So to begin with, all horror stories start out with a very pleasant beginning. A group of young adults heading off to the hills for their very first group camp outing. Only, one-half-hour in, after all the playful flirting and bravado, the killer shows up to send them into panic. This is my day. It all started fine. Sandra and I woke up after a good night’s sleep, headed down to the KOA center and got ourselves some FREE pancakes! I thought this was setting the tone. We then bicycled downtown about 4 miles to the Charley Russell Museum where we saw a bunch of paintings of cowboys and Indians. It was a pretty big venue, so we must have spent over an hour there. By the way, I got approached by a Mask-Nazi who apparently said that just having it over my chin was not sufficient. hmmm, Remember when we were free?
OK, so the horror story starts here, after we get out of the Museum and head down to the leisurely green-belt for a nice little bike-ride, or so I thought. Start out great, we were heading down the Missouri River dropping down into single-tracks, and catching some great views of the Dams along the way; we must have hit 4 Dams; Damn! About 13 miles down the trail it occurred to me that I only had 1.5 liters of water in my bag, and we were doing a lot of ups-and-downs. The temp was around the low 90's so I wasn't too concerned until my little lizard brain put the math together, and came up with "where out 13 miles, and need to go back UP river". I suppose, this discovery was why I did not get into a top-tier Technical school like MIT or Caltech. The good news I was not out of water yet, but I raised the RED flag to Sandra about my back-of-the-envelope discovery. She didn't seem to worried, and wanted to do more on the trail. So, she had 3 Liters of water, and was ready to head through more of the ride. I put my foot down and said like a gentleman "I want to go home now". So we did, but not without a little nod of "dang, I wanted to do more". Not but a mile or so, there it was, that dry slurp of the last bit of water from My Camels-bak. Now, I knew I was being chased by a serial-killer of drought and heat. As we peddled and peddled and peddled, it was getting more dire; Since Sandra had 1.5 liters more than me, she split it up so that I could have a chance to someday write another Ugly Chronicle. For what seemed hours, moving slowly back along the trails, and then ultimately the paths. The Missouri river off to the right and down the steep canyon was looking more tasty. Ultimately, heat exhaustion did set in with Nausea and head-aches, but thankfully that old Williams cowboy blood came through and kept me going. We finally ended up back in Great Falls and hit the first water hole we could find. It turned out to be a double-wide trailer converted into a Diner that normally, we would pass by and raise an eyebrow too (yeah, I know. A little elitist). But, Brother it was there, and I ran into the place yelling "Give me all the water you got!". What a reprieve! It was like the Sheriff showing up to save us from our demise of the situation we put ourselves in. At this point, only 5 miles back to the motor home. It was still slow going, but once there, I must have finished off all the water and all the beers I had left. Funny, Sandra experienced none of this....maybe she was watching a different movie.