Day 26: Dillon to Virginia City, Montana

Beaverhead Rock

I lingered late in Dillon to catch up with the blog, and didn't leave until noon. But, the wind favored me with a rare kindness, and I sped along at speeds up to 22mph, making 26 miles in an hour and a half. Along the way I passed cultivated agricultural lands with hundreds of ten foot high rolls of hay waiting for distribution. I passed Beaver Head Rock, another notable icon of the Lewis and Clark trail, used as a navigation mark by Sacagawea's people, the Shoshone.



At Twin Bridges, my path took a hairpin turn from northeast to southeast, and I lost my favorable wind. Stopping at the Twin Bridges library, I met two other cyclists, a pair of college age guys on their way from Seattle to Denver. We shared notes and found a lot of common experience; our trips must have been paralleling each other for some time.

I was about to leave Twin Bridges when I met a man stuck in time. He rode right up to me on his bicycle, a man of indeterminate age, but somewhere north of 55, dressed in spandex shorts and a sleeveless black top that showed his armpits. He wore no helmet, and his think dark hair was immaculately blown dry, with golden tips that showed expensive care. He wore one small gold medallion, and a second of obsidian. The nails on his right hand pinky and thumb were laquered and grown long, either for snorting coke or for that extra long "hang ten". All in all, I'd say he had sort of a William Shatner thing going on, before Ben Folds scraped the camp off and gave him renewed legitimacy.

I believe his name was Frank. He first asked me about my recumbent, said he'd never ridden one, but his first bike, in '52, was a Bianchi (which meant nothing to me, but I understood that it meant something to him), to give me an idea how long he'd been a serious cyclist. Frank told me about his younger days as a cyclist, and how he'd ridden across country from New York to LA with a buddy in the 70s. He gave me a lot of advice about where to stay off the beaten path in Yellowstone (which I disregarded, because one of the things I like about knowing where I'm going is that it helps give me the strength to get there). He said he understood what I was doing, and approved, in a wish-I-could-do-it-again kinda way, and sent me on my way.

The comments about the first bike and the long ride placed him at about 65 years old, which meant that he froze at about age 30 in the mid-70s, spending 35 years in his frozen disco state. I wondered if I had also frozen and just not realized it.



The landscape began to change, as grassy meadows were replaced by scrub brush and gravel. I was deep into gold rush country, and outside Alder I passed through lands that had been extensively dredge mined for gold. The land had been scooped out and sifted, leaving behind small mountains of gravel in which nothing could grow.


The remains of gold mining

Historic markers shared the story of the Innocents and the Vigilantes. The self-styled Innocents were a group of road-agents, or highway men, secretly lead by Bannack Sheriff Henry Plummer, until their identities were discovered by area cattlemen, who formed the Vigilantes, and brought all of the Innocents to the gallows. (Anyhow, that's how the markers tell it. A quick Google search raises question about who preyed upon whom, and whether there wasn't some cover-up going on.)



Toward the end of my day I reached Nevada City and Virginia City, a pair of bustling gold rush towns that have been faithfully maintained and used as sets in many westerns. I considered staying in one of them, and even inspected the rooms and cabins of the Nevada City Hotel, but nostalgia comes with a steep price. I also had a pass to climb the following morning, and I wanted to get as close as possible. What's more, I wanted to watch the Perseid meteor shower that night, which meant camping outside. I continued through Virginia City to the Virginia City RV Park.



The V.C.R.V., as it called itself, was a funny place in its own right, perched on a scrabbly hill above Virginia City. For starters, it was for sale, something I would say was true for more than 50% of the RV parks I had passed in Montana, and I'd begun to wonder why. The owner was a tall, beefy, red faced man in a beige cap. I asked him about the sale, if it had to do with the price of gas leading to fewer travelers. He answered all my questions belligerently, as if I was challenging his authority. No, he said, he'd asked people who'd visited, and it wasn't the price of gas. This struck me as a non-sequitur, and I let it go. He assured me that he wasn't selling the place because he was in trouble, and that his investments "back east" were worth $850,000. I assumed that he meant "back east" as in, say, the New York Stock Exchange; later, it struck me that perhaps he meant "back east" as in Iraq or Afghanistan. He certainly seemed like he could be ex-military, and who knows what pots he got into "back east". He went on to inform me of the value of every property in the immediate vicinity. I asked him what he'd do once he'd sold. "Not a damned thing." Hobbies, interests? "Not a damned thing." What would he do with his time? "Nothing." We soon concluded our transaction.

As I set up camp and used the facilities, I saw that rules were posted here and there. Each item was posted in all caps, fit to size an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, with exactly four exclamation points. "BATHROOM WILL BE CLOSED BETWEEN 10AM AND 10:30AM FOR CLEANING!!!!" "PUT THE SHOWER CURTAIN INSIDE THE SHOWER TO REDUCE WATER LEAKAGE!!!!" "DO NOT EVER LOCK THIS DOOR, IT MUST BE LEFT UNLOCKED FOR GUESTS AT ALL TIMES!!!!" This last was signed with a tiny, handwritten note reading, "As per the management, Dawn and Floyd." I was only happy that the bathroom was warm.

I'd never seen the Perseids, and it seemed a romantic notion to lie out watching them, though I doubted my ability or desire to remain wakeful during pre-dawn hours. I set an alarm for 3am. Nature woke me at 1:30am. I crawled out of my tent to pee, and immediately saw three white streaks overhead. It was cold. I called it good and crawled back into my warm sleeping bag.