I’m in Montana, and it is hot, too damn hot. I’m on a bike, and I’m wondering if this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. The temperature is 38 degrees Celsius, or over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. There’s just a trickle of water left in my last water bottle and miles to go to where I hope to spend the night.
Last night I was in Great Falls and today I’m headed for Big Sandy. The State is experiencing its hottest ever summer and there is widespread drought. These are Indian lands: the Crow and the Blackfoot tribes know how to navigate this harsh landscape. They wouldn’t allow themselves to be stranded, running out of water under the hot sun. I pedal on, and a sign appears, it’s a truck stop. Some cool iced water is a lifesaver. Refreshed and hydrated, I headed back on the road, and soon reached my destination, a run-down motel in a small settlement off the highway.
Forty-one years ago, I cycled coast-to-coast across America for the first time. Back then I was a college drop-out, working in New York and I set out to see the real America, the one I’d seen in movies and on TV. I wasn’t disappointed. The jaw-dropping beauty of the landscape and friendly encounters with locals gave me a love for the USA. This time round I wanted to see how ordinary Americans were faring during the second Trump presidency. Too much of our coverage of the United States is through the lens of commentators based in Washington, and I wanted to see how the ‘Red States’ were faring, to meet people in rural communities beyond the Beltway.
After a long flight from Dublin to Seattle the first American I chatted to when I got off my flight was Kalifa. He worked in baggage handling, and when my disassembled bike arrived in a box on the conveyor belt, he volunteered to put it back together on his lunchbreak. His folks are from Senegal, but he grew up in Washington State. He was the most generous person I could have met and spent an hour helping me. I didn’t have the heart to ask him what he felt about the crackdown on immigration from the current administration. In the weeks that followed I met many Americans struggling to get by: with health costs and energy bills, often working into old age to make ends meet.
From Seattle I took a ferry across Elliot Bay, and a bus to Ozette on the Pacific coast, the most westerly point of the lower forty-eight states. It lies in a rain forest on the Olympia Peninsula and did it rain. Once an Indian fishing and whaling village of the Makah tribe today it is a centre for trekking along the coast. I walked a few miles through the forest to the ocean edge. After gazing out to sea and a chat with young backpackers I turned around and headed back to the trailhead. Signs warned of wild bears and cougars, so I was happy to hop on my bike and head East.
These were deep woods and huge logging trucks passed me as I headed alongside the Juan de Fuca Strait towards the Rockies. At 63 I didn’t have the stamina of my 22-year-old self, but slowly my fitness improved. Mountain inclines were a challenge with steep 7% grades, but gears allowed me to pace myself and make steady progress. The views from Steven’s Pass, four thousand feet high in the Cascade Mountains, were spectacular. Pine forests and snow-covered peaks stretched into the distance, and the downhill section allowed me to freewheel for miles downhill alongside the wide Wenatchee River. That evening, I arrived in Leavenworth; a tourist town with a bizarre Bavarian-Swiss theme dreamt-up by marketeers in the 1950s. The Alpine-themed buildings keep the visitors coming.
Apple and pear orchards lined the roads in the following days, often maintained by Mexican labour, and signs advertised tacos and tortilla by the roadside. I passed through the farming town of Quincy where overhead wires and pylons led to one of the world’s largest data centres, powered by electricity from dams on the mighty Columbia River. I spent 4th July in a downtown park in Spokane, Washington watching the fireworks, not knowing that weeks later devastating wildfires would destroy hundreds of homes there and lead to tens of thousands fleeing for their lives. From there I headed over the Rockies, often taking mountain trails to avoid the traffic on busier roads. Away from the highway nature bloomed: there were wildflowers by the trail side; and at one point a hummingbird hovered as it inspected me, and flocks of butterflies rose up from puddles on the road.
This idyllic part of the journey soon came to an end. Since I had last travelled through North Dakota oil and gas discoveries have transformed the farmlands with fracking rigs and oil derricks extracting fuel. Gas flaring meant that the clear night skies that I remembered were a distant memory, and constant truck traffic thundered along US Route 2 across the State. This has created new jobs, but the burning of fossil fuels has contributed to the record-breaking temperatures that slowed my progress. This summer’s ’heat dome’ meant that I rose before dawn to make progress before temperatures rose. Even still, it was tough going at times. I constantly refilled my three water bottles, adding electrolytes to replenish what I sweated out on high heat days.
Heavy traffic and supersized pick-up trucks were a worry, but thankfully close passes were few. I did encounter a bear on a highway in Canada, but it seemed more scared of me than I was of it, and it scarpered into the woods before I got too close. On another day a large snake slithered along the hard shoulder towards me, but I managed to swerve out of its way. I saw herds of antelope in the distance in the Midwest, and deer were a frequent site in many regions.
Much of my route was on roads alongside railways, and in particular the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe hi-line route just south of the Canadian border. The ‘Empire Builder’ passenger train operated by Amtrak runs daily between Portland, Seattle and Chicago. Long freight trains take the route too, and I counted one with over two hundred wagons stretching out across the prairie. Some carry shipping containers, double-stacked; others carry oil or sand for fracking operations. The sound of train horns permeated my dreams, and train songs were on my play list. ‘The City of New Orleans’ by Arlington Guthrie was a favourite, but so too was ‘This Train’ by Sister Rosetta Sharpe. Country singer Marty Robbins’s hits were also on repeat.
On Michigan’s Upper Peninsula beside Lake Superior, I saw a yellow road sign with an image of a horse buggy. Later I turned into a vast supermarket car park. To my surprise I saw a hitching post, and a reserved parking sign for buggies. Sure enough, there was a horse and cart parked up. It belonged to a member of the Amish community who live close to the land and grow their own food. Their communities are 400,000 strong across the USA, are of German and Swiss extraction, and hail from the Mennonite tradition. After weeks of large trucks and huge cars there was something appealing in encountering those who reject much of modern technology.
After a month and a half, and 5,500 kilometres on the road I reached Quoddy Lighthouse in Maine, the most easternmost point of the continental United States. The smell and sight of the Atlantic never felt so good. The following day I took a spin over a bridge to the wooded Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada. I visited the summer home of Franklin D Roosevelt, now a museum jointly administered by the US and Canadian governments. Plaques on the walls had words from the late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau stating that the relationship between both countries represents “the standard for enlightened international relations.” His hopes seem so dated at a point where US-Canada relationships are at an historic low, trade negotiations have broken down and Prime Minister Carney says, “America has changed, and we will not return to our old relationship.” With mid-term elections looming here’s hoping cool heads will prevail in these troubled times.
You can read my daily journal from the trip here:
