Epilogue, part 1. What I learned
One of the reasons for this trip is to see parts of the country that are completely new to me. Not only eastern Montana but the smallest towns and quietest roads. Rural North Dakota. And also to meet the people there whose life experience and outlook on the world may be very different than my own. I've only lived in large urban areas such as Seattle, the Bay Area, Denver, Boston, and one year in Alaska. Those areas aren't typical of our country and I want to see more.
General impressions
My trip was through rural and wild portions of the United States. The Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route intentionally avoided cities except where it was impractical, such as Cleveland and Buffalo. So I saw small towns, some very small and others moderately sized. But even in the latter the route usually stuck to the peripheral areas, not the city center. So my observations have that bias.
I saw the massive scale and range of the natural beauty of country. I’ve spent most of my life in the Pacific Northwest which is one of the most beautiful regions, but other forests of the west and the grand scale of the Rockies were also spectacular. I have a clear bias toward forests and mountains but I learned and appreciated the subtle beauty of the midwest, especially Minnesota, the Mississippi valley, and the shores of the Great Lakes. The Adirondacks were new to me and they are incredibly beautiful with strings of lakes, rivers and rounded peaks. And I have a new appreciation for the mixture of history and incredible beauty of New England, especially coastal Maine. It is hard to believe it is real.
As you can see from the pictures I selected in the blog, the buildings and houses I saw were among my favorite scenery. Our country has structures that have retained their beauty for a century or more, though many are now deteriorating. To lose them would be a great loss. Wood decays, stone is displaced by vines and trees. Those that are preserved and are well-kept are part, or should be, part of our national legacy. Some small towns continue to use these wonderful old buildings and homes but in others they are decaying.
In general, small towns themselves seem to be declining. Many restaurants are closed or have limited hours. Many have a gas station/convenience store that serves as the only restaurant available to travelers. There are many with spectacular courthouses and city halls. Others, particularly around train stations, are ghost towns.
Here's a map of my whole trip.
Transportation
Travel within and between towns is via car, usually a pickup. I saw one Greyhound or Trailways bus the entire trip, and one Amtrak passenger train. I saw nothing of the common movie scene of people getting off a bus in the town square, and train stations, those few where there was passenger service, were empty. There were only about a dozen pannier’d bicyclists and on the protected bike paths I used. Bicycles were very rare or completely absent. So options for travel between the small towns of my journey are very limited, with driving by far the most common option.
Food
I didn’t plan this trip to sample cuisine and didn’t have high expectations. Even with that low bar, the vast majority of food was mediocre with some remarkable exceptions. This was partly because I chose to stay mostly in inexpensive motels and walked to nearby restaurants at the end of the long day. For small towns this didn’t make much difference because there were very few options. Most of the food was bar and grill offerings, burgers, fried fish, fries and onion rings steaks in Montana and North Dakota,. Only one restaurant had corn on the cob! I had more flexibility for lunch and dinner but with some remarkable exceptions the food was very similar to the dinner offerings. Breakfasts were standard. Now, don’t misunderstand—I ate this food with gusto. But I was disappointed that rural American cuisine doesn’t seem to take advantage of all that is and can be grown nearby.
Remarkable exceptions:
Breakfast at Buttermilk Kitchen in Camden ME (all time winner for the trip)
Breakfast at the Hot Biscuit Diner in Ticonderoga NY
Lunch at Woodstock ,Vermillion OH
Lunch at Our Place Restaurant, Brook IN
Snacks in the Sand Springs Store MT
Dinner at White Maid Diner, Napoleon ND
Dinner at NOLO’s, Minneapolis MN
Dinner at Pleasant Beach Hotel, Fair Haven NY
Lunch at my sister Judy’s house in Hanover NH
Dinner at Galyn’s in Bar Harbor ME
You can see there were quite a few exceptions.
Things that impressed me
The number and power wind turbines. In Montana, Alberta, and North Dakota wind is everywhere, and a common topic of conversation. I even joked to Amy that we should invest in Montana wind farms. I don’t know much about design, national power distribution and storage but experiencing wind for as many days as I did, I can’t help but thinking wind turbines have a bright future. (I did see signs against wind turbines in Indiana and a few other places.)
I was impressed at the number of enormous coal fired power plants that were closed. These were massive and I expect were extremely expensive. Some were closed for health reasons and others because of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This gives me hope that communities can make very difficult but important and necessary transitions that have high costs. We will need to do this many times in the future, and we have done it before.
There were some standout towns
Port Townsend WA
West Glacier MT
Swiftcurrent, Many Glacier MT
Ashby Resort MN
Holdingford MN
Elkader IA
Red Wing IA
Inlet NY
Rockford/Camden ME
Bar Harbor ME
And this is the very short list.
I was also impressed and how friendly and open people were. I met folks from all walks of life, people that I don’t cross paths with in Seattle: commercial truck drivers, construction workers, ranchers, small town retirees, and many others. The smaller the town, the more concentrated the folks I met, often at early morning coffee klatches or the local convenience store or bar and grill.
I didn’t bring up politics. I wanted to better understand people’s lives, and what was important to them. I was biking long days, not doing a systematic study, so my encounters were by chance and not that frequent.
Things that concerned me
What I don’t know is how we can help small town rural America. There are not enough people to fill basic jobs in many places so lots of local small restaurants and stores are closed or have limited hours. Agricultural jobs are less common because large scale industrial farming needs less labor, a trend that seems to be growing. Very few people I met were farmers, ranchers, or agricultural workers. Education would help but wonder if more educated young people would return to their home town. I hope many would but jobs they want may be elsewhere, along with other young people.
I was also disappointed to see that most of the cultivated land I saw is used for GMO corn and soybeans, most of which is used to produce ethanol additives to gasoline for cars and trucks. Animal feed accounts for most of the rest.
I was incredibly lucky
I had cool weather (80 degrees or so) with clouds and some rain the plains, the mountain passes were open in the west—just barely so, by a matter of days—and the only wildfire exposure was light smoke in Maine blowing down from Quebec fires. I didn’t have any health problems or injuries. I had no mechanical problems and only 2 flats.
So I saw our country, experienced a lot, broadened my horizons in every way, and stayed safe. I loved it!
General impressions
My trip was through rural and wild portions of the United States. The Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route intentionally avoided cities except where it was impractical, such as Cleveland and Buffalo. So I saw small towns, some very small and others moderately sized. But even in the latter the route usually stuck to the peripheral areas, not the city center. So my observations have that bias.
I saw the massive scale and range of the natural beauty of country. I’ve spent most of my life in the Pacific Northwest which is one of the most beautiful regions, but other forests of the west and the grand scale of the Rockies were also spectacular. I have a clear bias toward forests and mountains but I learned and appreciated the subtle beauty of the midwest, especially Minnesota, the Mississippi valley, and the shores of the Great Lakes. The Adirondacks were new to me and they are incredibly beautiful with strings of lakes, rivers and rounded peaks. And I have a new appreciation for the mixture of history and incredible beauty of New England, especially coastal Maine. It is hard to believe it is real.
As you can see from the pictures I selected in the blog, the buildings and houses I saw were among my favorite scenery. Our country has structures that have retained their beauty for a century or more, though many are now deteriorating. To lose them would be a great loss. Wood decays, stone is displaced by vines and trees. Those that are preserved and are well-kept are part, or should be, part of our national legacy. Some small towns continue to use these wonderful old buildings and homes but in others they are decaying.
In general, small towns themselves seem to be declining. Many restaurants are closed or have limited hours. Many have a gas station/convenience store that serves as the only restaurant available to travelers. There are many with spectacular courthouses and city halls. Others, particularly around train stations, are ghost towns.
Here's a map of my whole trip.
Transportation
Travel within and between towns is via car, usually a pickup. I saw one Greyhound or Trailways bus the entire trip, and one Amtrak passenger train. I saw nothing of the common movie scene of people getting off a bus in the town square, and train stations, those few where there was passenger service, were empty. There were only about a dozen pannier’d bicyclists and on the protected bike paths I used. Bicycles were very rare or completely absent. So options for travel between the small towns of my journey are very limited, with driving by far the most common option.
Food
I didn’t plan this trip to sample cuisine and didn’t have high expectations. Even with that low bar, the vast majority of food was mediocre with some remarkable exceptions. This was partly because I chose to stay mostly in inexpensive motels and walked to nearby restaurants at the end of the long day. For small towns this didn’t make much difference because there were very few options. Most of the food was bar and grill offerings, burgers, fried fish, fries and onion rings steaks in Montana and North Dakota,. Only one restaurant had corn on the cob! I had more flexibility for lunch and dinner but with some remarkable exceptions the food was very similar to the dinner offerings. Breakfasts were standard. Now, don’t misunderstand—I ate this food with gusto. But I was disappointed that rural American cuisine doesn’t seem to take advantage of all that is and can be grown nearby.
Remarkable exceptions:
Breakfast at Buttermilk Kitchen in Camden ME (all time winner for the trip)
Breakfast at the Hot Biscuit Diner in Ticonderoga NY
Lunch at Woodstock ,Vermillion OH
Lunch at Our Place Restaurant, Brook IN
Snacks in the Sand Springs Store MT
Dinner at White Maid Diner, Napoleon ND
Dinner at NOLO’s, Minneapolis MN
Dinner at Pleasant Beach Hotel, Fair Haven NY
Lunch at my sister Judy’s house in Hanover NH
Dinner at Galyn’s in Bar Harbor ME
You can see there were quite a few exceptions.
Things that impressed me
The number and power wind turbines. In Montana, Alberta, and North Dakota wind is everywhere, and a common topic of conversation. I even joked to Amy that we should invest in Montana wind farms. I don’t know much about design, national power distribution and storage but experiencing wind for as many days as I did, I can’t help but thinking wind turbines have a bright future. (I did see signs against wind turbines in Indiana and a few other places.)
I was impressed at the number of enormous coal fired power plants that were closed. These were massive and I expect were extremely expensive. Some were closed for health reasons and others because of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This gives me hope that communities can make very difficult but important and necessary transitions that have high costs. We will need to do this many times in the future, and we have done it before.
There were some standout towns
Port Townsend WA
West Glacier MT
Swiftcurrent, Many Glacier MT
Ashby Resort MN
Holdingford MN
Elkader IA
Red Wing IA
Inlet NY
Rockford/Camden ME
Bar Harbor ME
And this is the very short list.
I was also impressed and how friendly and open people were. I met folks from all walks of life, people that I don’t cross paths with in Seattle: commercial truck drivers, construction workers, ranchers, small town retirees, and many others. The smaller the town, the more concentrated the folks I met, often at early morning coffee klatches or the local convenience store or bar and grill.
I didn’t bring up politics. I wanted to better understand people’s lives, and what was important to them. I was biking long days, not doing a systematic study, so my encounters were by chance and not that frequent.
Things that concerned me
What I don’t know is how we can help small town rural America. There are not enough people to fill basic jobs in many places so lots of local small restaurants and stores are closed or have limited hours. Agricultural jobs are less common because large scale industrial farming needs less labor, a trend that seems to be growing. Very few people I met were farmers, ranchers, or agricultural workers. Education would help but wonder if more educated young people would return to their home town. I hope many would but jobs they want may be elsewhere, along with other young people.
I was also disappointed to see that most of the cultivated land I saw is used for GMO corn and soybeans, most of which is used to produce ethanol additives to gasoline for cars and trucks. Animal feed accounts for most of the rest.
I was incredibly lucky
I had cool weather (80 degrees or so) with clouds and some rain the plains, the mountain passes were open in the west—just barely so, by a matter of days—and the only wildfire exposure was light smoke in Maine blowing down from Quebec fires. I didn’t have any health problems or injuries. I had no mechanical problems and only 2 flats.
So I saw our country, experienced a lot, broadened my horizons in every way, and stayed safe. I loved it!
