From the Headwaters of the Missouri

Hopefully I get this posted before the batteries die on the notebook and cell phone.  We ran the RV batteries low last night, so we are little short on juice this AM.  And the internet connection through my cell phone hot-spot has been very "spotty" which only eats more battery as I have to retry almost everything.

It was another busy day with a quick visit to the Montana State Capital building.  They were running tours and the whole place seemed to be much more lively than the capital building in Boise.

Then we drove to a Pizza Hut parking lot to drop the bikes and hit the road.  We had decided to change the route a little and head toward Three Forks, MT.  This took us down Hwy 287 which was much more scenic than riding along the interstate which is what I had originally planned.  Plus there were a lot more options for camping.

This is BIG wheat country.  As you can see, there were a few clouds hanging around.  This had been the case all day.  We even had a few sprinkles on us a couple of times, but nothing to get us wet.... which was really fortunate since we forgot to put the "trunk" on the tandem that has our rain jackets in it, along with spare tubes, chain links and food.  I'm not sure what we were thinking.  We were 50 miles into the ride before we even noticed.

Luckily, we made it to our stopping point without getting wet.  We loaded up the bikes on the RV and drove 7 miles to the Missouri River Headwaters State Park to spend the night.  We had barely got the RV parked before a thunderstorm dropped about a half-inch of rain on us in 30 minutes.

It was kind of interesting just riding over the Missouri river for the first time yesterday.  I thought that maybe we should drop a bottle with a note in it and see if it would beat us to Jefferson City, MO in about 3 weeks.

I'm not sure if you have wondered what two AARP candidates and a 16 year-old do in the evening with no TV, a limited selection of DVDs, and spotty (if any) internet connections.

... we play board games.  And right now the game of choice is Catan.  This is a game that Ben and Vicky (son and daughter-in-law) introduced us to a few months ago.  It is a lot of fun with 2-4 players.  It is a game of strategy with a good dose of luck since there are dice involved.  Somehow 11 was rolling a lot last night and that wasn't helping me at all!

Here is a link to yesterday's ride.

We are still a little ahead of our planned schedule (about 40 miles) and we are trying to decide if we push-on to try to make it to Yellowstone a little early or spend tonight in Ennis, MT.  We'll have to decide soon....






After two full weeks on the road (13 riding day) here are the stats: