The land, the RV park, and a rider of the purple sage

Rain in Fort Benton

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE

After Tom left I rode 57 miles to Fort Benton. All morning there were hills, but they seemed different -- they were climbs, not to passes, but to "benches," where you would stay a while -- and in the afternoon, the road was flat and fast, like a ribbon pasted on the landscape. I thought, so this is the Great Plains! Google says the Plains are parts of 10 states, including Montana, that lie west of the Mississippi and east of the Continental Divide. Right where I am. All the rivers here drain to the Mississippi, and, just as following the rivers upstream in the west brought me higher, following the Plains rivers to the Mississippi should be a downhill ride.

Should be.

Riding to Fort Benton, I kept thinking I should be able to see it from a long way away, but it just wasn't there. Then the road dropped; cars ahead of me started to disappear; and a road sign warned of of a 7% descent. I dropped, too, and went down screamingly fast, even braking hard. Then we were at the bottom. I guess they call this a "coulee" -- a deep ravine -- and it was broad enough to hold all of Fort Benton and farmlands too. At the top, you think, there can't be civilized life down there, but when you're there, you forget all about the fact that you're in a very large hole.

I liked Fort Benton. Like so many of these small towns -- population 1,400, pretty big in this part of Montana -- it puts its history front and center. They have a life-size replica of a Lewis and Clark fort (Fort Mandan), and plaques and statues of area events and figures. I liked the sort of goofy one of actor George Montgomery ("Riders of the Purple Sage"), which he designed. He was a man of many parts, including, of course, humility.

"I'm onna ride out and kill them thar varmints."

Anyway, as it turned out, I had come on the wrong weekend. It was "Fort Benton's Summer Celebraton 2019." I stayed in the tent section of an RV park that was like the parking lot at a Packer's game. A kid set up his tent overlapping mine, and I gruffly made him move it; the picnic table I had moved in front of my tent for my own use was quickly overrun by middle-school girls, who chattered and played music most of the night (even a rain shower didn't send them fleeing for cover); and, in the morning, a dad in a hammock insisted on calling out, "Good mooorning! Good mooorning!" Idiot. I packed up and left as soon as I could and got breakfast in town.

Today I climbed out of the coulee -- one of a couple of nasty hills today -- and did 60-something miles to Denton, which is just like the town in "The Last Picture Show," without Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Cybill Shepherd. Desolate. I'm in a cinder-block hotel room, if that helps.

I have more to say about today, if anybody's still listening, but I have to go to bed.

Flat flat flat.

The name of this thing is "Square Butte."

Yard art