Day 11 Sept 6

 

 As we had a 146 mile ride Dianne made a huge effort to get up early and on the road before 7:30.  The weather was sunny and coolish not cold but I needed a jacket to stay warm.  Dianne wore two jackets.  I believe gear is finally dry, yesterday at the hotel I found some damp spots in the saddle bags.  

The route today took us along hwy 200 east to 200S to I94 East to Webaux.  A total of 146 miles and it 6.5 hours.  At one point on the route we had 10 miles of gravel construction that required us to slow to 10-15 miles per hour as the Scooters do not like loose gravel (note what happened to me on Day 1).  But we did get through it all.

The route passed through Circle which was founded by Morby a major in the Confederate army.  He drove herd or long horns up in 1880 and stacked a claim to the large Circle Ranch.  They sold about 4000 head a year for 13 years then sold out to sheep people.  They ran it as summer camp for sheep but became too fond of Alcohol and the town took it over.  The area is known fossil finds and ranching.  The museum has a standard pioneer home and statue to the Pioneer wife that Dianne is in front of at the top of the blog today. That is a claimed to be typical pioneer home from 1909 behind her.  They also had some fossils stumps in front of their cement dinosaurs.  

Passed close to the Fort Perry dam build in 1936-1940, it is a 4 mile long earthen work dam the largest in the world and holds back the 5th man made largest lake in America it is 131 miles long.  A quote from one of the worker, “There is nothing here except black Widow spiders, ticks, rattle Snakes and misquotes.  We live in paste board house eat dirt work in the heat and when we don’t work there is nothing to do but guzzle beer and wake up in the morning with an headache.”  I do not think he had a good time.  

From Circle we followed 200s to Glendive MT.  This follows an old no longer active railroad is being used to store unused grain cars.  It was 20 miles of grain cars back to back the whole way.  Turns out the demand is low and therefore these cars are not required.  They believe the demand will come back sometime and it is cheaper to store the cars than scrap them.a

After Glendive we made a run on 194 and route 106 to Webaux.  Webaux was founded by Pierre Webaux in 1886, right after the army cleared out the first peoples and buffalo hunters killed the herds off.  Then the land was safe for cattlemen like Webaux.  He ran a 65000 head ranch and sold off 6,000-9000 head a year.  He encouraged the rail road to build a yard here in 1901.  He loved the country so much (or himself) that he erected a statue of himself overlooking the lands that was his ranch.  There are pictures of his town office/home/party center below.  

Interesting notes:

• For 15 miles on Route 106 we saw no cars or trucks
• Trucks are most common here
• 57 transport trucks on the side roads only (do not count on interstate) Saw 3 windmill blades being careered they are really big!
• 29 pick up trucks
• 27 cars (one corvette)
• 2 motorcycles
• 11 RVs
• 5 boats 
• Hitting grasshopper at 30 mph kind of stings a little and startles you too
• Saw no cars at all over a 30 minute period
• There are a lot of beef grazing in the area and almost all is black Angus
• Trash is still really low in the area
• One country we passed through had only 2000 Residences works out to less than 1 person per square mile
• Last nigh Dianne won $130 dollars in the Casino in Jordan