Today I was facing two big climbs, one early in the day and one towards the later part of the day. I stopped at the Wake Cup cafe and it was a wonderful place. Their brews—both coffee and tea—are top notch as was the breakfast. With a name like “Wake Cup,” they could cater funerals as well.
While having my breakfast, I started chatting with two gents in there from Alberta Canada. They were about my age and their hobby was collecting old tractors and the like. They drive around the countryside looking for old, rusting, tractors and farm implements and add them to their collections. Outside, their very large truck and trailer had an assortment of rusty iron already collected.
I could just see me calling Jane to tell her that, “Hey, Honey, I’ve found a new hobby! I want to collect old tractors and maybe some steam engines. Wouldn’t that be cool? What’s that honey, something about filing papers in the morning?”
Before I could get in any trouble, we parted ways.
I headed out from Fort Benton to an immediate climb and within three miles had removed all of my warm clothes. It was going to be a hot day.
I worked my way to Geraldine, Montana. In the cafe there, I sucked down three large lemonades in record time and hardly noticed. The heat here on these plains can be so oppressive and you just evaporate your liquids. I went outside to make a WiFi call to Jane and then talked with an older fellow on the porch for a while. He is a farrier, a fellow that does horseshoes. He had been kicked that morning and decided he would wait a few hours before going back to work on the horse again. I can’t blame him. The horse was probably just upset about the heat too.
Late in the day, I rode into Denton. My map information listed the town park as a possible place to camp. After some chow, I found the park. It was nearing sunset. There was nobody around and the restrooms were locked up and the swimming pool was being rebuilt, so all the water there was turned off. I saw a church behind the park and found a water tap on the side of the building, filled my water bottles and went back.
The Boy Scouts had, as a project, built a covered picnic area, so I put my bike in there, spread my sleeping bag out on a concrete picnic table and went off to sleep. Believe it or not, I slept well.
