My Route


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Saturday

Day 51: Tuesday, 21st August. Destination: Big Sky Motel, Wolf Point, Montana

It's been no easy going for me for these past couple of days, struggling into a relentless headwind as I recorded my slowest daily average speed of the trip, to date: a mighty 8mph. There were long sections where I just had to get into racing position and keep my head down, watching my feet pump round and round as the road surface rolled by underneath. Dust-coloured crickets jumped out of my way and got blown onto my legs, some of them clinging on for the ride. Folks round here seem to enjoy throwing their empty beer bottles onto the shoulder of the road - where I'm sure they make a pleasing crash - adding an extra hazard on top of gusting wind and overtaking trucks. But yet...

But yet, when I turned my head sideways to take a look at the view, somewhere on the road to Culbertson, the grey had silently slipped away, revealing and almost endless blue sky reaching from one far horizon to the other. And the sky was full of little fluffy clouds, receding into the far distance. It was amazingly beautiful. Welcome to the Big Sky. And just for a while, despite the wind and the trucks, I was grinning like an idiot for the first time since arriving in North Dakota. My internal jukebox (supplying me with a rather random selection of tunes to sing along to, on various points of the trip), which had fallen silent for some time now, switched itself back on, and I found myself singing - appropriately enough - 'Big Sky' by Kate Bush (with extended drum solo) all the way to Wolf Point.