Day 21 – Aug. 9, 2009 – Hamilton, MT – 18 miles

What breed is this?

White cow with black nose and ears

A stop at Casey's (closed on Sunday) announces Juicy Worms for $2.50 a dozen.

Note the Missoulian news in the background

We loved this.

The note left on the door says, "Took a bag of ice. Be back Sun to pay."

The only problem is they are closed on Sunday!

Interesting Gas Pumps

The sign below informs you that this diesel is only to be used for farm equipment.

We love this marketing concept!

They were selling Moo Poo T-shirts at the Cafe down the road in Corvallis.

Gregory loves to look for license plates on the road. This was in the cafe in Corvallis. Yesterday he found 3 Montana plates within a half hour. They are all different and one is a demo plate. He will ship them to Grammy and Papa to keep for his room.

Gregory has been calculating the tip and paying the bill as part of his math each day. His friends in California start school on the 12th. Here he looks so tall to me!

This is shortly before we got dumped on outside of Hamilton.

Gregory's roadside find of the day

Legos!

Christ Bible Church in Hamilton, Pastor Ed

The bike was stored in the church for the night.

Pastor Ed and wife Carol let us bunk in the basement

where they have held vacation bible school in the past.

Not a good day for Mike. The back of his left knee and down his calf was in real pain with every pedal stroke. We stopped after a few miles and did some stretching, massage and applied some Biofreeze but he was the peg leg man today. His only power came from his right leg pedal stroke and boy did Gregory and I feel the difference. We earned our keep today. Fortunately if was relatively flat, a comfortable 70 degrees and we had the spectacular view of the Bitterroot Mountain Range.

We took a long lunch in Corvallis and met a friendly couple (Penny and Steve) from Colorado Springs headed east on their tandem. We exchanged information and they invited us to look them up in their hometown and also their final destination. It turned out that our waitress at lunch had lived in Red Bluff, CA for several years (where my mom grew up) and just an hour from our last city of residence, Paradise. Again, it is such a small world! I took an antsy Gregory across the street to the school playground while Mike continued to visit with Peggy and Steve and we finally hit the road late in the afternoon.

Gregory’s find of the day was a miniature American flag. We were almost to Hamilton and the flag told us that the wind was in our face. The ominous clouds overhead and the chill in the air told us we were about to get dumped on! And dump it did. We had sprinkles just briefly and when we were just about to enter town it came down in buckets. We stopped and threw on our rain jackets but still got pretty wet in the process. In a few short miles our shorts were pretty wet and Gregory was not a happy camper. His first real experience in the rain and he didn’t like it. We took shelter under the overhang of a defunct service station and no sooner than we got Gregory dried off and in to some warm pants did a young gal pull up and inform us that she knew folks in town that hosted cyclists. She drove off to contact them and I took Gregory across the street to the café for hot chocolate. It helped a little but he kept saying, “My crotch is wet!” (He still had wet bike shorts under his dry leggings.)

Before this gal came back another couple pulled up and it turned out to be Pastor Ed and his wife Carol of the Christ Bible Church. They were also offering a place to say. Our first contact ended up being full for the night so it all worked out and we ended up parking the bike inside the church and having meatloaf, bean salad, and some sweet Flathead cherries with Pastor Ed and Carol this evening! For Mike’s leg, Carol set him up with some “Invisi-Vein” (Varicose Vein Crème by Venus Naturals) and a physician’s sample of Voltaren Gel. She couldn’t remember what ache it was prescribed for but Mike was willing to try anything at this point and applied both and wrapped his leg up tight with an extra wide ACE bandage. We also have a bed for the night and Gregory was thrilled to find buckets of Legos and plenty of Nerf guns to battle his father. Gregory won the “Battle of the Foam” because Mike finally called it quits and he’s passed out on the bed as we speak. He had a rough one.