Today is Monday, July 10th and Christina and I have just arrived in Billings, the largest city in Montana. We have officially made it through the Rockies and are happily resting over the fact that we won't have to climb over any more mountain passes. 😛 Despite the steep roads, we have fallen in love with Monatans beauty. The rivers and mountains that we continuously ride along are simply breathtaking! Last week we biked through Missoula which is where the Adventure Cycling headquarters is located. (Adventure Cycling is the organization that donated some of their excellent maps to us). We stayed at a warmshowers place there and met a few fellow coast-to-coast riders as well. Our host, Bruce, has turned his home into pretty much a youth hostel for any bikers to pass by and stay there for as little or as long as they want. Therefore there are always lots of bikers at that house and is a great place to meet people! After Missoula we made our way towards Butte and stopped in Ovando and Philipsburg. Philipsburg is known for 'The Sweet Palace' located there, also known as "the worlds greatest candy store" which we of course visited. Ovando is a tiny tiny town with about-are you ready for this?- 53 people living in it! My whole family is larger than that! But my my were they all so kind and welcoming to us. We slept in their historical jail cell, aka "hoosegow" and woke up to yet another kind person who made us some hot tea and scrambled eggs. 🍳We left that morning feeling energized and grateful for such kindhearted people. We spent our Fourth of July in Butte and met up with some of our new friends that we made back in Missoula. Josh, José and Scott are riding from Portland OR to Portland ME and they are cruising! We rode with them from Butte to Manhattan, about 80 miles away, but went our separate ways from there. They continued to Billings and we stopped in Manhattan to visit friends. It was a lot of fun riding with them through some beautiful canyons and we will hopefully see them again when we get to the east coast :)
In Manahttan, we had an excellent rest day at my friends, the Cuelho's place. They are a family of 13 children, and are all so kind and welcoming. We had so much fun with them and their lively atmosphere:) They truly are such a beautiful family, inside and out. They also let us use their car for a day so that we could see Yellowstone! It's only about 1 1/2 hours away from Manhattan but too far out of the way for us to bike to. It was so nice of them to let us use their car and see such an amazing park! Everyday I am just more and more amazed by how beautiful our world is and by how much we have to be grateful for.
Today we are in Billings and are staying with a warmshowers host who is preparing spaghetti and ice cream for dinner. He took us into the city to browse around which was so nice of him! Tomorrow we will continue our way to Hysham and should be out of MT in 3-4 days! Time is flying by but we certainly are enjoying every minute of it:)
Ajelet
