Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and looked east, I saw that the plateau of land I was on ended abruptly and plunged,
and the road—it's U.S. 89, by the way—followed it down. There was simply a drop-off,
and beyond it in the distance the whole rest of the nation seemed to be spread out before
me like a vast table that was waiting for place settings. I was amazed. Really, this must
be where someone coined the phrase “It's all downhill from here.”
If only. In fact, there were some uncomfortable ups and downs before I finally hit
the flats. The road pointed south for several miles, with a number of twists in it, no big
help against a stubborn wind from the southwest, but I finally found myself heading due
east toward Browning on Starr School Road, a desktop-straight thoroughfare for pickup
trucks with little weather shelter, and was able to use the wind a bit to my advantage. It
wasn't quite a sailboat ride into town but it was good to feel like the gods were at least a
little on my side.
After my conversation at the Lake McDonald Lodge about the Indian museums, I was
planning to stop in Browning, for an hour or two at least, overnight maybe. And after
my conversation at the Buffalo Cafe, I didn't want to feel accused again—even if only by
myself—of passing on a potentially valuable experience for the sake of expediency.
But, at the end of Starr School Road, I turned south into town, and someone riding
in a pickup that was pulling out of a nearby gas station tossed a bottle out the back and
it smashed on the road about twenty yards away with the sound of a gunshot. I'm not
convinced the bottle was aimed at me—I'm not even sure the guy saw me—but yeah, I
was spooked. And I was also being persuaded out of Browning by what I saw. The road
went along the edge of town and didn't show the place of to much advantage—auto
body shops, unattractive housing developments, storage sheds, scrubby fields with litter
blowing across them like tumbleweed. Besides, the wind had picked up and the road had
turned into it, and I could tell by the map that if I made it beyond town, I'd find the
junction of Route 2, heading east, and somewhat easier pedaling.
So I passed on through, though not without difficulty. Just south of town, Browning
ends abruptly, and so does civilization, and so does anything resembling a crest of land
or a grove of trees. Really it's just two flat planes, the sky and the prairie, meeting at the
horizon, with a stripe of road slashing through the blank-scape like the lone brushstroke
on a minimalist canvas. I had a lingering flash of terrifying awareness—a sudden bolt of
panic, and then a gradual increase on top of it—of just how little protection from the
elements is available to a cyclist on the high plains, and just how vulnerable I was go-
ing to be for the next
several hundred miles.
The first mile marker I remember passing on
Route 2 said 422—meaning it was 422 miles to the North Dakota border.
