We are really moving Eastward now! The cycling day started early, as the sun came up. After about 15 miles we reached the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn, and Custer’s Last Stand. To be honest, the rolling grass covered hills looked much the same as all the others! Anyway, here it is.  

    
Next to the site was a gas station where we were supposed to get food – shops in Hardin not having been open and the hotel breakfast having been poor. But it was closed down. So we rode the next section on a packet of fig   rolls! 

The scenery was much better than I had expected. Rolling hills covered with long grass of a delicate green, fading to yellow, and stands of lodgepole pine. And broken up by sandstone crags and towers straight out of the Westerns. I hadn’t expected to like this hot, dry country so much, but it is beautiful. And hot. By 12.00 it was 97F and much hotter later.  

 We stopped at a gas station in Lame Deer, on a reservation. This is a different America again. Wild horses in the streets, broken roads, people on foot and in battered station wagons, filthy toilets – not quite Africa, but well on the way. There was a ‘hot deli’ where we got fried chicken and loads of water.

Back on the rolling road, the wild life spot for the day was a huge rattlesnake – luckily dead – by the road. We had been warned that they like to sun themselves on the shoulder of the road – where we ride! 

At Ashland we found ‘the best little bordello in Montana’ (so we are told!) and this is Tim outside – repeat, outside. 

 In the final 45 miles the trees thinned out and we entered rolling grasslands, still interspersed with sandy crags. From the top of what I thought was the final climb (it wasn’t) there was a long view eastwards.

  
So here we are, after 120 miles and nearly 5000 ft of ascent, in a good motel in the tiny hamlet of Broadus (actually the biggest place for 80 miles in any direction). Tomorrow should see us across the corner of Wyoming into South Dakota and the Black Hills.