June 18 - Monday - Miles City MT to Billings MT - 227 miles

So goodbye to my new best friend Khan at the Super 8. Breakfast with a guy from Hawaii who comes to Miles City each year with a couple buddies to shot prairie dogs. Yup, prairie dogs. One of his buddies has been coming each year for 15 or so years. A local farmer told them they could shoot ll they wanted because the holes they dig do two things, 1) breaks the legs of the grazing cattle when they step in them, and 2) the prairie dogs dig the earth underneath which contains salt from the ancient ocean floor this used to be and the salt kills all the grass. He was born in Colorado but has lived in HI all his life.
So the forecast was for rain, again today, but ti was just overcast so I started with no rain gear. Jeff set the GPS for Red Lodge, no highways (thank you!) and we spent the first 40-50 miles on a gravel road with no nothing in between. I got nervous about gas, but it turned out ok, but we agreed we would fill up anytime we could after the close call a couple days ago.
Jeff had one wild ride in the gravel but he figured it all out. We got back on pavement in Ashland MT, which is in the Cheyenne Indian Reservation, and filled up with gas and had coffee.

We got up the road a mile or so and Jeff's new rear tire was leaking air. So back to the gas station (slowly) and we could not find anything obvious sticking out (nail, sheet rock screw, mastodon rib, etc ). So he got on the phone and tried to use his platinum MOA (Motorcycle Owners of America) thingie, but it soon turned to the Lead MOA thingie as no bike shops are very close, and being Monday, they were all closed.
While he spend a good part of the morning on the phone, i was quizzing the gas station owners about all the nice Native American art on the walls. The owner came in and she and I spent 45 minutes going over Native American affairs, American history, neurochemistry, conflict, Dunbars number, etc, etc. Turns out she was educated back east somewhere and her dad was German but her mom was Cheyenne, and she decided to live back on the reservation. I could have spent half the day talking to her, but she had to get back to her other shop,and I had to help Jeff with the tire.
So plan B was a can of "Fix-O-Flat" which we put in and then went the few blocks down to Fred's Hardware, who has the only air compressor in town. We pumped it up, but it started leaking again. So back to Fred's and we got a "plug kit" (by the way, Fred has just about anything you could possible want hanging on the wall somewhere). So I gave Jeff a quick tutorial on plugging tires and he done good. Back to Fred for more air, and we decided to let it sit near Fred's and went to the diner next door. There we spent a lovely hour talking with the folks in there. Two of them were coal miners, another was a woman who seemed to know everything about crops, animals, or anything else you could imagine (and she was roping cattle yesterday) and the diner owner who ran the place all by herself. This is one of those towns where everyone knows everyone. I'm sure these two guys with the flat tire will be talk around town for a few days. (Gotta send Fred some Maple Syrup..)
So the coal miner guys reminded us we would be riding right by Little Bighorn Battlefield, where Custer got creamed by the LaKota, Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne Indians. And to my delight, I got to use my Senior Park Pass again ($20 bucks, cha-ching!)
One last leg to Billings for the night.