Great Coffee!
In the morning we decided that we would just head south and go through Helena. The talk around town was about the forest fire and it sounded like it was spreading rapidly. So our pathway to Great Falls was probably blocked anyway. We had breakfast at Montana Coffee Traders again this time in the town of Columbia Falls. This had become the favorite place to eat breakfast on the trip. They have the best coffee! They roast their own beans. Not at the restaurant, but a few miles away in Whitefish where they are based. The waitresses are cute too. Check them out at www.coffeetraders.com. (The restaurant, not the waitresses!)

The State Capitol Series Begins
Not much went on after we left Columbia Falls. It was mostly a driving day. Not much sight seeing. We did stop in Helena, the capital of Montana. Another nice Montana town. For those of you who have followed along on both of our trips, this picture of the Montana state capitol building started the whole state capitol series of pictures. It didn't start out as a theme, but it became one after this picture was taken. Unfortunately, we had not started taking these pictures until after we passed near Salem, OR, or through Sacramento, CA, and Olympia, WA. Missed those opportunities.

We continued south and checked into a Best Value Inn in Bozeman, Montana for the night. Got there kind of early, about 7:45pm at mile 4390, so there was still a couple hours of daylight. Lots of time to relax a bit before hitting the sack. It was nice to sleep in a real bed after sleeping bags for the previous few nights.

Random Thoughts
Since there wasn't much else to our day, a few random thoughts about Montana:

• We've done a LOT of road trips and no matter where we went, when we would scan for stations on the radio, there would always be a Spanish station coming in crystal clear. California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, even in the middle of the desert, or all along Interstate 40 across the US. There was even one point crossing from Oregon to Washington where the only station we could get was Spanish. That is not the case for Montana. The likelyhood of finding one seems to fade as you travel east.
• We don't have any accurate measuring instruments, but the sky here seems to be the same size as anywhere else we have been. (Did anyone get this joke when I wrote it originally? Or even realize that it was a joke?)
• There's a huge anti-crystal meth campaign going on here. It's everywhere, on billboards, tv, radio. Must really be the middle America problem you always hear about.
• Took almost a full day to remember that we crossed into the mountain time zone when we got into Montana. Thought we were ahead of schedule the whole time.
• The fire that detoured us at Glacier National Park continued to grow with no end in sight.
• Forgot to mention, we hit an owl Sunday night on the way up to Glacier National Park. It was very dark but we could clearly see it in the headlights standing on the road in the opposite lane. As soon as we got close it flew up and swooped around right into the driver's side door. Very strange. Stopped to see if it was OK, but no idea what happened to it.
• Also almost hit a deer yesterday. One thing to remember, they always seem to travel in pairs. And it's the second one that usually gets hit because you aren't expecting another. This happened to my brother in Maryland and it did serious damage to his Audi. His warning about two deer saved me this time and another time a couple years ago in Utah. Both were very close calls. Although I saw another one today cross the road. I wasn't going very fast so I stopped and waited for the second one which never came.