On Tuesday, October 30, 2018 at 6:27:59 AM UTC-4, Ned Mantei wrote:
On 30-10-18 07:58, James wrote:
On 30/10/18 11:39 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:


When my wife, daughter and I did our coast-to-coast ride, we were on a
gravel road in North Dakota when a woman driving a pickup truck
stopped us. She explained that another pair of touring cyclists just
ahead of us had spooked her cattle so badly they stampeded right
through a barbed wire fence and up the road.

Her family was herding the cows back down the gravel road, opposite
the direction we were riding. She asked us to please hide ourselves
behind some huge hay rolls in the adjacent pasture until they had
passed by.

So we took a snack break there, and after a while got to watch cowboys
on horses plus another pickup truck move the herd.

At least we didn't have to disassemble our bikes.Â* :-)


Yes, I've been asked to wait for cattle being driven along the road
reserve.Â* Some horses are particularly skittish around bicycles too.


I've seen this sort of thing only once. Going up into an out-of-the-way
valley (Val Sinestra) there was a trail of cows coming down from their
summer pasture (https://flic.kr/p/bH8xNB ) Surprisingly, they were led
by several horses, with no humans around (https://flic.kr/p/bH8xK4 ). I
moved to the side to let them pass, but left my bike close to the road.
The cows avoided this strange object, but still kept going
(https://flic.kr/p/bH8xT4 ). Humans appeared later in an SUV, after all
the cows had passed.

Where the trail ends closer to settled areas, coming down from the
pasture at the end of summer ("Alpabzug") can be a sort of parade, with
the cows being decked out for the celebration
(https://flic.kr/p/2bqbDB9 and https://flic.kr/p/NKW6cX ,
or https://flic.kr/p/bHacdR ).

At other times I've encountered groups of cows right on the road. Often
it was easy to go around them (https://flic.kr/p/LxHLkD ), but once I
had to walk right through the group. They didn't seem to care at all,
and let me pass. The only unpleasant part was that they were surrounded
by clouds of flies.

And somehow touching: Once I was standing at the side of the road
looking at a map, when a cow came over and started to lick the sweat off
my arm. An unusual but not unpleasant sensation...

Finally, as I've mentioned before, mother cows with their calves
("Mutterkuhhaltung" in German) can be very dangerous. Every year or two
the newspaper reports on a hiker killed by a mother cow. Here I leave at
least 50 meters space, or just give up and go back.

Ned

The cow licking your arm was after the salt. When I worked on a farm with cows one of the things I had to do was put the salt blocks out in the areas where the cows grazed.

I looked at a number of other images in that photo stream you posted links to. I found it interesting that the signs were in time = how long it'd take to get some place rather than in distances such as kilometers.

Cheers