June 27 Day 27 Great Falls 57 miles 4:37 riding

Yesterday, we saw a curious facility alongside the road at the top of a ridge. It was a paved or graveled area, a couple of hundred feet on a side, set back a hundred yards from the road. It was surrounded by chain link fencing maybe nine feet high topped with barbed wire. There were no above-ground structures besides some electrical poles. We all made guesses about what it might be. We also saw a number of vans marked "Security Force" rolling around the roads. This morning, we met the county planning director (he gets cornered into assisting with checking on the fireworks stands at this time of the year to make sure nobody's smoking, etc.). He explained that Roy's guess had been correct - it's a nuclear missile silo. Cascade County evidently has dozens of them. We've passed several others since. One location houses the operators to control several missile silos remotely.

We met Lee Rickter, a Chicago high school biology teacher during the year to make a living, who bicycles home to Missoula for the summer to enjoy life. He's pedaled everywhere. He crossed Australia with a wine box refilled with fifteen pounds of water.