Beautiful Places, Empty Spaces

We were in Dillon MT. last night. If you've ever seen the movie "Hot Fuzz" it was kind of like that. Cars in the streets, but no one around. Actually, I've noticed that about quite a number of the small towns we've been in. I wonder, "Where are the people? Are they in their houses watching The Price is Right?"

One of our group, Jim, left us this morning and headed home to Calgary. Admittedly, it was hard to say good-bye. He is such a unique character and brings down-home wit and wisdom to our riding and conversations. Speaking of someone that he had frustrating business dealings with he said in typical fashion, "I'd like to grab him by the lips, pull him through a knothole and give him a good talking to."

Perhaps the sadness at Jim's departure foreshadows the beginning of the end of our adventure and a return to the more mundane. It is hard to describe the feeling of getting up each day and hardly knowing what day it is, where you are going, or when you will get wherever you eventually decide to go. It has been a refreshing and stark contrast to my normal life of clock-dominated routine.

It was cool when we started out -- about 10 degrees C. So we stopped for coffee in, of all places, Wisdom. Are you searching for wisdom? Well, we found it. And we had coffee at Fetty's. No muffins. Or jam for the toast we eventually ordered. And the danish were soggy. The pickup parked out front with the two rifles in the gun-rack took me back to my days of growing up on the Canadian prairies.

We had lunch in Missoula, and although it rained a little on the way to Kalispell, this time we had our rain-gear on and didn't get wet.

In total we traveled about 500km today so it was a shorter day. Our estimated total distance travelled so far since leaving last Friday is about 4400 km.

We arrived in Kalispell mid-afternoon before heading to Capers for supper -- rated #2 of 68 restaurants in town. There, I was a little more adventurous and had Rattlesnake sausage pizza for supper. If you ever get a chance to try it -- do! It doesn't taste like chicken!