We got an early start as we left the Günter "Hunt'n Dog" Motel (photos 1 & 2). Today would turn out to be a commute day as we had large amounts of prairie to cover. We quickly passed the lakes and bird sanctuary with the bonus feature of flying bugs (photos 3,4,5,6). I have to tell you, I don't know how you folks do it that ride with no windshield. Splat!

One can imagine how our forefathers managed the heat and bugs as they traveled across all of this grassland in a Conestoga wagon. You can see the end result of their efforts in many of the small towns that we passed on the way (photo 7 & 8). Some of these modern day folks are having a little fun on the job. We passed a couple of structures that had painted cowboys and trees on them. Cool.

We suffered a minor, modern day crisis for us when the mouse to this computer packed it in. Where are we going to find a computer mouse in the middle of the prairie? Well, as we were heading through Lewiston, there was an Office Max right off the freeway. Bam, exit and buy the mouse, and bam, get back on the road and out of town. Problem solved. Two America's living next to each other. One America gets up early, works the farm and fields, and goes to bed early after a hard day of fighting the elements, so to speak. The other gets up, goes to a job in the city, collects a check and goes home to watch TV. And people like me get to ride through town on their vacation to try and make sense of this stuff.

At some point, we were traveling down the road behind one of the many RV's touring America. We had been seeing birds all day but one of these cut it too close to the big RV in front of us and, got knocked into big bird heaven. Now I mention this because during the trip so far, I've hit two small birds with the bike. Thank goodness they were small and hit parts of the bike, not me, but I did wonder how many of our flying friends get killed each year by cars, RV's, trucks and other moving objects. I have a hunch it's a goodly number.

We continued to pass grasslands on our way to Billings (photos 9,10 & 11) and found a motel for some well earned rest and air conditioning. We cleaned up the bike and trailer and went to dinner (photo 12). We have another long day ahead of us tomorrow.

Today's Route: We took US 89 to Grand Fork, Lewiston, then SR 87 to Grass Range and on to Billings, MT