A new day, but this one is a bit different – today we go to the Farmers’ Market! Ok, we only find one of the three … what is it with websites for a place that do not give you an address, or at least an intersection? Really?

Got some Tuna, Scallops, and a bunch of fresh veggies. Yeah!

After that, we get changed and head out to Rattlesnake Trailhead. Gonna try one of the local trails, with only about 2,000 feet of climbing, see how we do. Long story short, not worth a crap! We got tired of pushing the bikes up a REALLY steep hill, so we just bailed really, REALLY close to the top and went back the way we came. Why bail so close to the top? We were toasted, and the return had the potential to be very confusing, and very easy to do more distance than anticipated, so we went the safe route. On the plus side, it was a screamer of a downhill (after the REALLY steep part – that was not so much fun), and the last part of it no brakes at probably 20 miles an hour – fun stuff!

Late lunch/early dinner (the tuna), and tonight, also an early beddie-bye time. Good night, folks, I’m bushed! Tomorrow? Maybe rest day for me and The Bear. The kid is all go-go-go … well, he can go, go, go – I’ll sleep in!

Ok, today we are TOAST. No biking today, but we decided we needed to do something, so we hiked up the hill to the big “M” just outside of town.

Drove out to the trailhead, and headed up. And “up” is the operative word here. First of all, there are two trails (actually there are also several subtrails, but let’s go ahead and ignore those for this discussion), the hard one (VERY steep, and out in the open), and the not-so-hard one, which goes along the trees somewhat. Obviously, we opted for the not-so-hard one.

Well, not-so-hard it may be, but according to the literature we read, the trailhead is at 4,950 feet, and the M is at 5,800 feet, for a net 850 feet. The trail is 1.5 miles. Do the math – not-so-hard is still hard, especially after the brutal ride we had yesterday. BUT … going up was not actually so bad … the bad part? Coming down! Wow, that hurt my legs!

Here’s what the “M” looks like from Bozeman:

And here is what Bozeman looks like from M – iPhone for both photos:

We are parked just out of sight, hidden by the pine on the left, where the highway disappears. Yes, that’s a long way down!

Well, that pretty much wraps up Bozeman. Tomorrow – Missoula!

Alright! Early breakfast, head out of town about 60 miles to Red Lodge for a few loops.

Well, there are the plans, and then there’s the reality. We left a little late, and we stopped at the Visitor’s Center to get some literature, and a very nice woman talked with us, regaling us with tales of life in Montana. Very enjoyable. Well, for the most part. There are bears. Ok, we have The Bear, and in the wrong mood, I probably would rather face a real grizzly, but still, this is no joking matter. I have Gretchen with me, and will be carrying her on the trails, but I really have no desire to shoot a bear, I’d much rather just scare it away. Of course, loud noises are supposed to shoo them away as well, and Gretchen can certainly make a bunch of noise, but again, I’d rather do it in a low-impact way, so off we go to find bear spray. Oh, yeah – Gretchen is my Glock model 20, in 10mm, loaded with DoubleTap 200 Grain bullets that move out at 1250 fps. Almost 700 ft-lbs of energy, and they’re used by the Sirius Sledge Patrol in Greenland to protect themselves from Polar bears, so I figured it should work for grizzly as well. I sincerely hope I never have to find out.  So, off we go to get bear spray. $40 bucks for a small bottle, but what’s your life worth? Well, we figure ours are worth at least that, and we get a bottle. Barri has the spray, I have Gretchen, and Adrian … well, he’d better ride faster than either of us!

Bottom line? We get into Red Lodge proper and done with our shopping at 11:00. Ok, let’s have lunch, then we’ll ride! The guy at the store (Sylvan Peak Mountain Shop) was VERY friendly, and very helpful, and even pointed us to a great place to eat – Foster & Logan’s. Off we go! And it’s closed. Doesn’t open for half an hour! Ok, we’ll wander around town and see what’s there. End up at the local Coal Mine museum, go through it and learn all kinds of cool facts. And now, it’s lunch time! Woohoo! On the way to lunch, we see some cool recycling ideas:

A ski bench, and a ski chair:

Some folks had also used them as fence boards. Cool idea! Ok, lunch for real!

Burgers and french fries, but no Guinness, we’ll have to come back for that, and finally we’re off to ride the trail. Trail’s a little hard to find, but we finally get there, and star the ride – uphill. Why do they ALWAYS start uphill? Can’t you just ONCE park us a little high, let us breeze through the first part of the trail, and THEN kick our butts with the hills? No. I guess they can’t. But it wasn’t too bad, a service road at first, a little rocky, a little sandy, not too hard to ride, then we get to the actual trail. A little rocky, a little sandy. A little rockier, a little sandy. Ok, it’s getting quite a bit rockier, and the rocks are getting to be the size of cabbages, and it’s starting to be a challenge to ride through this stuff … this is not so much fun right now, but we’re troopers, and we keep going. We were in tall pines, so the scenery was pretty spectacular, but the ride … oh, how I hate the stutter bumps of riding on rocks. Well, thankfully, it eventually smoothed out, and the ride back was smooth and fast, until we got to the road we took up to the trail, but by this time, we were flying so fast down that hill that we were only hitting about half the rocks, Oh, lordy, please don’t do anything where I have to stop suddenly, because that is just not going to happen. Not gracefully, anyway!

Ok, today, we went back to the Zimmerman trail, but we went with a purpose – to find where the locals get on the trail originally, not stumbling into it mid-trail. It turns out it’s pretty easy, but even though it’s in plain sight, it’s invisible.

Also, start of day, went by an auto parts store to buy a brake light bulb for the truck. What’s with light bulbs on this trip? A few days ago, I was sitting in the trailer – it’s old, so not everything works. It has two overhead light fixtures, but only one of them works. I was sitting there, reading something, when all of a sudden I thought “Hmmm … if anything happens to that light bulb, we’re screwed!”. No reason for anything to happen, so I kept reading. Not fifteen minutes later, the bulb burned out! Prescience is not all it’s cracked up to be. Of course, maybe I was also prescient a few weeks ago, when I tried to fix the other fixture by putting a new bulb in it – that didn’t fix it, but I went ahead and left the new bulb in it. That’s where my spare bulb came from! Maybe sometimes prescience is good!

Anyway, to start searching for the elusive start of Zimmerman, we parked at the Boothill Cemetery, far beyond the easter edge of the Z trail, so we were sure to be far enough out. Here’s a shot of the sign:

And here’s the cemetery itself:

And here’s the parking lot, in all its glory:

When on the Z trail, I took another panoramic:

Another great ride!

Tomorrow, we go to Red Lodge, Montana!

Up early (not TOO early!), get breakfast, and realize I pulled into the wrong spot in camp. The one I’m in is not marked. Of course, the one I am SUPPOSED to be in IS clearly marked! How did I miss it? Really good question! Oh, well. Off to the office to get it fixed – they moved us in the computer instead of physically – thank you!

The office personnel are extremely helpful and friendly, but it still does not make up for the poor design of the campground, specifically the bathrooms. It’s a HUGE campground, with two “bathroom complexes”. One is attached to the office, same building, but around the side, and that’s ok. And those are actually fairly workable. The problem is the second set of bathrooms. First, they are relatively close to the first set, and this place is HUGE – did I mention that? And the people  that need the bathrooms the most – tenters and cabin dwellers (only the two Deluxe Cabins have bathrooms) – are the furthest away from the bathrooms. Really?

But that’s not the worst of it. This second bathroom complex has 11 little rooms in it. Four are toilet-urinal-sink (we have to be unisex, I guess), and the other seven are toilet-urinal-sink-shower. First things first – ladies, do you REALLY want to be sitting on a toilet with a urinal at your elbow? I’m a guy, and I don’t, so I guess you don’t either. Another problem with at least one of the small ones is that the urinal is in the very corner, not a bad thing in and of itself, except the hand drier (one of the larger type) is on the wall to the left side, and keeps anyone from getting close to the urinal … any guesses what the end result there is, especially if the guest is a bit overweight? Yeah, evidently most guys end up pissing on the floor, because when I went in there, there was a huge wet spot in the corner floor, and the place stank of urine. Great design, guys! Maybe if more guys were hung like Pegasus, they could reel it out that far,  but in the real world, this doesn’t work! Of course, if more guys were hung like Pegasus, women wouldn’t care … but I digress.

Ok, here’s a photo to illustrate my point:

Guys! Ditch the urinal!

Haven’t tried the shower ones yet, but folks – why waste all that space? That means when someone is showering, no one else can use that urinal, or sink, or toilet. Really? Someone thought this was a good idea? Really? Conversely, when someone is using that sink, or toilet, or urinal … you get the idea. Any time someone is using one part of this little room,  75% of it is going unused. Find that architect and revoke their degree!

Ok, rant over. It’s mid-morning and it’s time to ride!

UPDATE: Alright, I’m back, and I’ve gone and showered. So. No urinal in those, GOOD. BUT – any time someone is using the shower, or the sink, or the toilet, the others are not available to anyone else. Great for privacy, and great if you had seven in each corner of the complex, but really, folks, almost 150 sites, and this and the other 3 or 4 showers and toilets is all you’ve got?

Ok, rant REALLY over!

BUT – today we rode! The Zimmerman Trail. No, really! That’s what it’s called, and that is what it was called long before that name made headlines. And no, it has nothing to do with the guy in Florida. Although I do think one of the brothers spent some time out there, it was over a hundred years ago.

Anyway – fun little trail, with a beautiful view of part of Billings:

There was quite the precipice on one side, and sometimes the trail did run quite close to it, but we managed to avoid unscheduled departures. The view was pretty spectacular. Also, there were some added attractions along the way:

Don’t know what kind of car that was, but it was pretty old, so not a recent addition to the landscape. Hope they made it out ok.

Went to lunch after doing the first (West) half – another salad at Wendy’s – then returned to try and find the Eastern half. Not so easy to find access, but finally did, and rode most of that (I think). Cool trail!

Tomorrow? Not riding, I don’t think – have to replace a brake light on the truck, and maybe we’ll go see some pictographs, then go to Little Big Horn in the evening. We’ll see!

Ok, last full day in Cheyenne, last day to ride. We’re going to Vedauwoo! Woohoo! Ok, it’s pronounced VEE-DA-VOO, or so the locals tell us. We asked more than one, to be sure.

Nice scenery, and some interesting trails. We got … misdirected, shall we say, and ended up two miles in a direction we really did not want, but that’s ok, it’s all riding, isn’t it? I’m blaming the Mex … ahhh, Italian we have with us. He gets the blame for everything, from here on out. Part of the price he pays to be on such an epic trip.

Got some nice shots today:

This was a little waterfall we came upon shortly after dropping down into the trails. It’s also where we took a wrong turn …

Well, as I said, the scenery was nice, and we came upon some cowboys using dogs to round up cattle:

Here is a panorama that I took of the area:

Beautiful country!

Ok, lots of trails, lots of time getting lost and getting found, but there was one trail I HAD to see. Phallic Trail. Honest! I didn’t call it that! And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why it’s called that, though now I can say I’ve ridden it. Here are a couple of photos:

Maybe that’s the reason in the distance, but it doesn’t seem right.

Anyway, here’s a pano of the area:

Looks ok, but there was almost no trail there. Dodging those little bushes was NOT a lot of fun!

Ok, another thing about Cheyenne – they have these places everywhere:

I was afraid to go in there! Is it a house of ill … mmm … never mind! Let’s go gas up at King Soopers.

Anyway, short story long, we managed to get off the trail JUST before the rain started (there’s that curse again!), and got ourselves back into town.

Went to Chili’s for a late lunch. That was a disaster. Sat us quickly, but that’s when the wheels came off this thing. Waitress – excuse me – our server, took about ten minutes to get our drink orders – water all around – we’re cyclists, see? Then she took another ten to take our order, meanwhile really chatting up the table behind us, who was there ONLY for the 39 cent wings (a real money-maker for the restaurant, I’m sure), The Bear checked in with FourSquare, which offered us free Chips and Salsa (we’ve done this before a few times in Dallas, so we know how it’s supposed to work), which she mentioned to the waitress … server, I mean. Eventually, we got our food, but sans the Chips and Salsa. The tab was $36.00, and I paid $36.00, and asked for the manager on the way out. A little skinny guy showed up, looking a bit nervous, and my statement to him went like this: “Julie (that was our server’s name, according to the ticket) is going to complain that those assholes from Texas didn’t leave a tip. She’s right. I don’t leave a tip when I get bad service. She took forever to get us our food, and she never refilled our water glasses, or even asked if we needed anything, never mind the Chips and Salsa we were supposed to get. I tip well when I get good service – you can call The Bunkhouse, where we ate last night, and find out I tipped $25.00 on a $100.00 tab, so I don’t mind tipping for good service – which we did NOT get here today. And by the way, the last time I left no tip was over ten years ago, I’m fairly easy to please.” He was very apologetic, but I didn’t want anything in return, just for him to know I wasn’t happy, and was leaving that way.

Head for home and start packing for tomorrow, when we leave for Billings, Montana!