Once the pool closed at 8:30pm it got very quiet in the park and everyone slept well. No earthquakes tonight!!

Starting early again today because of the heat and the predicted headwind. Should ONLY be 6-8mph today. Yesterday it was 10-12 mph!!!

I was the first one out of camp, at 6:30am. Six miles down the road was Ft Belknap and the associated Indian Reservation. The Aaniih and Nacoda Nations have their own college on the reservation!!

It was only about 7:00am and their commercial center was not open yet, but I would have liked to have visited this coffee shop. Great name!!!

Looks like the Native Americans deal with a similar problem the rest of our country shares.

ACA routed us off onto tribal roads. Nice to get off of Hwy 2. Routes 9 & 6 gave a welcome relief to the constant traffic on Hwy 2. Only saw 2 cars in the stretch of highway . . .

Development has been kept to a minimum and the land probably looks very much like it did when the tribes roamed the prairies in search of food. Nice looking ponies along the way . . .

. . .  great landscape, sixty degree temps, no wind, no traffic and lots to look at. PERFECT biking . . .

A bald eagle looking for some morning chow . . .

I looked across the field and saw a mother leading five of its little pups across the landscape. They looked like five little bumps as they raised up above the grass line with each step . . . in perfect line behind Mom. They were making their way to this cement pipe that was sticking above the ground. May have been a water source. Once they got there they all climbed up on it. May have been woodchucks Fun to watch!!!

The tribes cemetery was located on Pony Hill. You can’t see it in the photo but it was a collection of white crosses atop, a small hill, in the distance.

I also had two instances of yearling deer running along a fence line, paralleling the road, before they cleared the fence in one leap, crossed the road and jumped over the other fence. Nothing quite as graceful and fluid looking as a deer in full motion.

This section of riding was one of the best of the whole trip, so far. When riding something like this it is easy to see why the native American people feel such a connection to Mother Earth. Easy to image their tents set up along a creek, campfires burning, cooking going on,  kids, running around, meat drying on racks. A gentle people . . .  in a gentle setting. As the road ended, and I turned back onto Hwy 2, I thought I saw a brave on a pony up on the hill waving goodbye to me . . . as I traversed in front of it I realized it was a metal well head. I’ll stick with my imagination.!!!!

Soon I arrived in Dodson, our halfway point for the day, and of course had to stop on at the Dodson Mini-Mart and Café. The café part was out of business . . .

. . . but there sat Al, the owner, behind the cash register of the mini-mart. Not much for sale but they did have cold ice tea. Al has the place up for sale because he is having knee problems and can’t hear or see so good anymore. I asked him if he planned to travel to Florida when he sold the place and he said, No, he had traveled enough and  seen everything he wanted to see. He just wanted to retire in Dodson!

. . . he has the place listed with Kitty Wines . . . quite a name!!!! . . .  and here is the listing!!!

Right outside of Dodson I came to this site of what must have been a terrible accident. Have never seen a seven cross memorial before . . . and on a straight section of road too. Very sad.

Kid Curry . . . a great name. Most of us stop and read these signs at historical road  pullouts. Gives you a chance to get out of the saddle, have a drink and learn some local lore. Always interesting!!!

A big part of a quality ride is to get into camp in one piece each day. A lot of doing that is biking defensively, being aware of your surroundings and having a safe riding experience. Safe riding experience = good shoulder. It’s interesting that a state highway like Hwy 2 can have so many varieties of shoulders. One would think it would be standardized across all jurisdictions. This is not a good shoulder (too narrow) and is an en example of what we have been riding on most of the time through Montana. Vehicles of all kinds zipping by at 70 miles per hour, their mirrors or chassis less than five feet way. When a car is coming towards you in the other lane and a vehicle is coming up behind you, and can’t pull over into the other lane to give you a wide berth, it is like the Perfect Storm. You all pass each other at the same instant. It is very unnerving . . . the only thing worse than this shoulder is the same shoulder and the whole thing is a rumble strip. Got to ride in the traffic lane then!!!

Must have something to do with county budgets. Blaine County had about a six foot shoulder, including an 18 inch rumble strip . . .

. . . but five feet later when you crossed the Phillips County line it went to 8 feet. NICE!!!!!

. . .what’s that ahead . . . an overpass??? Sure enough. Hwy 2 runs east west and we have had the BNSF rail line on the north side of us for HUNDREDS of miles. Always entertaining to watch trains roll by. Now, for some reason, the road was crossing over the rail line and it will now be on the south side of Hwy 2.

A BIG deal in the world, as we know it? . . . No, but when you are riding 4,282 miles cross country, you have a lot of time to notice things. Inquiring minds want to know.

We arrived in Malta, MT our home for the night. The ‘campground’ was marginally acceptable. We have stayed at a number of RV parks that have tent camping areas that have been pretty nice. My favorite is still the one in Ione. But if it says RV Park, like this one does, they are really set up for rigs you pull behind your car that need electric and plumping at night . . . in fact that is what we were supplied with, this drive in site. Not much soft ground for a tent. The brown building on the right has a laundry room and a nice bathroom, but only one. With 15 people that need to shower and use the bathroom, SEVERAL times during the night, it would not work. We had to rent a motel room to provide additional ‘plumbing access’!!!!

There was a screened gazebo we could use.This is a bad sign because we are still in the Milk River Valley and mosquitoes were bad last night. With the presence of this screened gazebo it probably means things will be worse tonight. Lots of irrigation in this area = lots of hungry mosquitos!!!