Rodeo in Montana and rafting in Canada

19.6.-21.7.2024

Return from Salt Lake City

I was now returning to Idaho Falls by bus. My vacation with Jenny had just ended. A local family I knew picked me up from the bus station and took me to their home. My bike was waiting in the garage, where I had left it a couple of weeks ago. They took care of me like a member of their own family.

I replaced the new tires with the worn ones I had received from Finland and continued my journey in the morning. The day was hot, as usual. Now my route was about to change. Up until now I had been following the Western Wildlands route. But in order to reach Canada before my visa will expire, I had to make the route easier. I took the nearby Great Divide route. Both mountain bike routes run their entire length through the United States along the Rocky Mountains.

The Great Divide was also interesting to see the Tour Divide ultra bike race, which was currently underway. The competitors had set off from the Canadian side with the Mexican border as their destination. There were three Finnish daredevil participants. I imagined the transition to the Great Divide would be a boring task, but it was the opposite. Over the course of a couple of days, I saw the massive Teton mountains with their glaciers and the lush green meadows that were so pleasing to the eyes. I was now like I was inside Windows 95.

Tour Divide

I made it to the Great Divide Mountainbike route at sunset. The race had started in Banff, Canada, a week ago. The front of the race had passed this point just moments before. I set up my tent in a meadow next to the road and waited for the competitors. I was able to cheer right away. This was great, because in the last 2.5 months I had only met a couple of cyclists in total. As I was sneaking along the dark road, a couple of approaching cyclists got really scared, thinking I was a bear. Then I learned to start cheering early enough.

In the morning, Tero Niemelä came up against us. This race had clearly already tired this hard-working passionate cyclist, as we had time to take a long break to chat on the side of the road. His position at this point was around 20th.

The journey continued on a dirt road through coniferous forests, following clear rapids between the mountains. I met competitors from time to time, so I was able to shout encouragement again. It clearly pleased everyone. I missed Markku Leppälä, the second Finn, because he passed me late in the evening and I had fled the tormenting swarm of mosquitoes into the tent. The tracking of the race is also not very accurate.

Today was also Midsummer Eve. I got inspiration from his social media and made myself a traditional whip made of birch branches (very finnish thing) , which I hung to decorate the bike's rack. The next day I arrived in a small village with a grocery store and a restaurant. There were a lot of competitors, whom I now got to meet a lot. Sami Pasanen also dropped by. I was even excited to do a race interview with him on Instagram . As a final touch, I took my birch whip from the rack and gave him a treatment (which is normally done only in sauna). His Japanese racing buddy was next to him, who also got a treatmenton to his back. Taken out of context, this must have been a confusing cultural experience for him.

Rodeo and random overnight stays

Flat prairies and desert mountains now adorned the landscape. In the middle of nowhere, suddenly arrived to a big cowboy event. People were dressed like in Hollywood movies. There were various horseriding competitions, related to cattle herding and rodeo. Even the children had their own competitions and I was impressed by the skills of the under 8s to handle their horses really skillfully.

I next arrived in Montana. It was the last state on my way to Canada. I had a couple of special overnight stays here: There was a nice free camping spot along a small road, with tables and campfire sites. There was no one else there. In the evening, I started to hear some animal rustling loudly in the bushes behind the tent. I could hear branches snapping. I went out of the tent with bear spray and peered into the pitch-black forest with a flashlight. My finger was ready to fire the bear spray, but I couldn't see anything. The sounds died down and I finally got a good night's sleep with my earplugs.

A couple of days later I arrived in Butte in the afternoon , it was a big city. I didn't have time to leave before dark, so I stayed in town for the night. Behind the almost empty parking lot of the shopping center, there was a small strip of bushes where I could pitch a tent in the dark at dusk. Just before going to sleep, I saw a police car pull into the parking lot to check an abandoned car that happened to be quite close to my tent. The police noticed my tent with their flashlights and started to approach. However, they soon turned back and left. Maybe they saw my bicycle and thought I was a harmless traveler. I finally got a good night's sleep.

One day, I stopped by a classic diner restaurant again, hungry. Diner restaurants are my absolute favorite for an authentic American dining experience. I sat down at the bar counter to eat and ordered the long-awaited portion of American pancakes. The full stack portion contained a tall stack - a total of four large pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, jam, blueberries and a scoop of ice cream. I also got a large glass of coke full of ice cubes, which the waitress always refilled when it was empty. Friends in Finland had told me that the pancake portions in the USA are huge and you can hardly eat the whole portion. I had to try such a claim myself, to be sure I would believe it. And so it turned out that they were right. It took two hours to digest the food coma before I managed to get back on my bike.

Cyclists' community

I still saw Tour Divide competitors every day . Most of them took it easy, as they set off a week late. Some local farms also offered food and accommodation to the riders for free. I only happened upon one of these places. It was the legendary Llama Ranch , which had a large bicycle painted on the roof as a symbol. There were even several small cabins and a barbecue shed, among which the farm's llamas were hanging around. I got a bed in one of the cabins and its own kitchen was equipped with all kinds of food, which were freely available. There were even bottles of wine available. All of these were made for cyclists.

I had a fun night here with many travelers. Some had been here for a couple of nights and were on their way in both directions, to Canada and the Mexican border. You can take a brief look at the ranch at the link below, presented by Ryan van Duzer as part of his journey: https://youtu.be/V3O3ooTtrV4?t=1286

The next day, I met another group of cyclists in town, who were heading in the same direction as me. There was an American, a German and a Polish. We continued cycling together all day. The next village, it was said, had a Christian parish that accommodated cyclists for free. This American cyclist, already approaching middle age, had just retired after selling his law firm. In honor of that, a cycling trip was now underway across his homeland. When he arrived, he offered restaurant food to everyone, and no one left hungry or thirsty. The house of the nearby parish, which was located on the ground floor of the church, was free to use. There were already over twenty cyclists there, retiring to sleep on the floor. Behind one of the connecting doors, I found a small room that served as my own accommodation. I woke up exhausted at nine in the morning. The long and hilly 100km day had been exhausting. I opened my door and the room gaped in its emptiness. Everyone else had already left. I lost my bike group and continued cycling alone again.

Independence Day

After a few quiet days, I arrived in the town of Kalispell. I was now getting a warmshower place to stay for the night after a long time. In a quiet area of single-family homes, I rolled along the small streets looking for the right house. There was a small crowd in one backyard and I stopped to ask if this was the right place. The host came to meet me and greeted me happily, inviting me there. The hostess greeted me with a hug and told me that I could eat right away, because the food had just been served. I sat down to eat in the backyard garden. It was a nice warm summer day. Now the 4th of July is Independence Day. That's why a proper festive meal had been served.

There were four other travelers and the son of the host family. They were all about my age. Two of them were hikers on the Continental Divide Trail. The trail runs through the United States in the Rocky Mountains, like my bike route. Two people had been shipwrecked here, as one of them was living in a camper van built into a school bus and their trip had been interrupted by a broken engine. The school bus was now in the repair shop, while the engine removed from the crashed car was being installed in her car.

As the evening got dark, we went out to the street to watch the fireworks and wave sparklers. I decided to stay here for two nights. In the morning, the host family had left for work. I searched the cupboards for breakfast. The three of us stayed in the house with the bus guys to hang out for the day. It felt a bit strange that the whole house was given over to travelers like this. People are being trusting and that's great.

The house was a bit old and uniquely decorated, but that's what made it very cozy. I was able to borrow the house sewing machine and now was a good time to replace the broken zipper on my inner tent. I went grocery shopping in the afternoon and greeted the host at his work, the local bike shop. During my two-day stay, I got to know their specialty; They had a huge number of different games, many of which were completely new to me. We spent time like in the old days and I got a feel for how life in the United States was before the smartphone era.

Rafting in Canada

The next day I cycled again. While camping at night I noticed that my health was deteriorating and the next day I had a slight fever. I was unable to leave the tent all day except once to relieve myself. After this one day of rest, a miraculous recovery came and cycling resumed almost completely healthy. I now arrived in Eureka, near the Canadian border. In the courtyard of a shop I met a group of other cyclists. One of them bought a package of ice cream sticks for the whole group and they brought a lot of joy on a hot summer day.

According to my calculations, tomorrow would be the last day of my 90-day visa. I found an online calculator to make sure how the length of stay is calculated. According to it, I had already exceeded my length of stay by one day. I then immediately set off to cross the border today. So I didn't need an actual visa for the United States, but it is a visa waiver program, which you can get with a $21 online application and usually takes a few days to issue. Canada has a similar procedure, but the price is a few dollars and the processing time is calculated in minutes. Afterall, I forgot this application in my hurry. The border inspector asked a few questions, apparently because of missing permit before I got the Canadian stamp in my passport. I was now in British Columbia. The rugged mountains with coniferous forests were now everywhere and the crystal clear rapids were roaring. Nature was like Finnish Lapland on steroids.

I wondered why I had been in the US for so long when it was so much nicer here. However, cycling for weeks was starting to get tiring. I also needed a break, so I decided to stay in the town of Fernie for a few nights. As a budget-friendly option, I camped in the nearby forest for the nights and went into town to hang out for the day. McDonald's served as a great base each day. It had a bathroom, electrical outlets, free wifi , air conditioning, and cheap food. This town was popular with outdoor tourists, so I decided to try something; I signed up for a full-day rafting trip. We went down several kilometers of rapids in six-person rubber boats. There was an instructor behind the boat, so all we had to do was paddle when he gave the signal.

The roaring rapids were mostly class 3 and 4 rapids. What does this mean in practice? Classes 1-2 are the easiest. The water splashed a little and it was fun. In class 3 rapids, the waves came over the entire boat and the adrenaline flowed. The class 4 rapids were already brutal - like a huge washing machine. Our boat tipped over at a 45-degree angle and got stuck in that position in a huge current. At the same time, a strong wave hitting the boat unsteadied me so that I fell onto the opposite side of the tilted boat. Before I could hit my buddy next to me, he flew out of the boat due to the same wave and I ended up in his place. I swayed on the side of the boat for a while without being able to grab anything with my hands. Eventually, my center of gravity shifted enough in my favor that I staggered back into the boat. After a while, my buddy next to me was lifted back on board and the journey continued. An additional program was also a jump from a cliff ledge into a rapid. Back to shore, you had to swim at high speed so as not to be swept away by the current.

Later in the afternoon, the rapids on the river began to decrease and the excitement faded. Now there was a sad, empty feeling, that this was it. The body was already used to the adrenaline – and wanted more of it.

My bike route now often followed small rivers. Unfortunately, the waters have always been very cold, which makes washing difficult. However, now I got braver and diving into the freezing water was actually a great experience. Something had changed, because without rafting I would never have thought of getting myself into a freezing river and even enjoying it.

End of the leg to Calgary

One small village full of hotels reminded me a bit of Finnish Lapland with its reindeer. Instead of reindeer, the lawns in front of the hotels now had only elks. I still saw several cyclists almost every day. Almost all of them said they had seen bears in the last few days, a couple of cyclists said they had seen as many as six bears. I, on the other hand, had not seen a single one yet.

I also met two long distance hikers. They were on Continental Divide’s additional section of the trail, on the Canadian side. They only had small backpacks on their backs and one had an umbrella, which was excellent protection from the scorching sun even on rainy days. This hiker named Twig said that she knew a Finn. He had been hiking the CDT across the United States with Suvi. In Finland, lightweight backpacking circles are small, so I knew Suvi from the internet. Trail names are a specialty of long-distance hiking circles in the United States. So people don't use their own names, but on the PCT trail, other hikers give them a new name.

At lunch we spread our food out as a shared buffet and had a really good gourmet lunch. They were amazed by my extensive food selection. It's so much easier to carry eextra weight on a bike. I felt like a luxury traveler compared to hikers.

Then something happened again. In the evening, at sunset, I started looking for my phone in the tent, but I couldn't find it. I realized that I had forgotten it in the afternoon in the campsite which I shortly visited for using the toilet. Now I had to put the camp back together and it took me about an hour to cycle back to the campsite. The phone was found on top of the toilet paper holder, exactly where I had left it. I stayed there for the night, because it was already dark. The place was empty and I was able to sleep in peace.

I approached Calgary and said goodbye to the absolutely beautiful nature that seemed downright unreal.

It was good to cycle to the big city. I had bought a plane ticket to Quito, Ecuador, and the flight was now three days away. I got a place to stay with a couple who were also cyclists. I actually got my own room with a private bathroom. All meals were provided and the breakfast, which had a wide selection, was eaten in the garden. The couple was retired, so they had time. Despite our age difference, we got on very well. Over the past few decades, the man had been hiking in several destinations around the world, which I had also already been to, or had dreamed of going to. In the evenings, we watched adventure videos on YouTube from cyclists they had previously hosted.

They had extra cardboard boxes in the garage for bikes, as several cyclists had arrived here in Calgary first, starting their bike trip across the United States. I packed my bikes and the next thing I knew I was on a plane to the Southern Hemisphere!