Four miles up the road, we stopped at the unsigned intersection of 9-Mile “Road” and US 12.
I pointed up the hill. “That’s the best-looking part of this road.” A double track fit for a jeep snaked up towards the plateau above the Musselshell, water coursing down through the deep ruts on either side of a gravel-filled center hump.
Sheila asked, “Up there is where you took that picture of the gate?”
“Yeah, we decided not to drive any further, ‘cause it had already been so difficult getting the van up there. We did check out the other end, where it comes out towards Ryegate. It looked nicer, smooth and wider, art that point. But I can’t be 100% sure it’s passable, even if it were dry.” I neglected to tell her the sketchy road had caused us to wait for several hours at the side of Highway 12, waiting for AAA to help us fix the flat tire the ruts had caused.
“Well then, it’s a good thing we’re not riding today,” Tom observed.
A very good thing, because then we would have missed lunch in Ryegate. This little hamlet features a post office, a humble elementary school, a little park, and the Ryegate Café, the only place to eat for 40 miles in either direction.
Half the tables in the front section were filled with locals seeking shelter from the storm. Someone had erased the first “S” from the hand written whiteboard asking us to “Please _eat yourself.” We filled a long table in the back, next to a small children’s play area. As in all the other establishments we encountered in these small towns, several slot machines occupied one wall opposite the kid’s corner.
A haggard waitress approached, flipping her order pad as she asked, “OK, how are you doing this? All together?”
We tried to explain who would be paying for whom, but after Michele tried pointing at Jonnie at the opposite end from here and saying, “I’m with…”, she was cut off with, “Never mind, I’ll just write y’all up separately!”
The menu featured a range of fried finger foods and a surprisingly tantalizing and complete miniature salad bar. salad bar. Without any dressings. She said, “We’ve got Ranch, Blue Cheese, Honey Vinaigrette, we bring it to you.”
Dave ordered a salad, and the lunch special. “I’ll have that with Blue Cheese.”
“Oh, honey, we ain’t got that.”
Dave looked non-plussed and gave her his sweetest Carolina drawl. “But you just said you did.”
“OK, blue cheese, “she grumbled.
It went on like that for five minutes as she did her best surly waitress act for the out-of-towners.
I looked at the menu and found the comfort food of all comfort foods. “I’ll have a grilled cheese. And some tater kegs. And some jalapeño poppers.”
“Tater kegs? What do you suppose those?” Satish queried.
“I don’t know, but I’m hopping they’re like the beer-battered poutine I had in Indiana last spring. Without the cheese.”
“Beer-battered poutine? What’s that aboot?” Satish laughed.
The tater kegs proved to be tater tots on steroids, cylinders of fried potato 2” x 1”, and tasty as they looked.
While we waited for our food, we read the back of the menu which featured a long history of the Musselshell valley, its ranching heritage, and an obituary for the cryptic “Testical Festival”, which died in 2016.
“I don’t know if I want to eat here,” one of the guys said, “not if they’re going after testicles. And they can’t even spell it right. Ever see ‘Deliverance’?”
“No, it’s ‘Rocky Mountain Oysters’,” someone else offered.
“Huh?”
“Look, right there…it says they found another way to castrate the bulls, make then steers. You never heard of Rocky Mountain Oysters? They’d cook ‘em up after they cut ‘em off…”
Outside, the rain had stopped, but the wind still whipped through the trees, brings a sideways shower off the leaves as we assembled for a group photo in the lee of the Café.
“No, wait,” I said. You’ve got to come over here, under the sign,” I urged.
“No way, it’s windy out there.”“But look at the sign! That’s the picture, believe me.”
[To Be Concluded]