Thursday, October 1, 2009

Wednesday, September 30th

I woke up early this morning to hit the road with the goal of at least making it to Livingston, MT. After packing up my gear along with my wet tent, I made it all of 5 miles to Gardiner, MT before my hands and feet were wet and cold and my face hurt from getting pelted by the miniature hail coming down!

For this reason I decided that I would stop in Gardiner and do some online research of the current and forecasted weather. This was very difficult because it was a small town and every place that had computers with internet service was charging by the minute. I then proceeded to look for a pair of waterproof gloves (of which I could not find) and some plastic bags to put between my socks and shoes to prevent my feet from getting wet. I was able to obtain some plastic bags but no place in town seemed to have air dryers in their bathrooms of which I could dry my socks. Eventually I happened to talk the people at the Best Western to allow me to use their business center computer so that I was not left stranded in this city without anywhere to sleep/go. After researching the weather/hotel rates/people in the area that I might know or someone I know might know... I decided that I was just going to have to suck it up and get a hotel room. I was checked in upon at this time by the desk clerk. She wanted to know if I had found anything ... she also wanted to inform me that they usually charge non-guests to use the computer and wanted to make sure that I was actually doing what I was saying I was doing. I appologized to her for taking so long and explained to her that I was not having much luck and she said that I could go ahead and use it as long as I needed.

As I left the computer lab, 10 min later, the clerk asked again if everything was alright and I gave her a little more information on my situation. You know ... birthday, westyellowstone, cancer research, etc. She then told me of the church down the street that sometimes would allow people to stay overnight if in need. I thanked her for this information and headed in the church's direction.

Long story short, I stayed at the church, met some great people and had an overall pleasant experience. Unfortuneatley I did not have such a great first impression with the paster of the church but that story will have to come another time. Don't worry, the pastor and myself are now on good terms!

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