A long stretch
Poor weather would plague us for the next few days. The forecast out of Deer Lodge was for thunderstorms in the morning, so the original plan was to leave later in the day. Not hearing early morning rain, we turned on the TV for a weather report, which was revised from yesterday and put the thunderstorms into the afternoon. We bolted out of bed and quickly packed and hit the road so that we could get to Butte before the rain did.
The ride was a gradual climb at first followed by some steeper climbs. We made it into Butte before the rain and made decent time. The plan was to visit the area the next morning and head onto Bozeman, but that plan was altered by the threat of snow. We had a wonderful visit of the area in the morning under mostly blue skies. We hoped that the snow would be a joke, but that wasn’t the case. The snow came- 7″ of it - so we took the Greyhound to Bozeman. Not as simple as we thought.
While walking from the bus station to the hotel, we heard a local comment about our cycling prowess. Considering that we were simply pushing the bikes, we found the remark rather humorous. We arrived later in the day so we planned on touring Bozeman the next morning and then leaving in the early afternoon for the short ride to Livingston. As things go, the weather was following us, which meant that the snow was due to arrive in Bozeman. We simply hunkered down here another night so that we would have a pleasant ride over Bozeman Pass and into Livingston.
It was quite chilly on the day that we would be cycling over Bozeman Pass, so we bundled up in the clothes that we hadn’t needed for a long time. I thought that the days of wearing tights were long gone, but was glad that I had something to keep me warm.
We started up the pass and as we came close to the highest elevation, the snow began to fall. This road wasn’t the best as it had a disappearing shoulder and it was rather hard to see ahead with the snow blowing in our faces. We eventually reached the high point and were disappointed not to see an elevation marker. We got off the interstate as soon as a frontage road appeared and made the cold and quick decent into Livingston.
I had been to Livingston a few years prior to board a train for a tour of the area. We walked to the station and I tried to get our bearings. Since we had left Bozeman late, we were in town at the wrong time for lunch. Maybe restaurants had already stopped their lunch service for the day, but we eventually found a suitable Mexican restaurant.
Reed Point was next on the itinerary and we had a nice ride on mostly frontage roads. As has been the case almost every day, the wind picked up. We had an intense crosswind coupled with spurts of rain. our last 15 miles into town took more effort than I wanted to exert. It was such a relief to make it to the Montana Hotel, a nice change of scenery from the predictable decor of the chains that we had been staying in.
We trudged on through Montana and thought that we had already been in this state long enough to become residents. On the way to Billings, we pedaled very few miles on the interstate. We climbed some intense hills, but the climbs were worth the great views. Not shocking was the fact that we suddenly found ourselves riding into an intense headwind the last few miles into Billings. Our approach was not a good one, as it seemed like we could have avoided a very treacherous, congested bridge on the way to our motel. We crossed that without incident even though I know my heartrate was up and not from the pedaling.