June 18 from Malta, Montana

The night of our last posting, we stayed in Joplin, Montana. These towns along Route 2 are spread out about 8-15 miles from each other along the Burlington Northern Railroad, which parallels Route 2. Each town has a sign, a grain elevator, a school, some dilapidated buildings, and a quiet, aging population that remains mostly invisible. The roads are mostly dirt, and they are numbered avenues in one direction and numbered streets in the other. We got lucky with Joplin. It has a manicured park at its center with trees and a gazebo and bathrooms and we were allowed to pitch tent right in the middle of it. A woman from the town walked over in the evening just to comb the park for litter because there had been an antique car show there the day before, not because she had to. She sat down and spoke to us for quite awhile, and like many of the other women we've met along the way, was pretty impressed that we "gals" were doing something like this. Then she started talking about Hilary. I guess we are fortunate enough to think nothing of doing this as women.

Yesterday was our first day over 80 miles! We actually did 85. We were not in a rush to reach our final destination, an old park in Zurich that we had heard was swarming with bugs. Was it ever! We hid in the tent as soon as dinner was over with the intention of reading/ writing in our journals, but I think we just fell asleep.... This far north that means we fell asleep while the sun was still high in the sky.

Today we had a strong tailwind, and good thing because Chaos Panda is now up to 7 flat tires, which means long stops in the hot sun. Some other cyclists stopped to help and actually had gotten a flat themselves. The road is full of hazards, glass, car parts, roadkill, rocks. This morning we all screamed when the debris started to slither! Our second snake.

We are now on our way to the Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs, which had better be awesome, because Liz has been using it as the ultimate carrot for days. We started counting down mileage to the hot springs two days ago! The only bad part will be actually having to look at our tan lines, which are pretty unbelievable. We try not even to look at our hands, which have the weirdest looking glove tan lines.

In case you're wondering, Liz has made a top three list of things she misses.
1. Bath towels
2. Sponges for doing the dishes
3. Sushi

Cate and Sarah to share their lists in a future posting.

- The Pandas