Somehow I didn’t take many photos this day.
The roads to Cut Bank, Montana were sublime hardly any traffic on them until I was just a couple miles from town. I did notice a pulse of vehicles go by that would reach the border crossing between 8:45 (border patrol) and 9:00 (folks wanting to be the first to cross that day).
When I got to Cut Bank, I was ready for a cup of coffee and a treat. But I also needed to charge my back up battery since it hadn’t been plugged in for two nights. I thought I found a coffee shop I would hang out in while my battery charged. But it turned out It was just a drive-through stand. There are a lot of those in the areas I’ve been riding through. The kind lady who made me my coffee and heated up my muffin top suggested I might go to the public library. She’d be better at Bike touring than I am, I had heard people talk about libraries being a great place to use the Wi-Fi and charge your devices, but that nugget of knowledge was filed away somewhere obscure. I went to the public library and I asked if I could charge my devices while I was drinking my coffee and eating outside, but the librarian said come on in, you can eat and drink your coffee as long as it’s not in front of a computer. They also had bathrooms and a water fountain where I could fill my water bottles. Like an oasis in the desert.
When I made it to Shelby, I went to Pizza Hut to celebrate and ate entirely too much pizza. I had to do a little bit of hunting around to find camping in Shelby I ended up paying for a campground. Boo! It’s not so bad when it’s a hiker biker campsite rate but this was in the $30-$40 range. Got to manage the budget.
There were benefits though, I met Cameron and Juliana, a couple from Calgary out for an adventure in their RV trailer with their cat cattachino. They were wonderfully kind and invited me over for a beer and snacks. I found myself feeling gratitude to strangers again, thanks guys.
Slow and Steady 
Leave a comment