7/12/19   

We started our day with breakfast at the Cowboy Café.  It had a lot of the local charm and good food to boot. (a little cowboy humor, ok very little)

One of the most memorable things about this ride was a good bit of it was on Intestate 94.  We were dreading this since we had to ride on it yesterday and the shoulder, in which we had to ride, had a thin layer of sand on all of it.  Sand and bikes don’t mix well, but today we were fortunate because this shoulder was paved with no sand, great!

We were on and off I-90 and I personally preferred it when we were on side roads.  These roads had very little traffic.  One of the bad things about the side roads were the climbing grades were steeper than on I-94.

The scenery was also better on the side roads.  Here is a picture of a cross on top of one the hills we skirted.

Here is a shot of a field of yellow plants.  I’m not sure what is was.

But one of the good things about being on I-94 was the state crossing.  We were able to get a great picture of the Montana border crossing.  The first one is of me alone, but the second one is a prize picture of 7 of the 9 riders that I am riding with this year and  I rode with in 2017 when we did the TransAm crossing of MS.

Today I had one of those things happen that I don’t like to happen BUT I had a flat tire.   This leak was very easy to find. I hit a staple that went completely through my back tire.  

It was stuck in the tire and when I removed it I was concerned that the two holes may be too large, pinch my tube and cause another flat.  So to protect against that I put a folded up dollar bill inside by tire to cover the holes.

Before we arrived at Glendive we received a message that there wasn’t any services at the Dawson Community College, where we are going to spend the night.  So they suggested we stop and get something to eat before going to the school.

Since we arrived around 1:00 p.m., we stopped at the first restaurant we came to.   Our stay was extended to over 3 hours because it stated to rain shortly after we stopped for lunch.

I kept watching it rain and I didn’t want to go back out once we made it to the school so I bought and extra cheese burger and fries to take with me.  I can’t tell you how happy that made me since we had a steep climb up to the school.  It had stopped raining and the weather turn out great but the climb was a climb.