Hi everyone! Welcome to days 48 and 49. We started out the day camping, so it was a cold and somewhat miserable morning for us. To make ourselves feel a little better we had a nature art exhibition. Some of the art pieces were a little more abstract than others but as we all know art can take many different forms.

Soon after we started biking we exited Yellowstone and crossed the border into Montana.

The first half of the day we biked through a very scenic area of the Gallatin National Forest. We were biking by a lake surrounded by mountains on both sides. Combined with the fact it was a slight downhill almost the entire way, it was a very pleasant ride.

In the middle of the day we stopped by the visitor center of the Earthquake Lake. The lake was created after a powerful earthquake caused a landslide in the area forming a dam on the river. It was a unique and interesting place to visit and the visitor center won our hearts by selling t-shirts for less than 10 dollars.

The rest of the day we were biking on a country highway surrounded by some beautiful mountain views. It was quite a long and tiring day so we were very grateful at the end of it to have hot showers and dinner provided by the very nice staff of the Madison Valley Presbyterian church of Ennis.

For day 49, our ride dedication was for Anna and Edgar. Anna and Edgar are both cancer survivors and members of the ACS chapter at UIUC and we were lucky enough to do portraits with them at this year’s Relay for Life. Most of our portraits are with older people, so getting to do portraits with students was very unique and memorable. We admire their strength and willingness to share their stories with us!

The ride on day 49 was pretty short at only 53 miles. We also did not have a lot of climbing so we finished the biking for the day early at about 1 PM. The highlights along the route included…

Mountain views…

Making new friends…

Snacks…

Veronica finally finding a small license plate she’s been dreaming of finding…

And whatever is happening right here.

After getting to our stayover and getting lunch, we decided to visit the Montana Grizzly Encounter which home for rescued grizzlies. We got to see a 3 year old grizzly bear named Max, make some jokes about our own Max from the team, and take a picture with a bear statue.

In the evening, we all headed for dinner to a Mexican Food truck which was payed for by the I4K alum Nick who joined us for several days of our ride in Wyoming and Montana. The place was probably not quite ready to serve 23 people at the same time, so dinner took a long time but was still delicious. Thank you Nick for dinner!

-Valerie