Day 340
Garnet Ghost Town
After yesterday’s easy miles today was payback time. 50 plus miles, reasonably tough, but we had added in something extra, a deserted, and rumoured to be haunted, gold mining town. Well you know the saying, ‘There’s gold in them there hills’, yes? Well that’s where they built the town, up in them there hills. Naturally to get there from our side of the hill was up Bear Gulch, all 17 miles of it. The sign at the bottom said that at 6 miles up it was closed, but we decided that only meant for cars and pedalled on. It was so quiet that Tom and I both felt somewhat nervous, could we see a bear, no? Could the bears see us? We didn’t know. 6 miles in and the threatened closure point came and went, we were fine to continue. Now this hill started in earnest. Komoot colour codes it’s climbs. Green = easy, light orange = slightly harder, deep orange = its getting steep. Well this was coloured dark maroon and boy my face soon matched! 15% in places! It was tough, not only very steep but also not tarmac but a rutted loose gravel track, with strips of rubber acting as drainage channels every few hundred yards. We both had to dig very deep to keep going. Tom made it, but yet another rubber strip on the last 100 yards from the top of the steep section broke me. I slipped off and simply pushed on up. Enough was enough, on my mountain bike I’d have loved it, but on my fully loaded tourer it was hell. Though obviously we were still far from the top, we still had 4 miles of orange to go!
Garnet, our ghost town was worth it though. From someone shouting, ‘Gold’ a large bustling town was instantly created. The gold was panned rather than mined for, and soon there were many claims. The town grew as more and more prospectors arrived. There was a school, 13 ale houses, stores, cottages, a hotel containing the best dance floor in Montana. There was even a honeymooners cottage. If someone married, the owner let the happy couple live there for free until the next wedding. Today the majority of the buildings have gone, but a few remain, the school, a store, the blacksmiths and the hotel with that dance floor. One house was still lived in until the mid-1950s but the majority left long before. Time and scavengers have taken their toll but if you stand for a moment, half close your eyes you can almost see it in it’s heyday.
Then our reward, 17 miles downhill, and on the road that cars use, so no rutted track, but still a fair bit of gravel which made the first few miles rather tricky. Finally tarmac arrived and with it the sun, we flew down and arrived into spring at the bottom! At this point I started fantasising. Now wouldn’t it be wonderful to find a coffee shop like we have at home in Scarborough. To explain, in the UK we love our cafés. If there is a reason for people to gather, a garden centre, a town, a village, a hamlet, a nice view, then you will also find a café. Generally there will be coffee and tea on offer to drink. Some more adventurous places may serve alcohol, there will be soup and sandwiches, but they will all serve cake and my personal favourite, scones. I am somewhat of an expert when it comes to scones, I spent lockdown creating a new flavour every week and delivering them by bike to a select group of friends. I like to think I made their week! So anyone who has been to the places Tom and I have ridden in the States will understand my anguish. Unless in a sizable town, and they are very few of those, there are no coffee shops. If you can find a sandwich they tend to fry the bread, tasty but well not quite right. No chocolate cake, no coffee cake, no lemon cake soaked with lemon drizzle, and finally the scones. We serve them with wonderful jams and clotted cream. I can hardly type the words now, but here they call scones biscuits and serve them for breakfast with white gravy. So our reward for that hellish hill was a stop at the gas station, or petrol station to my British readers. We knew we could rely on it to serve us food and drink, always plentiful and good value but oh my what I wouldn’t give for one of my blueberry and lemon scones from the oven. Ah well.
Refuelled we rode the last few miles to our home for the night, Salmon Lake State Park. This was a first for us, we hadn’t booked as it had a hiker biker section. The staff were welcoming and clearly very proud of the campsite. We were too tired to do anything more that eat our tea and fall into bed. Tomorrow we would explore!
