Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire On the road again.

TIme to finish up. I have no photos of Jim's place or of us, we simply forgot to take one. Spent the whole time talking, like TImbermaster (who brung me a sleeping bag several pages back ) said, pretty much our genial conversation ran along the lines of the 'Fire. Plus I got to meet his great family. Jim is among the more fortunate of us here on the 'Fire.

I got there in the afternoon, early the next morning my buddy left Great Falls and covered in just two or three hours what took me three days, and we drove back to his place.

Bike is already getting packed up and shipped out, here in Great Falls we are driving out Glacier in a couple of days, then back to the grindstone fer me, except I don't really work for a living

Last photo I have of the bicycle part of the trip: The road to Jim's place, looking north.....



Last photo of the bicycle itself; a purpose-built touring bike, designed to carry a significant load comfortably at moderate speeds all day long. That bike just devours the miles

2,000 miles TX to NY in '14, 1,500 miles England/Scotland/Ireland/France in '16, and most recently 1,250 miles of Texas/Wyoming/Montana since late June. All of that and I STILL have problems running around the block. Which is an indication of what a good bicycle can do for ya.




I had been crossing paths with the Nez Perce Trail ever since Yellowstone on this trip, so after my friend picked me and the bike up, we went out of our way to see the Bear Paw Battlefield. Naivete runs like a thread through the Nez Perce saga. From the accounts, at first they thought if they cleared out of Idaho to Montana they would be left alone, and after they had whupped the soldiers sent against them like four times they thought they had left pursuit behind for a while, and so more'n 700 of them stopped to camp in this hollow, let down their guard, and hunted buffalo just one long day's travel from refuge in Canada. It was here that General Miles and 520 men, including elements of the 2nd and 7th Cavalry, caught them by surprise, outnumbering the approximately 200 combat effectives in the the Indian camp by more that 2:1, perhaps closer to 3:1 after some of the Indians made their escape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bear_Paw





The other thread that ran through this whole saga was that the Indians were good shots, something of a puzzle given the motley nature of their firearms at the beginning of the conflict, them becoming better armed with U- issue carbines and rifles captured or picked up on the battlefields along the way. Actually, if you get past Frontier Pop History and read into it closely, Indians had been good shots for at least 170 years prior to 1877. As it was the 110 men of the 7th Cavalry suffered 40% casualties in their opening attack, picked off by methodical fire at the hands of Nez Perce marksmen and the battle devolved into a five-day siege. Two hundred of the Nez Perce accompanied by some of the warriors made their escape at the onset, a company of Cavalry was sent in pursuit, but as happened repeatedly in this campaign were driven back by well-aimed rifle fire.


Well, there it went; another bicycle expedition. God willing, I can do another one in 2021.