Day 348
Picked up by a pickup
We had another quiet day on the road, big hard shoulder and little traffic. We diverted to have a look at the Two Medicine area, with its stunning lake 2 miles wide and 33 miles long, surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Two Medicine got it’s name due to two groups of Blackfoot Indians. They had arranged to meet up and perform the Medicine Ceremony but being unable to find each other, each group performed the ceremony, and Two Medicine was born. It was a calm beautiful area but we were excited to reach our destination, East Glacier, so pushed on.
Ahead we noticed flashing lights and stationary cars, roadworks! It looked as if they were widening the road, which is great as at this point the hard shoulder had disappeared. Good news for cyclists but not what we wanted today. We don’t mind queuing, it just means time to rest and chat to the car drivers about just how awesome we are! However today there was bad news, we couldn’t cycle through the roadworks, we had to have a lift in a pick-up truck. We politely explained about the ‘line’ and how we wanted to ride all the way apart from crossing the sea! The pickup driver wasn’t interested in our plight but didn’t want the hassle of loading the bikes and we were through, yeh! We were waved through the next set of lights too, but whoever was in charge wasn’t happy, and at the final set of lights we met the immovable Harriet. A perfectly lovely lady, but no matter how much we pleaded it was in the pickup for the final mile or so uphill. I have to confess I was rather excited about riding in the back of the pickup and missing the hill was a bonus. Tom was much more disappointed, but we decided as the road was barred to us technically, we hadn’t broken the line!
We then had a fantastic few mile downhill to our campsite. We stopped and looked at an area dedicated to the Blackfoot Indians, who at one time could call most of Wyoming and Montana home, but now had rights to just a tiny piece of land.
Our campsite was simple with one major plus, the position. We had a grandstand view of the mountains. As the sun was out and we were tired we decided to just kick back and relax. After we cooked our meal, our neighbours invited us over for a drink and chat about our trip. A lovely end to our day.
