 Come here man. How you doing Vaj? I'm good, slept well. I slept great. Did Mira cuddle? Mira certainly cuddle. This morning especially. She was awed about the cuddles this morning. Peanut butter, Nutella breakfast is my favorite. Buen provecho amigos. We need that sun to come up over here. It's cold. Thank you beautiful campsite. Somebody's ready to rock and roll. And her name is Mira. No crashes, flaties, whammies? Can you say that? Close enough. Somebody's excited. Yeah, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy. You psyched? You ready for another day? Oh baby, there's that glorious sun I've been waiting for warming us up. It's 7.30 a.m. The birds are singing. The frogs are frogging and it's time to ride bikes. You excited about this one John? Should be another good day. Should be another good day. Yeah we don't know what it's going to bring. That's just the way it goes. That's the exciting thing about all this. Who knows what's going to happen. We are getting pretty high. We're at 7,600 feet right now. And for example, when I started one week ago today in Eureka, that town sits at about 3,500. So we're getting higher and higher and as we go into Wyoming and Colorado, I think we're going to be continually at about 7,000 feet. Which means colder nights and mornings. Yeah, we made it to the top. You made it to the top. You were running and having a great time. Yeah, you were. And look at the view. Whoa mama. These are the kinds of places that I dreamed of getting to on my bike on this trail. Out here in the middle of nowhere, it's just us and the flowers and the birds and maybe some bears off in the distance. But this just makes me very, very, very happy. That's way steeper than what we went up. What do you think of that? You got to run really fast, didn't you? So this looks steeper than anything I've ever done before. It just drops completely off the elevation profile. Hopefully it's not really a cliff. I doubt it. That's where we're going. There's the cliff. Yeah, that's pretty steep. How are we doing, Mira? I feel like I'm going down a roller coaster with the brakes on. Oh my God. This is crazy, Steve. Oh my gosh. Wow, look at how hot they are. Yeah, they've cooled down already. They're steaming. Oh yeah, you can smell them, eh? You can smell that. Are your brakes burning? Are your brakes burning? Yeah, you don't know anything about that. Geez, look at that. Wow. Yeah, dropper posts would be nice right here. Running down a mountain with bike in my hand. Have there ever been anything down that steep on your rig so far? Not quite like that. Well, I mean, like, single track stuff, sure, but like a road? Like a jeep track? No. No, that's steep. Wasn't steep for Mira. She's all terrain. Yeah, she's just sitting in the flowers enjoying her day. What are you doing bouncing around in there? Yeah. Way to cool off. Good thinking. We've just come upon a little town or village and look at that osprey. Just sitting in the morning sun. Loving it, just like us. Seeing this osprey makes me happy. It reminds me of my mom. Here's a fun fact about my mom. She loves following wildlife cams all over the world. And some of the osprey nest wildlife cams are her favorite, where they just have a surveillance on them 24 hours a day. She also loves giraffes and eagles. I'm always impressed at the stock that these little mercantiles have in the middle of nowhere. Today I'm going to treat myself to some chocolate peanuts. You find anything good, John? Oh yeah. And of course, Huckleberry stuff is very popular in Montana. I love small town America. I bought this postcard right there in the mercantile, asked where the post office was. It's right here. Gonna send this one to mom. You know, gotta send her some real mail every now and then. Not just this electronic stuff. And look at this, somebody left me a present in my helmet when I went to the post office. Could it have been John and Mira? It was Mira? Aw, thank you, Mira. They're so cute. They're the cutest. We're now gonna be riding a scenic byway for about 50 miles, which is great. I like scenic byways. We've had our ups and downs and dirt today. Now it's time to chill. So John and I were just riding along all of a sudden. He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait! And turns around and I'm like, what? What's the big deal? John found beef jerky on the road in the package. I say it's safe. Totally. It's kind of my thing. In Mexico, I found green beans and I found two bags of potato chips. And here in America, beef jerky. You know when you see dogs sticking their heads out of windows of cars and their tongues are out and they're just loving life. That's essentially what Mira does in the basket. She just looks so happy. And on flat pavement like this, John really has to put her in the back because it's just too much running for her. So John has to work harder. Mira gets the view. I just stopped here on the side of the road to run into the woods and pee. That's how you do it. And I'm like, wow, it smells good. And it's all of these lupine flowers, these purple lupines. They're everywhere in this forest and mixed in with the smell of these pine trees. It's pretty dreamy. We're watching the clouds build up and it seems to be coming in hot now. Flags are blowing like crazy and we're going to hide behind this fire rescue place, wait out the storm, whatever happens of it. We don't have cell reception so we can't quite tell if it's going to be a long storm or a short storm or what. But yeah, it's definitely, it's coming in. It's exciting. Mira, do you know if it's going to rain? Can you tell us? Are you one of those psychic dogs? Thank you Fire Station for having fresh water. All right, we've waited for a little while. It hasn't turned into a grand thunderstorm so we're just going to chance it, get back on the road. I don't want to get caught in a rainstorm but I have to say I love the smell of rain. Ah, it has that just scent of summer. It's what we do at the end of the day. Hey, get out of my shot. Hey, you. Hey, you're sitting on my camera. There you go. Say hi. Mira, we're going in. Mira, you want to come in? Come in. Come in. Come on. Mira, come on. Come on. Mira, are you going to come in or not? Come on, sweetheart. I got you. I got you. Yay, we're all in. It's one big happy wet family. So John is using something I've never seen before. What is this? It's a mitt made out of a face cloth. Look at that. Scrubbing. Yeah. Yeah, quite useful. Nice. We're ready for the ball. Yeah. So I thought I was done filming for the day but I went on my nightly walk, which I usually do, just to loosen my body up. And within five minutes of leaving the campsite I come upon this ghost town called Bannock. And Bannock, we saw on the side of the road a highway sign that said this is the first provincial capital of Montana. And this is a full-on ghost town. It's super cool. So I ran back and got my cameras so I can share it with you. Bannock epitomizes the tough, primitive towns that sprang up with gold discoveries. Its story also illustrates a century of survival through boom and bust periods associated with resource extraction and technological advances. On July 28, 1862, prospectors John Whiten Company made a lucky strike, triggering Montana's first major gold rush. These weren't just cabins. These were full-on homes and people made them real nice. Oh wow, look at this old stove. How cool is that? Miners, many from Idaho's crowded Salmon River diggings, swarmed over the continental divide. By spring 1863, Bannock had 3,000 inhabitants. Briefly designated capital of the new Montana territory in 1864, the first legislature met here in a crude log cabin. John, did you watch a lot of American Wild West movies growing up? Oh yeah, the spaghetti westerns. I still watch them. Check this out. This is the schoolhouse. Very cool. There's where the kids played on the merry-go-round. I still have all the desks and the lessons on the chalkboard. Here we go. Here's the rules for teachers. Some of these are crazy. You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores. You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with anyone unless he is your father or brother. Really sucked to be a woman back in those days for sure. This looks like an old mercantile. Oh wow, look at that. I know it's a bar or something. Look at this. What are you going to have, John? Oh, I'd like a nice cold IPA and a pizza. I'd be great. I wonder if they have any of that back here. What's that? Skinner's Saloon was built in 1862 by Cyrus Skinner down at Yankee Flats. Nice people did not wander into Skinners. This was where the most dangerous, meanest and ruthless men in the territory congregated. It was not safe to walk down the streets of Bannock and Virginia City after dark and even sometimes in the daylight. Shooting and killing was a normal standard here. All right, now we're going to check out the hotel mead. This is the most impressive building. Oh wow, look at these stairs. Nice view of town out the window. This is a lot nicer than some of the hotels I've stayed in in Latin America. Does this remind you of the shining? Wow, look at this. This must be what hotel rooms look like back in the day. What are you seeing here? I wonder some of the details in the door, all the trim. Yeah, look at that. I mean, even the hinges. This wasn't just quickly put out there expecting this is going to be here for a very long time. And I think that concludes the tour of Bannock. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm going to get my tent now or maybe I'll get a room in this hotel and get a drink at the bar with all the bad boys.