July 2 Jordan
Rest day because of the threat of severe thunderstorms and big hail. This afternoon the weather service issued a tornado warning for this county. Real milkshakes at the soda fountain in the drugstore! We watched a spectacular thunderstorm from our motel in the evening. Roy had his camera out in case of a tornado. I think he was a little disappointed not to see mobile homes flying overhead.

Dave Wainwright left us behind today. He has a real job that he needs to get back to. He pedaled to Circle in spite of the weather. We talked later. He crawled into Circle about five in the afternoon after pushing through headwinds all day. He had to take shelter from thunderstorms twice. He hid under a bridge once. The second storm hit just as he was arriving at the Flowing Wells rest area. There's an awning in front of the bathroom to give some protection, but the rain was coming in sideways on the wind so he built some further protection for himself (his mattress pad, maybe?). He expects to reach Williston, North Dakota, a day ahead of us to catch a flight home.

To discourage careless driving and as a public service to Montana, the American Legion places a little white cross at the roadside wherever someone has died in a traffic accident. Sometimes they are in pairs. Sometimes they are decorated with flowers or notes. We'll pass a dozen or more in a day's ride sometimes. Considering how little ground we actually cover and Montana's population (under one million), the crosses are pretty densely placed.

Every town we pass through has at least one homemade sign warning against meth use. (I'll attach a couple of examples when I reach a library that allows me to upload some photos.) All of them share the tag line, "Not even once." In Idaho, every store has a poster showing the mug shot photos of one woman arrested maybe eighteen times over ten years, now dead. The photos document her frightening deterioration. Even with these warnings, meth is evidently a small-town plague.