We woke up and ate a helping of warm oatmeal with PB/Nutella and drank coffee. Afterwards, we slowly gathered our things and said goodbye to the other riders, and to our new llama friends. We took one last look at the beautiful cabin and its surrounding landscape, and set off towards Helena. The sky was bright blue and the sun was hot. Our first climb of the day was long and intense. We stopped in Lincoln, a small ‘town’, grabbed some supplies at the grocery store, and ate sandwiches. As we continued onward, we began another long grind and finally descended towards Helena. The last 7 miles of pavement into Helena, on paper, looked like a nice gentle descent. Instead, we were greeted with an intense headwind that slowed our pace to a crawl. When we finally made it into town, we stopped and ate bacon cheeseburgers. We had to run a couple of errands which, per usual, took much longer than excepted. With it being late in the day, we decided it was best to take it stay the night in town. We enjoyed our first hotel room in a long while, ate pizza, drank beer, and soaked our aching bodies in the hot tub.