Drummond, MT to Missoula, MT
Today's ride was a short one, and we knew we would have fun with it. At the 20 mile mark, we saw a "hot" spring and pulled over and everyone jumped in, which was a lot of fun. The water was not really all that hot, especially at 9 in the morning, when we got there, but we found a great place to jump off the rocks into the spring, and there was a waterfall and an awesome underwater cave that we explored. You had to swim underwater and through a passage, and then up into a room where you were inside the rock and could hang out. It was scary to try to get in and out of, but it was really cool once you made it inside. After that, we rode on, and made it into Missoula with not much trouble. Cady broke his handlebars, but somehow managed to glue them back together for the last 15 miles of the day. We explored the city a bit, and it is nice to be in a big city. Missoula actually has traffic, and stores with actual things, its almost strange to be in a normal city after the past few weeks. We visited a few bike shops with Sae-bin, his derailleur broke the other day and he decided to buy an entire new bike, despite the fact that we only have two weeks left. At night, we had some chinese food for dinner, where we met an older man who biked across the country in 1987, and did it only 40 some days, so we were all humbled by his stories of riding 90 miles a day all by himself. Then we all headed out to some local watering holes for Matt Harlan's b-day, which was at midnight.
Today is our second-to-last rest day(!) and after I finish blogging and putting my pictures up, I plan on getting some food, doing laundry, trying to send some stuff home so that I can pack my bag again, and then maybe exploring Missoula a bit more. Sae-bin just walked in with his new $4000 bike, but he got a great deal on it, it was originally $6000, and the thing is insanely light, I can easily pick it up with one hand. This is a college town, since the University of Montana is located here, the home of the dominating Grizzlies, one of the best football programs in D-II college football. They also have a huge letter M on one of the hills overlooking town, as many of the towns in the West have, so I am considering heading out there to try to catch the sunset tonight. I am loving Montana so far, it is really scenic everywhere, and all the people are so nice. I think this is definitely up there on my list of favorite states that we've been through. It's funny, but you can't help trying to imagine living in all of the places that we've been going through, just to see if you can imagine yourself living there. I am not really a fan of most of the small towns, there is just not enough happening most of the time, but Montana doesn't give me that feeling, despite it having way less people than any other state. We head to Idaho tomorrow, and then into Washington, then Oregon! It's crazy to think that this journey is almost over, and that we have ridden 3200 miles already. Weird. New pics are up at http://www.flickr.com/people/8300819@N03/ as usual.
States traveled through:16(NY,NJ,PA, DE, MD, DC, VA, WV, OH, IN, IL, WI, MN, SD, WY, MT)
Distance today: 56 mi
Total Distance traveled: 3244 mi