Day 24: I just want to see one tree

Some people find that waking up to birds is a very peaceful activity, so much so that it’s even one of the alarm choices on an iPhone. Those people obviously haven’t been in Jordan, MT at 4:20 AM when it seems like several thousand birds all started screeching their heads off. Not peaceful at all, but anyways it’s Brian with Day 24 of the trip, or as I like to call it, two days out from leaving Montana.

I eventually got back to sleep after the birds woke me up earlier and started getting ready for the day around 7. The birds were still screeching but it was semi tolerable at this point (though there were owls hooing in the daylight which is lending more credit to the theory that this is all a simulation) and I packed up all my gear and ate my oatmeal breakfast. Just as we were leaving I found that the birds had sensed my annoyance at them and had pooped all over my left handlebar (as I’m typing this Dustin just found out that a bird pooped on his tent as well…we are being targeted) so that was fun. We left around 8:30 for a 67 mile day to Circle, MT and honestly even though today was shorter than yesterday, it was much more hot and with the first 50 miles being more rolling hills, it was pretty exhausting throughout the day. Morale got pretty low pretty fast and we had to do a lot of convincing ourselves that the next hill was going to be the last one (it wasn’t ever true).

One of the locals in Lewistown had this to say about eastern Montana: “It isn’t Hell but you can see it from there” and yeah I am starting to agree with that random stranger. The sheer amount of rolling hills on this side of the state are a biker’s nightmare and thank goodness that the last 9 miles of the day were pretty much flat or I was going to just collapse on the side of the road and wait for a car to pick me up. 

We eventually got to Circle (no squares allowed) and found the RV park that we were supposed to be at for the night but apparently it’s between owners so we didn’t know who to pay or see about reserving a site. A very nice lady who lived next to the RV park offered us her lawn to tent in though so here we are. The kindness of strangers on this trip really is something else (this is disregarding the many many very angry honks we have gotten from semis on the highway). One of the highlights of today is that we had a laundromat available and finally were able to wash out our clothes which we had been wearing for the past 5 days. If any of you reading this were expecting a joyous reunion that was sparkles and rainbows when we get back to UConn please reevaluate how smelly we will be and bring Frebreeze to the event. 

For dinner we walked down to a nice place called the Lunch Box where we basically sat in silence and devoured sandwich after sandwich as we were all basically starving. Even though most of the towns we have been staying in don’t go over 500 people, the food has really been one of the best parts of the trip and we have gotten some quality meals out of the small town shops. 

Tomorrow is 78 miles, our second longest day of the trip and it’s supposed to be 92 degrees out so we are trying to leave at 6 am, getting up at 4 am, but we will see how that actually goes. Thank goodness though, tomorrow only has two hills. Both are huge but I’ll take those over rolling hills any day.

Photo Dump: 

Sheep babies

“It’s all downhill from here” - Leo

**this was, of course, a lie**