Happy Birthday Keith!

Leah

I was starting to think this morning that our camping trip was turning into more of a 50/50 split between camping and hotels. We are now booked in for TWO nights at a campground in Red Lodge, MT so that will sway our stats to the camping side. We managed to pack up and hit the road by just past 10am this morning. So not too shabby, not early by any means but we knew that we had a short day ahead of us. The plan was to ride into Billings to find a camping store that we could replace some solar components that had fallen off of Keith’s bike yesterday. (Again, a grumpy Keith moment searching for fallen stuff on the side of the highway). We found dead rattlesnake skins on the road, if that counts for anything.

Today turned into another hot one! The temperature got up to 105F, so we were diligently re-applying sunscreen at every stop we made. We stopped at one dive/redneck bar in the afternoon for a cup of coffee. I think Keith and I both felt like it was a touch too rustic for our liking and we made it a quick coffee stop and carried on. We rode past a wind farm that didn’t have a single wind turbine moving at the time (how often does that happen?) it was a little eery. It probably would have made a good picture, but we just motored on past. There was also an old rustic looking grain elevator that would have made a good backdrop for the bikes, but we were on a mission to get where we were going!

We made it into Billings and stopped at Cabellas hoping to find the stuff we needed, turns out they only had Americana sized components and we needed the smaller back-country sized stuff so a staff member recommended that we try a store called Scheels. I had never heard of that store before, after going in…HOW HAD I NOT HEARD OF IT?! There was a Ferris wheel inside the store. A FERRIS WHEEL. INSIDE. Where have I been my whole sheltered little life? We managed to maneuver through the monstrosity of a store, found the stuff we needed and hit the baking hot road.

I must say, all of the roads in Montana have had very good surfaces, the only exception was the 5km or so of construction that we went through today on our way into Red Lodge. The scenery got more and more promising as we drove. We could see the mountains approaching and the roads started to have some twists and turns. Only slightly, but still better than the straight, straight, STRAIGHT stuff we had been on. You can really see why they call this “big sky” country. There are amazing vantage points where you can see for miles and miles and miles. Good luck trying to not get that song stuck in your head. There are a lot of plateau areas and some sudden cliffs and drop-offs that just appear out of nowhere. We saw some deer and pronghorn in the fields. I actually spotted some pronghorn in with a heard of black angus cattle just outside of Medicine Hat yesterday.

Today is Keith’s 39th birthday, we don’t buy each other birthday gifts, instead we have an agreement that we need to be on a mountain on our birthday. We are nestled at the base of the Rocky Mountains today, so that is close enough. (I am an estimator after all, and all we ever can ask for is to be close).

As mentioned earlier we have checked into a campground just outside of Red Lodge and very close to the Bear Tooth Pass that we will ride tomorrow. The campsite we have is right beside a little stream that is beautifully clear and I’m sure will sing us a lullaby as we doze off tonight. We’ve started the first campfire of our trip and we’ve actually seen a tiny bit of rain tonight as well. A storm passed through as we were eating dinner in town (at a brewery – no surprise there). We waited the storm out, got a small back stage tour of the brewery and then made it back to camp and set up our tarp before the next little sprinkling of rain started. The brewery was Red Lodge Ales, they had some very nice beers, so we’ve taken a few cans back to enjoy by the fire. What can I say, life is good!