Day 12, Townsend to Harlowtown, 100 miles with a glorious tailwind

Best: 11 mile climb (when do you ever see best with the word climb after it)

Worst: Last nights most disappointing dinner, more below.

Most Unexpected: Cows that ran with us.

Okay get ready for one of life's biggest disappointments.  I have been building up this restaurant in Townsend for several days as the place to get a big steak in Montana.  The Woods family restaurant welcomed us, I looked at the menu to confirm my order, and said Rib Eye please.  The waitress said, 'no ribeyes, we forgot to defrost the meat"  Frozen, Are you kidding me?  I waited two years to come back for the steak that filled my plate.  The waitress recommended the sirloin and I went with it.  It was puny, and probably was flown in from Missouri.  Most of the other riders went with the pizza which was good, but took an hour to get it ready.  Two years ago Cookie never got her pizza until we were all done and were leaving.  Take the Woods Family Restaurant off your list of must do eateries.

We ate breakfast at the Mint in downtown Townsend and I ordered a senior breakfast cause I am old. The ride had a wake up climb, then at mile 11 miles we began an 11 mile climb which was not steep and spectacularly beautiful.  One more picture from the climb below.

After the climb we started down at a slight grade, then a steeper grade and cruised into the Montana high plateau at an attitude of a mile.  After the lunch stop we caught a beautiful tail wind and enjoyed the last 60 miles.  We cruised past a couple of cows that were running along the road next to us, and then we saw a larger group just sitting around.  We yelled at them and encouraged them to get up and run, and amazingly the entire group started running along the road with us.  They probably thought we were leading an escape.  

Riding behind Terry I got a personal view of an antelope that jumped across the road about 10 feet in front of him.  I was looking for the second one that would take out one of us, but fortunately the antelope was a loner. 

The scenery changed from rocks, to high meadows.  The pictures below best show the changes.  We are at a church for the night and I am sleeping in the sanctuary by myself.  If I don't post tomorrow, you will know I received my higher calling, or got hit by lightning for being blasphemous.

This almost qualified as the worst.  We did five miles on dirt through a construction site.  My posterior is still recovering.