June 26 - Helena, Montana

After breakfast we decided to try Plan B, which was to bicycle into town and see the state capitol building and downtown area that way. I pulled the bikes down from the bed of the truck, inserted the seat and front wheel in mine, pumped up the tires, adjusted my front brakes, and after all this folderol we were finally ready to go shortly after 9 o'clock. We really wanted to avoid the most direct route from our campground to downtown Helena, Montana street, because it was heavily traveled, had a speed limit of 60 and no shoulders, a combination that makes me feel like a duck in a shooting gallery. Instead, we took a bike path that started across the street from the campground and led due west, hoping to turn south and get into Helena that way.

Unfortunately, bike routes are sometimes unpredictable in where they go or don't go, and this was one of those times. We worked our way to the next major crossroad and then turned south, but after another mile that road was blocked by construction. The road to the west was dirt so we diverted farther to the west on the paved section until we hit the next major north-south road. The bike path ended there and we were left once again with a narrow two lane road with no shoulders and fast, altho sparse, traffic. We wanted to get off that ASAP, so we turned left a mile later on the next east-west road and followed it until it turned into a dirt road. Our only option (besides turning back, which we never do!) was to go south on a side street, which was OK because there was virtually no traffic. But it also ended in road construction on a busy east-west road, so we road west and after another mile found ourselves right back on Montana! Argh!

By then we were convinced that there really weren't any other routes into Helena, so we turned south on Montana for a few miles when Monika finally stopped and said, "I'm exhausted, my butt's numb, and my hands hurt!" She usually never complains, so after resting a bit we decided to take Montana straight back to the campground. For a while that went better than we had hoped because we found a nice blacktop bicycle trail snaking along about 20 feet to the east side of the street. If you ever try to ride this on your bicycle, however, absolutely do NOT do it at night because this path had nasty surprises like unmarked sharp right-angle turns and one place where it you drove straight you would hit a sign post head on! Since it was daylight and we were traveling slowly, we could avoid all these traps but it reminded me of the bicycle paths back at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana that were so bad and dangerous, really, that I usually gave up and rode in the street with all the cars. (Of course, to be fair, my style of riding might have been incompatible with their bike path system. When a fellow student and I came back from a bicycle ride in grad school he said, "You don't ever use your brakes, do you?")

We headed back toward camp, but we were now bucking a headwind and Monika was getting really tired, which concerned me in that we were riding on the white line and if she deviated a few inches while cars were roaring past at 60mph she might have been hit and killed. So I offered to ride on and come back with the truck to pick her up, and she reluctantly agreed.Putting words into actions I had a rather tense ride back and came back to pick her up with the truck, after which we found a post office and mailed the letters we had written the night before.

We then continued south on Montana into town and had lunch while I mulled over Plan C. In the end, Plan C was to drive to the state capitol building, park somewhere in the area, and walk over to the downtown area and back. That worked pretty well, which was good because I'm not sure if we had a Plan D or not. The state capitol building had a very traditional dome-with-two-wings layout, and out front was a nice floral arrangement with "Montana" spelled out in flowers.

Walking westward toward the downtown area on 6th street, we stopped to look at a really cute Victorian house in just perfect condition. It had nice balconies, cut crystal leaded glass around the door, and two large dolls representing a bridegroom and a bride in the front window. You don't see that every day, do you?

A lady was in the side yard and we complimented her on the house, at which point she invited us in to see the interior. It turned out she and her husband had just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and the dolls were part of the decorations they had used for the celebration. Even more remarkable was that she had apparently spent the last 20 or 30 years finding just the right period furniture for every room in the house. It all fit together perfectly and was just an immaculate set of antiques. The front room also had something I had just never seen before, a stained glass fireplace screen! It looked great altho I'm not sure how practical it really was if you had real fires burning with soot, embers, and all. She said that the crystal leaded windows around the front door had a southern exposure, and in the winter the rainbows from the window would reach across the living and dining rooms all the way back to the kitchen! I could well imagine that superimposing rainbows on the museum-perfect Victorian interior of the house must have created a astonishing melange of form and color, and I was sorry we couldn't see it as the sun was at the wrong angle. The lady also showed us her husband's Indian arrowhead collection and some of her other dolls that were normally placed in the front window, and then we finally took our leave and continued on our walk. My goodness the unusual things we find on our walks! And how trusting of the lady to let two complete strangers into her house on which she had clearly lavished so much time and effort. I'm sure not all western folks are this friendly, but we continually experienced this kind of uncommon courtesy while we were out west.

We walked past several other beautiful Victorian houses on our way downtown. The downtown area of Helena had quite a few historic looking buildings, many of them arranged along a pedestrian mall street that ran north and south. This street follows a gulch that was initially mined for placer gold during the Montana gold rush and later became a business and financial center of the city, which explained some of the nice old buildings. We were trying to find a library to do our email, and on the advice of some locals we followed the mall to the south. Sure enough, we finally found the library at the southern edge of the mall. The good news was that it was still open on Saturday afternoon; the bad news was that their internet connection was shut off until July 6th! Oh well.

From the south end of the mall we turned back past a curious exhibit of all the naval ships that had been named "Helena" after the city, including a cruiser and a submarine! On top of the bluff above the gulch we found a symbol of Helena from the mining days, an old fire watch tower made from wood beams with a bell hanging just below the observation platform. In the mining days, the watcher would ring the bell to summon the volunteer fire brigades whenever he spotted a fire. Despite this precaution, the downtown area had been repeatedly burned, according to some other plaques we read. The tower was, however, a great place to get a panoramic view of the city and the surrounding valley.

From the watch tower we curled back past an old county jail, now apparently a community theater, and past the old courthouse building, an interesting fortress like building of gray rocks that was apparently still in use. We headed back east on 5th street to get to our truck and again passed some very nice old houses along the way. All in all, Helena looked like a very nice city and it was a shame that the Volksmarch had been cancelled. What we saw was very nice, but we really don't know what all we missed by winging it on our own thru the city.

After a full day of biking and walking we were quite tired and just drove back to the trailer and put our feet up (literally) for the rest of the evening. Monika processed the pictures of Helena and crocheted a bit while I brought the journal up to date. The winds picked up in the late afternoon and evening, a regular trend in that area which I had noticed while towing the trailer. The winds make a noticeable difference in gas mileage: towing in the calm mornings resulted in my standard 13 mpg while towing in the teeth of the afternoon winds decreased my mileage to only 10 mpg. That is also something you might want to also keep in mind if you are bicycling in that area, especially if you bicycle downwind in the morning and have to come back into the wind for the return trip in the afternoon. I know not what direction others may bike, but as for me, give me downwind and downhill! Hah! After a bit more work on the computers that afternoon we switched over to reading Baxter Black's books for the evening before retiring for the night.