Montana

Ride from Big Sky to Bozeman.

My trip through Montana was Big Sky, Bozeman, Great Falls and then finally Billings. I'm going to try and put all of this into one abridged post so I have a chance of catching up on the blogging. The problem I'm having is that ever since I took up couch surfing my available blogging time has been massively reduced. As awesome as couch surfing is, it takes a lot of leg work. For each place you visit you must write 3-5 couch surfing requests, each involves reading a lot of profiles then working out some sort of personalized message. Since the website doesn't really say if hosts are already full during certain dates, a lot of requests end up being fruitless. It then takes a bit of dicking about to line up dates where hosts are available.

But don't get me wrong, couch surfing has been awesome! I've met some really interesting people, and it is always great to hang with locals in the towns where I'm staying.

More Montana from the road.

So anyway, leaving Big Sky, I had to traveled back to West Yellowstone to pick up a few things, got some chili at a local restaurant then headed all the way up to Bozeman. When I arrived I visited the local Starbucks (attached to the supermarket, of course) so I could use their WiFi. I've learnt it's best not to get the coffee, but the mocha-light frappacinos are pretty awesome!

The problem was that my host and her roommate didn't get back from her job at Taco Bell until midnight. This meant I would have to hang about Bozeman for a very long time. One of the major issues with this is that my bike with all the gear on it isn't super secure; the panniers are lockable, but the security on the Ventura rack can be easily compromised using a pair of strong scissors. The other issue being that I didn't want to drink at a bar then ride to my host's place, or did I really want to hang out all night at Wall-mart - the only other place that was open till Midnight.

Olive and Rebecca.

So with a bit of reluctance I booked a cheap hotel and cancelled on my host. Feeling a bit guilty, I offered to meet up for breakfast the next day with her and her roommate. We went to a small cafe downtown called "Cat's Eye", which did some pretty awesome pancakes. My almost-host Rebecca and Olive were only 19 years old and were going to put me up in their dorm. That might have been a little weird, but they were the only hosts that requested that I could stay with them (that is, they responded to my advert). Olive was studying chemical engineering and Rebecca was studying a kind of nursing at collage in Bozemen. Both were very nice young ladies, damn I felt old around them though!

I set off from Bozeman to Great Sky at about 11AM. To be honest I wasn't too sure where to go in Montana, so I just cherry picked Great Falls because it sounded interesting - and I managed to get a host. Apparently Missoula is a pretty sweet town but that would have taken too much time out of my journey. I needed to get across to the East pretty soon, time was running out on the warmer weather.

Chris cuts some onions for dinner.

Early that afternoon I met up with Chris; my host in Great Falls. Chris was (another) host in the Air Force, his job was involved in road construction. He was kind enough to drive me to the "Great Falls" of which the city is named after. Afterwards we drove to a liquor store where I bought some Montana beers. It was kind of funny, he sort of thought I wanted to drink Australian beer, which he asked the assistant to find. As usual there was only the Fosters and "Sheaf Stout". Which brings me to a question, as Australians it's obvious that we don't drink Fosters, but has anyone seen a person by Sheaf Stout in Australia? I've seen it in the stores, but never in someone's hand.

The Great Falls, notice the damn right behind.

Chris was a pretty chill guy, cooked me dinner (homemade pasta from a family recipe - he had Italain heritage) then we drank beer and watched to DVDs. We went to bed pretty early, he was an early starter. But he was nice enough to cook me some oatmeal and coffee the next morning.

That day I then headed down to Billings, which was positioned well for me future (long) jump into North Dakota. Before I left though I tried to get some touristy things in, I took some more photos of the great falls (this tome with the SLR), Rainbow Falls and the Great Spring. The falls would have been really awesome if the dams weren't built around them. The photos below demonstrate, if you can cut out the damn in the shot it's pretty awesome, but as you zoom out (and what you see in person), it turns out kind of underwhelming.

A close up of the great falls, trying to remove the ugly dam.

Rainbow falls, even at my greatest zoom I
couldn't remove all of the dam.

But this is what you really see of rainbow falls -
imagine without the dam!

After the dams/waterfalls I went to the "Great Spring", one of the highest rated attractions in Great Falls. The car park said that I had to pay $5, but me being such a total bad-ass wasn't going to pay $5 for a 2 minute walk around some spring. So I just moved really quick and got some photos of it.

The Great Spring.

From a different angle.

Afterwards I set of to Billings. There was constant roadwork. Someone later told me there were 2 seasons in Montana: Snow season and roadwork season.

On the ride from Great Falls to Billings.
Seemed very classic American to me.

The place I had lunch! Nothingness everywhere.

Sean ponders the universe at a microbrewery in Billings.

Once in Billings I met up with my host - Sean - in his camping store where he gave me some keys to his apartment. I spent the rest of the day catching up on couch surfing requests (common theme here?) at a local cafe, then headed back to Sean's place.

Sean was a pretty cool dude, he was your classic outdoorsy guy who loved to hike, camp, drink and brew his own beer. One of his fridges just contained 2 kegs of his homebrew.

That night he and I went out to a few microbreweries in Montana. The first one had like 16 beers on tap, all made right there in the bar. It had an awesome back porch right on the train tracks. Unfortunately the breweries in Montana have to close at a ridiculously early time (I think 9PM?), so we had to head out to another bar for dinner.

We had some awesome tapas at this bar - including bacon wrapped dates which were amazing. Shortly after we headed back home.

That morning I started my very long journey to North Dakota!