Great Falls, Bozeman / Montana

They left us back in again and all the smuggled Goods from Cuba. The ride from Great Falls to Bozeman was again miles and miles flatland and now the Rocky's appeared in the distance. I was very surprised by the dry fields and after talking to a local it makes sense because the land experienced 11 years of drought. So everyone out here is praying for rain.

We are now very close to Yellowstone National Park and our obsession with wild animals can be continued. I can not believe it but Till saw a Grizzly bear in Waterton in 50 m distance. I gave up after riding around for hours and focusing on bushes and the surrounding and not on the street, so the chance riding into a bear was actually bigger than seeing one. I found out later that the best time to see wildlife is Dawn or Dusk. I guess Till was meant to see a Grizzly and I can just watch the video he took.

Now spending some time in Canada and experiencing cultural differences between the US and Europa I think Canadians are very close to Europeans, generally saying. One example made it pretty clear for me. We met an interesting Canadian in Banff and decided to hit the local bars together and our last destination was an Irish Pub. We were sitting close to an empty table with just three empty glasses on the table and next was a big group of maybe seven to nine people sitting and enjoying also music and drinks. Now all of a sudden one of the empty glasses burst in thousand peaces. We felt interrupted, stared a couple seconds at the peaces and were already with loud thoughts on our way to solve the mystery.

The big group stared a moment at the sealing than at each other and than at there beer. Basically just continued like nothing happened. Alex our new friend from Canada pointed out that this distanced and quiet behavior is very common in Canada. Now in the US this incident would have been discussed much louder and in a bigger group and of course with CNN and big cameras interviewing traumatised and bleeding victims.

I also experienced differences in the bike to bike waving culture. In Canada it is not really common to wave at each other, so after riding for so long I kind of wave automatically like using my signal light. So some bikers were overwhelmed, some looked around and didn't know what to do. And here in Montana it is more a waving with the index finger. I have to practice that in front of the mirror. Now I am going to stop boring you with the cultural differences from the view of a biker.
There is something else I wanted to share, every were out in the pampas are signs with " historic sites "next to the street. And when you follow the signs you will find yourself way off the main street and specially here in Montana you can maybe read that 1962 was a Cow born with three legs and than 1964 she broke unfortunately the wrong leg. And right next you can maybe buy stuffed Cows with three legs.. .....Or something like that.

And something else actually Till wanted to get out. We are staying in a hostel in Bozeman which was once the childhood home of the late actor Gary Cooper. He took drama classes here and his career also started here. So that was the historic part to it.
My dear friends....

Zennure