Big Ride Day 18

Photos from Day 18

There was a lot of anticipation of this day among the riders since it is the longest day of the ride. Some people were scared of making that many miles. I probably would have been too if I had known just how difficult the terrain would prove to be. I think the staff played it down a little in order not to scare people too much. We started out by climbing pretty steadily for about 20 miles along a beautiful river. Then we entered into the rolling ranch and farmland we would be in for the rest of the day. The rolling was gentle at first but as the day wore on, the hills became steeper and steeper and higher and higher. Fortunately, I had started out pacing myself pretty well in order to save my knees. The checkpoint was at this "country club" out in the middle of nowhere. This place was really cool inside -- a restaurant, bar, meeting hall, pool hall, etc. It serves all the ranchers in a wide area as a central meeting place. When they said that the checkpoint was at a country club, I was picturing at least a golf course or something but this was a completely different thing. It was wild to come across it in the middle of nowhere. It's amazing how these places survive but they just serve such a wide area I guess. After lunch, we started the long remainder of the day, rolling up and over bigger and bigger hills. At about 2/3 of the way, we reached a bar called the Spotted Horse, which is another bar that is an entire town (the town is also called Spotted Horse). It was a cool little tavern with all kinds of memorabilia on the walls. Apparently, the highway we're riding today used to be on the route to Yellowstone before Interstate 90 was constructed and they did a lot more business then. There was a woman in there from the next town over and she was celebrating her birthday. We sung her a round of "Happy Birthday." It was funny. We hung out there for a while and had some soft drinks and then moved on.

After many more rolling hills, we finally made it to camp. I was riding with Eric and Jim all day. Since I was taking it easy, I actually wasn't that tired but got in the latest I have on any day -- around 5:45 PM. I iced my knees and then went in for dinner. We had buffalo burgers and they were not that great. Also, they wouldn't let us go back for seconds until everyone had been through the line and given how long a day it was, that was going to be a while. That was a bad situation because we thought that there wasn't going to be enough. There turned out to be enough but it was still not that great a dinner.

This page modified November 25, 2000