Beers and Gears Blog

In Search of Dryness

By Bill Schneider, 5-30-10

	A photo of a brand new section of U.S. 89 south of Browning. Note the rumble strip, recently dug into the 2-3 foot shoulder, which violates Montana Transportation Department policy. Photos by Bill Schneider.

We left Whitefish this morning, but not on our bikes. Yep, it was raining again. West of the divide, “showers” apparently means rain every minute of the day. Again, we’d decided to not ride through the rain. Instead, we decided to search for a dry road, and then ride.

Will called the campground in East Glacier where we planned to stay after following our original plan, which involved riding our bicycles over there from Whitefish, and she said they had snow on the ground. That helped us decide.

So, we’re off. Columbia Falls, rain. Hungry Horse, rain. Martin City, rain. Coram, rain. West Glacier, rain. Essex, rain. East Glacier, rain. Browning, no rain. Whow! No rain. That’s a novel concept. We throw on our Lycra and bolt out of the mobile home and onto our bicycles, heading for Choteau.

Dupuyer, no rain. Penroy, no rain, Bynum, no rain. Choteau, no rain. 

Yep, no rain, all the way, all 71 miles. Hard to believe, eh? 

Glacier Creek bringing snowmelt out of the mountains.

We end up having one of the nicest days in the saddle ever. The route from Browning to Choteau is about as pleasant as it gets for cyclists, great road most of the way, incredible scenery all the way, especially for prairie-lovers like me. I’ve driven this road many times, and every time, I say to myself, this would be a fantastic bike ride, and I was right. Not the high-mountain, snow-capped crags, type of scenery, but better--the tumbling of gentle knolls as the prairie rose up and melted into the Rocky Mountains.

A lot of this route does not have a rideable shoulder or the shoulder has been eradicated by a rumble strip, but nonetheless, it’s still almost as good as it gets.

We had a sharp, westerly side wind all day, which is probably common, but it still turned into one of the best days I’ve ever had on a bike, even without a brewery at the end of the ride. A cooler full of Bent Nail IPA from Red Lodge Ales and Amber Ale from Lewis and Clark Brewing to go with a scrumptious ribeye steak on the grill might have been even better than the best taproom. 

Where the prairie melts into the mountains, all along today’s route.

Just to come clean, all this means, of course, that we’re slackers. So far, we have skipped four days of cycling in favor of experiencing the Great Divide Brewery Tour from the Winnebago. Four rain days. We’ll have to do better next year when we do this again, not in May, but in August or September.

A note on rumble strips. I’ll be writing a column about this later, but for now, here’s the short version. The Montana Transportation Department has a policy that a rumble strip shall not be installed unless there is at least a 48-inch shoulder, but the department commonly ignores its own policy, as we witnessed along most of the route today. If you have a nice three-foot shoulder, it makes cycling much safer, but if you put a rumble strip down the middle of it, cyclists often have little choice but to ride out in the lane of traffic.

Stay tuned. Our plan is changing again tomorrow.

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