When entering Montana a few days ago, locals told us that we wouldn't have to worry about getting rained on--Montana is in its fifth year of drought. We quickly discovered that this information was partially false. Despite travelling through an excessively dry region, our luck gave us late night thunderstorms for two nights in a row.
The late-night storm procedure goes as such:
One of us wakes up to the cold pelt of raindrops (usually Piper is responsible for this task, thanks to his perceptive bald head, which he lovingly refers to as "The Sensor"). Then both of us awkwardly stumble out of the tent--still half asleep--to construct our rainfly as quickly as possible and dive back into the tent. "What luck," we grumble, "...getting rained on in the middle of the desert...hrumph..."
We compensated for the late night disturbances by sleeping in and taking the day off in Roundup, Montana. While searching for a spot to use the internet, we stumbled across a schoolyard and ended up chatting with some elementary school teachers. Roberta invited us to her house to take showers. After hanging out in the public library for a couple of hours, we went to Roberta's house, where we met her husband Dave and ate some sandwiches for lunch. We showered and enjoyed the cool comfort of a living room and friendly faces.
Later on, another elementary school teacher saw Adam on the street and invited us to eat dinner with her friends at their church. After dinner, we watched an a cappella performance. Gail invited us back to her house to spend the night. Two of the college-age musicians also happened to be staying at Gail's house that night, so the five of us stayed up into the night, chatting about school, travel, and the other intricacies of life. Gail's somewhat psychotic but very lovable cat, Razz-ma-tazz, proceeded to entertain us for the evening.
