Friday July 3rd - mid-morning

On this trip I have gone through literally 100's of small towns. It has been interesting seeing the school reader board comments and mascot names. The best was this morning as I went through a small town in Montana name Belfrey,the school mascot was the Bats:-) Another good one in Minnesota was in a town named Lake, the school mascot was the Walleyes. Interesting signs and billboards also, one was for a mortuary - it said "drive safe - we can wait". Right now I am in Columbus, Montana on I-90. I will ride on this for a while. It is 62 degrees and looks like it could rain at any minute, but so far so good. I skipped Yellowstone this morning because of the crazy number of people and when I looked up the forecast it was for heavy rain and lightning. So I headed north to Billings. I am hoping to camp somewhere around Missoula, Montana.

I was riding along on I-90 in Montana and this little Mini Cooper passes me. When he gets around me, he slows way down and I am thinking what kind of crazy driver is this, so I pass him. When I get around him he speeds up and passes me. When he gets next to me, he stays right with me until I look over and he is motioning for me to pull over. I think, " I wonder if I forgot to tie something down again". I pull off at the next exit and pull into a gas station and he follows. He jumps out and enthusiastically yells, " I am your Colorado bumper sticker". I had met him and another fellow on Harleys in Utah. They were on a trip and they were from Colorado. He had taken my address and had promised to mail me a bumper sticker from Colorado for my aluminum boxes. He drove by me on the freeway in Montana 30 days later. He said he knew it was me, because nobody else in the world has that much stuff stacked on a bike. We visited for a while and he said that he had to go. We have each other's address. Must be God's will that I stay in contact with this guy.