Gordon Taylor from Stone is cycling across the length of the United States this summer – 3,800 miles from Seattle on the Pacific coast to Boston on the Atlantic. Here’s the second of his regular reports of his adventure, from Montana
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t was quite a surprise, yesterday, to come across an Izaak Walton Inn near the tiny town of Essex in Montana.
On my bike rides out and about around Stone, I often pass his cottage at Shallowford or the pub bearing his name at Cresswell. The Montana version is a railway hotel, dating from the 1930s and unfortunately has no connection with Staffordshire’s most famous angler – it’s just a random name apparently. I can recommended the coffee and cinnamon rolls, though.
Yesterday’s other surprise was to still be cycling up mountain passes, despite being nearly nine hundred miles from the Pacific coast. In eleven days so far, I’ve crossed the Cascade range, the Rocky Mountains and the area called the High Desert in between. All is going well, except that a large forest fire to the north has closed the famous Going to the Sun Road through Glacier National Park, so I’ve had to use the shorter cycle route across Montana using US Highway Two instead.
In the USA, the phrase “cycle route” means a long-distance, on-highway facility, usually using the wide and smooth shoulder lane. Around Stone, the cycle routes seem random, with bits of lanes here and there plus a bumpy, narrow, shared bit of the canal towpath. High mileage cyclists like myself find most of our local facilities just too fiddly and frustrating to use. Out here, I can ride all morning, covering miles and miles, without even putting a foot down. It’s bliss!
The touring cyclists in Montana are known in the roadside pubs and diners as “wallets on wheels.” Unlike the traveller in a car or motorbike, we stop in virtually every little town. Any semblance of a normal diet is forgotten as we hunt down food which gives the most calories for the fewest dollars. Anything less than six thousand calories a day means I, literally, come to a grinding halt. I often see bicycles parked outside a little cafe. It’s good to have a chat to others, learn about good campsites or road conditions all while we eat American sized portions of omelettes or pizzas.
Now that the mountains have ended, I’m faced with a thousand miles of the plains and wheat fields ahead. Long days on long straight roads. Can’t wait!
