Ovando, MT → Helena, MT
- Jun 8, 2016
- 2 min read
Hey there! It was another hot day today, but it felt great compared to the last three days we complained about in yesterday's post. We stayed in Ovando, MT last night and felt like we'd gone back to the wild west. MMost of the town sits on one dusty intersection. After first walked into “Trixie’s Saloon” (turned out to have been previously owned an operated by a famous western vaudeville actress) last night. The patrons’ reaction to our arrival was what you might expect when a couple in bright, skin-tight spandex walks into such an establishment. Everyone, bartender included, stopped what they were doing to look up at us and stare. Not a word of greeting was said. We mustered our faux confidence and acted as if we blended in. It seemed to work.
A more friendly couple from Missoula soon joined (Chris and Heather) and told us that we could stay in a room above the town's old-fashioned corner store. We fell asleep to the sounds of cows in the distance and heat lightning streaking across the night sky.
After a solid breakfast, compete with biscuits and gravy, at the “Stray Bullet Cafe” we set out for Helena. Beautiful ride. Lots of rolling hills and open pasture. All the cows seemed to be staring at us like we were idiots. We soon realized it might have been the giant thunder clouds sneaking up behind us--soon surrounding us.
Needless to say, we were chased up the continental divide by a massive afternoon thunderstorm. Although the tail wind helped our climb we were far too nervous to celebrate our feat at the top. As we soared down the mountain (I soared at least, will let Kate address her fear of downhill riding in a later post) the wind and thunder grew more threatening. Once we saw lightning we pulled off into the first barn we saw.
Soon after we met the owner, a really sweet guy named Jerry, who took us back to a beautiful pavilion he’d built next to the pond to wait out the storm. Really nice chatting with him--school teacher, turned PhD, turned world travelling construction worker. Now he spends his days tending to a gorgeous plot of land outside Helena. He invited us to stay for his weekly horse shoe event with his friends and stay their place, but we wanted to see Helena before heading east in the morning.
In town we ate dinner outside in the cooler post-storm air, hit up the Big Dipper for ice cream, and even found another wonderful WarmShowers host (thanks Joel!) willing to put up a couple of road weary cyclists for the night.
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