Day 15
June 16th, 2007

After the usual early morning wakeup we were on the road for a little 80 mile jump over to Philipsburg, Montana. Today I rode with Chad Small, Chad Snyder and Britton Wall. Today's ride was at a slow easy pace and was great for enjoying the spectacular Montana scenery. For the first part of the day we rode on I-90. The interstate in Montana is not a bad road to cycle on because the shoulder is relatively clean and wide. About 50 miles into our ride we left the interstate for a much smaller road. Today was our first experience with cattle guards for the summer, they are kinda scary to ride your bike over. I am pretty sure Montana is one big farm. The picture shows one point on this road where we ran across some cowboys that were rounding up some cattle and in the process of taking them across the road. We were able to get by them before they let the cattle go. After about 30 miles on this road we reached the little town of Philipsburg. Philipsburg was originally founded as a 19^th century mining town. The town has a main street that looks like it is straight out of a western movie with cool old buildings. For dinner we had the best mean of our entire trip so far! We were treated to a BBQ competition by the Philipsburg Rotary club. I don't think I have ever had so much good meat. At the BBQ we met a lot of really cool people, one of which is our chapter president's grandfather. Swollen with food Adnrew, Wes and I did the only logical thing, we went out for ice cream and shakes! We went downtown to a really neat soda bar that served up some spectacular dessert for us.