On the Road: Greetings from Helena, MT

We are definitely in "Big Sky" country now. Big open valleys surrounded by mountains. Lots of hay and cattle.

We made it to Helena a little ahead of schedule. We didn't take our full "rest day" off in Missoula. About noon we headed out and road 41 miles toward Helena. We spent the night in Russell Gates Camp Ground along the Blackfoot River. Today was a scheduled 110 mile ride to the MacDonalds Campground about 20 miles from Helena. But by putting in 41 miles early, we made it all the way to Helena today. We will have plenty of time to visit the state capital tomorrow before heading down the road toward Boulder, MT and Yellowstone National Park a couple days after that. So far we have had plenty of sunshine since we left the Oregon coast, but tomorrow is forecast to be rainy, so we will see how things go.

Just for fun, Beth has made it a mission to find a license plate from every state that we are in along the roadside. So far she has been very successful. Today she found 2 Montana plates along the road. So far she has found at least one plate in every state, OR, ID and MT.

Beth and I rode the tandem 60 miles today and then Nicholas and I rode the last 27 miles together including the climb up to MacDonald Pass. Nicholas absolutely killed me going up to the pass. He was at least half a mile ahead of me when he reached the summit. Even so it was a blast riding down the other side, at least for the first 4 miles with an 8% grade going down. Here are our tracks from the past couple of days. Rest Day... Today.

It is hard to believe that we will hit the 1000 mile mark tomorrow on this journey across the country.... only 3000 more to go!!!