day 69 Madison Jct to Hebgen Lake, MONTANA! 35 miles (3088 total)

Before the sun set last night at Madison campground, we had the pleasure of meeting 7 new cyclists who rolled in. One was from Switzerland who had a longing to get to Devil's Tower. We noticed he was living off mashed potatoes and had a passion for sculpting them with his fork.The park reserves spaces for cyclists (we are never turned away even though the sign may say "full"). We had our own little wooded hangout away from all the RV's and the ladies at the registration booth even let us tap into their coffee maker in the morning!

The doctor's orders seemed to have worked for my ankle as I had a pain free day! Met up with Dave and Carole coming from Old Faithful and agreed to meet them in West Yellowstone for a late breakfast at a nice diner that an east- bounder had tipped us off about.

After the "entering Montana" photo shoot and a few errands, we had another great hour with Dave and Carole over breakfast. We are really going to miss them when our routes split in Missoula (they're headed to Oregon). We haven't met a more upbeat couple on the whole trip!

The skies were darkening as we headed out of town, and after 8 miles it caught up to us, a brief but nasty t-storm with lots of gusty wind. Luckily we found shelter at a Montana DOT building until a blue sky reappeared. Soon we were cycling along the shores of beautiful Hegben Lake, a long narrow body of water tucked between two mountainous ridges. We stopped at a campground store for some chocolate milk and a "NY hotdog" (featuring Sauerkraut and Gulden's) and learned that power further down the Madison River valley had been taken out by the storm. Rather than risk taking a cold shower and doing our laundry by hand at a campground without juice, we decided to end our day early here. Soon Dave and Carole pulled in and we were happy to learn that they would be keeping us company for the night!

Had the pleasure of meeting a young couple from Australia cycling east-bound, swapped the usual list of must-sees and good places to stay and eat!