Day 68: Criminals don’t ride bikes

Annie’s cafe was closed despite their google listing showing they were open. Plan B is Hummingbird cafe so I called them to make sure since they were uphill 1.5 miles in uptown Butte.

Near the college uptown we found a nifty trail that led us to our route. We rode into familiar Anaconda. I say familiar because we passed thru here in 2014 in the other direction. The slag pile is still here and they are cleaning it up ever so slowly. The copper smelter plant closed back in 1982 but they are STILL cleaning up. Fun fact: this town originally chose “Copperopolis” as their name but decided against it because there was already another town with that name.

At the park during lunch we met a local named Gary who retired here from mining engineer. He loves the town and couldn’t wait to show us his favorite theater. Thanks Gary!

Some kids came by to sell us lemonade. Inflation must be really bad…they charged us $2/cup. Brent asked them if it included free refills…”no but half price”. I cracked up.

We eventually got to Philipsburg and enjoyed a nice beer at the brewery. Unfortunately, plan A of camping didn’t work out so we followed the suggestion of the forest service and camped at the city park. Steve was the last man standing when the sheriff arrived and he was very understanding of our situation and warned us we would have to relocate if a second resident complained.