Nearly a century, but worst day ever

Claire and I are now in Culbertson, MT, not too far from the Montana/North Dakota border! We will be in our fifth state tomorrow. We are enjoying the hospitality of a group of women on a supported tour with the organization Woman Tour. We got to take a shower and they are letting us sit in on their dinner! We are also going to make an appearance on one of their blogs, if you want to check it out: http://golindago.blogspot.com.

Here's a post about our longest and worst day yet, though it most definitely doesn't do it justice:

7/11 The route from Jordan to our next town, Fort Peck, was 96 miles with one rest stop for water at about the 37 mile mark. The route headed east until the rest stop where it turned north and ran along a wildlife refuge which had a few primitive (i.e. no water) campsites. We decided to try to make it the entire 96 miles. Waking up early and strapping extra water bottled to our bikes, we headed out for our longest day yet. 

Though hilly, the eastward portion of our journey passed quickly and we ate lunch and filled up on water at the rest stop. As we left the rest stop, we passed a sign that gave the mileage to Fort Peck as 59. Without a doubt, those were the toughest 59 miles of my life. 

It's hard to really summarize the day, and after Claire read what I wrote, she said it didn't capture the awfulness of the day, and I agree. The temperature was over 90, the winds were gusting from the north, making even the downhills difficult, and the hills never seemed to stop. At about 5:00 we still had 25 miles to go, and I kept noticing my speed at 6 MPH on my computer, making me think we would never make it. We were offered rides by two cars, and though both were quite tempting, we knew we wouldn't forgive ourselves if we had taken them up on the offers. We did experience extreme generosity from a man and his son who gave us a bottle of Powerade, then drove to town, bought a gallon jug of water and two bottles of Gatorade and brought them back to us. I was so grateful since I had already drank a large amount of my water and everything I had was hot. 

The last 15 miles passed more quickly, as the wind seemed to have died down a bit and the road shifted slightly so it wasn't blowing straight at us. When there were about 12 miles left, Fort Peck Lake finally showed itself. According to my map, it had been just a few miles to our left the entire day, which seemed hard to believe since we had been riding through desert-like badlands ever since we turned north. It's appearance seemed to be timed just right, as we had finally left the barren land colored different shades of brown and were again amongst green grasslands. 

At the end of the day my odometer read 99.16 miles, nearly a century and the farthest I have ever ridden in one day, and I'm not sure if you could have paid me to go the extra .82 mile to make the full 100. 

We let ourselves sleep in this morning and ate all we could at the breakfast buffet before heading out towards Wolf Point, a 50 mile ride. We headed north for about 15 miles before turning east on highway 2. We had some hills early on, but thus far 2 has been, dare I say it?, FLAT!