40 miles).  The shoulders of the highway were wide for most of the day, so the occasional stiff side wind wasn't much to be concerned about.

We camped last night at Spencer's Hi-Way Bar & Grill in Hingham ($25, full utilities).  The new owners are in the process of freshening things up, and it is quite pleasant, as is the weather (it finally warmed up late in the afternoon).  The owner was a touring cyclist as well, having ridden from Anacortes, WA to Havre, MT (our destination for tomorrow) in 1988.  It shows in the reader board out front:

We shared a great dinner there of broasted chicken (available only on Mondays and Fridays) for only $8.95 - 4 pieces of chicken, fries and a salad. 

It showered most of last night and by morning it looked a lot like Seattle weather - low clouds, constant rain of varying intensity, but never raining all that hard.  We managed to time things so that we caught the trailing edge of the system and hit the road.

Havre, MT happens to have the last Walmart until we reach Dickinson, ND in another 8 days or so.  The last grocery store we stopped at had wine for exactly twice what we had been paying in Boise, so this is our chance to stock up on supplies and keep our expenses low, at least for those things that aren't perishable.

We adopted an every 5 mile headway for leapfrogging our way to Havre, just in case the rain started back up again and I needed some shelter from the storms.  But it seemed the storm system was moving just a bit faster than I was.  By the first stop at 11 miles I had been averaging 17.7 mph with calm winds.  Since the scenery is a bit monotonous, I decided to see how far I could bump that average up, and by the time I had ridden the 33.5 miles to the west end of Havre the average was up to 19.0 mph.

Look, Ma!  No earmuffs!

So we set up camp at the Great Northern Fairgrounds ($20, power & water) around noon.  We'll be shopping and doing laundry next and then hope to do a little sightseeing.

The view from near the fairgrounds, near where the Natives would
kill bison by herding them over a cliff.

In case anyone was wondering why it is called
the Great Northern Fairgrounds...

According to Rand-McNally, we're now officially in Eastern Montana, so we're about halfway across the state.