Bike Odyssey 2014 (Day 37 – Sunday, June 22) – Camping on the Yellowstone

260 miles of speedy interstate, holding due SE and darting between heavy thunderstorms to the South and to the East. Some rain on leaving Butte, soon over. And our reward is the nicest campsite since we left the California redwoods behind, Pine Creek KOA on route 89, nestled in woods on the very edge of the racing Yellowstone River, its surface overtaking itself all the time as the Clark Fork River did yesterday.

The memorable contrast of the day was between sad, bleak, forgotten Butte, haunted by its mining-town past & seemingly with nothing to re-invigorate it, and plush Bozeman, site of the Montana State campus and home to every fashionable franchise under the sun. Bozeman has skiing, fishing, hiking, kayaking, climbing, and it’s the gateway to Yellowstone Park. Butte… well, Butte has a personality. It’s a drunk, unemployed, shouting-in-the-street (we saw some) personality, but give me that every time. And give me M&Ms, the 24/7 Butte bar/cafe/diner, over Starbucks any time. Not that there’s much choice, in Butte. Try finding hot food in Butte on a Sunday. We scoured the steep, boarded-up streets until a friendly drunk, proudly waving his beer bottle on the sidewalk, pointed us at M&Ms (thanks to a gloriously un-revoked city ordnance, you can drink openly in Butte – how long would that last in Bozeman? – and, as our beery pal explained, you can offer a passing cop a swig of your poison of choice). Tell me you don’t love Butte now.

M&Ms has nothing on its aluminum-sided front to tell you it’s a bar, much less that it’s a Serbian Irish bar. (Yeah just another ol’ Serbian Irish bar.) Sam the Montenegrin will be your bartender, he owns the place – refurbished it 4 years ago to bring it back to life – and keeps it open 24 hours. Serves good burgers and even better wings (‘Rat Wings’ the menu calls them, and they come from pretty fat rats). These are the places that have made our tour of America the sweet journey it has been; these and the landscapes – Montana finest of all, for my money.