Waking up in a bed is pretty nice. Just wanted to put that out there for those of you who might take it for granted. I took advantage of the hotel restaurants free breakfast and restocked some food at the local co-op. Check out was at 11 and I used up the last minutes packing. A cruise around town showed me U of M, a couple historic districts, and Lindley Park where I changed out the small tube for one of the right size that I had gotten at a local bike store. It's pretty comforting to have good tubes and enough spares.
Since it was after noon, I snacked and had a quick sampler at Bozeman Brewing Co before hitting the road. I pretty much had headwinds the entire day, varying from 10-25 mph. Have I mentioned how demotivating they can be? After 46 miles I had an average of 11.1 mph, a far cry from my 15-ish average, but I was still able to make progress.
Livingston exists almost purely due to the railway which I found out in the Railroad Museum. The Northern Pacific line run/ran from St. Paul to Seattle and Livingston sits right in the middle, convenient for repairs and fuel. The museum was interesting and by the time I left I was hungry again so a stop at Neptune's Brewery was warranted. I got the 6 beer sampler which cost a little more than expected, but I soon found out why. I've been used to 4 oz tasters and six of them is no problem, but these were around 8 oz each! To top it off they were high gravity beers ranging from 6-8% and even up to 10%. Let's just say when I left I was riding a line slightly more curvy than I'm accustomed to, so I had some snacks to soak it up.
My ride concluded during sundown and I saw at least a dozen deer grazing in the fields alongside the road. I also came across the first antelope of the trip. There were two, one inside the fence and one along the road. The one on the road was spooked by me and began running down the road, trying to find a gap in the fence. At first it was exciting, seeing this creature running at my pace just in front of me, but it soon made me nervous. It would charge what looked like a hole, nearly get stuck, and keep running. I got a little worried about it turning on me with those antlers in fear, but soon it found a gap but still came close to getting stuck in the barbed wire. I'm glad it all worked out and was exciting but next time I'll stop and let it calmly find an exit, no need for everyone to get frantic.
I finally made it to the Big Timber KOA and had a good night of camping. Big Timber is the most ironically named town I've come across yet, there's hardly a tree in it, let alone anything of notable size, but at least it had a campsite for me. On to Billings tomorrow!
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