Shelby to Joplin, MT
This morning, after a great night’s rest and some camp oatmeal, we headed out. Pat and Dave left with us. We made good time with a gusty tailwind, seeing hundreds of prairie dogs and ground squirrels, a pronghorn antelope, and a bald eagle on its nest. This was the first real spate of roadkill we’d encountered, and most of it was the luckless prairie dogs. If I saw one about to dash into the road, I’d yell at it.
The guys got to Chester well before we did, and Tim, Kevin, and Rick all got haircuts, or I should say got their heads shaved . . . none had any remaining hairs over an eighth inch long.
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| Someone in this area is making a great living off his/her metal cutting skills; many of the city and attraction signs looked like this one of Chester |
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| This dinosaur was quite close to the Chester sign and was probably fabricated by the same person |
The shave & a haircut story is best told by Tim: “I found the barbershop ready for business. I told the barber that I wanted a #1 on the sides #2 on top. He says #1 is short and he’ll do a 1 and ½ on top. I was like sure . . . okay. Kevin and Rick showed up and took the seat after me while I rode around looking for the others; eventually finding them at Subway. When I got back, I found that even though Kevin asked for a #2 on the sides and #4 on top, his haircut looked strikingly similar to my own. So I guess we learned that for $10 you get the haircut the barber wants to give you, not the one you request.”
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| The two "skin heads" comparing cuts |
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| Looking toward Canada, which is only 30 miles north; that's the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe RR--we've been following it nearly all through Montana, which tells you how flat our route has become |
Bill, Diane, and I were riding along together. It was a very hot and windy day, and despite a tailwind, I was beat when we finally got to Joplin. There was a small bar at roadside before our turnoff to the city park where we would camp, so we stopped here long enough to get a cold drink and speak to the owner. He told us that there were no showers at the city park but that we could shower in a place he was building but hadn’t finished. Told us to check back about 3 as he had to get the key.
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| We take a break at a convenience store somewhere on our way to Joplin; it may have been Chester or maybe Rudyard |
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| Rick watching the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe roll through town; it was our nearly constant companion all through Montana and much of North Dakota |
After our bar break, we rode a short piece of unpaved city street to the park, which was a jewel, with long, very green grass and plenty of shade trees. By the time we got to the park, however, the hot wind was pretty fierce. It was difficult to set up the tents and then they had to be carefully staked. Nonetheless, they flapped and slapped in the wind. Pat and Dave rode in and set up their tents, and then the rest of the group arrived and set up theirs. We beat them to the campsite only because they’d spent so much time in Joplin at the library, eating, drinking, and getting haircuts. Kevin brought our attention to a sign on the picnic pavilion wall, and we read it carefully after setting up our tents. It told us when the automatic sprinklers would come on—after midnight on such and such days. At first we thought we had to move our tents, but then realized that we didn’t.
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| With the exception of MT-2 which cut through it, Joplin's city streets were unpaved--very small place but with a lovely park |
We all took sponge baths rather than wait for the bar owner’s shower key, and Kevin even took a bath with the hose that was by the restrooms. Pat and Dave stayed at the campsite and cooked their evening meal, but the four of us (Kevin, me, Bill U., and Diane) went back to the roadside bar for dinner.
Sitting around the picnic table that evening Kevin and Pat got slurringly drunk and talked each other's ears off in a nonsensical way. At one point Kevin grabbed my hand and tried to look earnestly into my eyes to tell me that he really really wanted to thank me for the day-by-day directions I'd made. Of course for the whole ride thus far he has ridiculed the directions to the others and called me obsessive compulsive. I explained to him for the umpteenth time that I had made the written directions for myself as I knew we would not always be riding together. I didn't tell him that I'd made copies for the others because they had no maps and he often wasn't sharing the next day's route with them. Of course we didn't always follow the itinerary, so the written day-to-day directions were often bootless anyway. What we really needed was for Kevin to take a leadership role and to make the route clear to everyone the night before, but he was frequently too tired or tipsy to do so.
On that whining note, I shall end the blog and retire. Tomorrow more miles on endless MT-2.
