Day...uh...twelvety: Ravalli, Montana

As the green hills of northwestern Montana turn to brown toward the state's interior, so too does its economy, apparently. The map shows towns between Plains and Missoula, but you wouldn't know it to ride through them. There are no services between Plains and Missoula - only boarded up shells of gas stations, cafes and taverns; the latter bearing For Sale signs extolling the transferability of liquor licenses.

I slept rough last night, on the lawn behind a firehouse in Dixon, and in the morning crawled through the broken window of an abandoned house to use its bathroom. Seven miles down the road in Ravalli, I found weak coffee and fresh-made doughnuts at the closest thing the area's got to a grocery / cafe.

35 miles to Missoula. I'm still fighting brutal wind and crawling along at 5mph, but even so, I ought to be there by late afternoon.