Dillon, MT

Hello from Dillon!

I'm really pleased with what small towns are like, especially in the 3000-4000 population range. It seems to be a good size--large enough to have everything you need, but still small enough to get to know a lot of people. Standing in line today to get some postcard stamps at least three people knew each other and started talking. Cool.

Big news: MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE. We saw one off of the side of the road today. It was pretty big, but also far away. They look so goofy. This one didn't have the big antlers, so it was probably female? I'm not a moose-ologist...

A recap of the past few days:

July 5: Missoula, MT to Lost Trail Pass, MT (right on the state line of Idaho and MT) 100 miles.

We got a really early start, and put in about 50 miles before noon. It felt great to have a lot miles in early. Missoula was seriously disappointing, I think. Too big and spread out. Especially compared to this town, Hamilton, MT. It had the best bakery, called A Place to Ponder, which had AMAZING food. They had these raspberry bars, delicious, moist, and perfect scones--I can't describe how good it was.

It was getting hot for the day, so we went about 30 more miles until we got to this little town of Sula. It was pretty much a general store/RV park/campground all together. We wanted to get out of the heat, as it was 100 degrees in the shade. Soo hot. I sat around, drank a lot of water, and read my book, while Michael used his fishing rod for the first time, and caught three trout. He was pretty stoked.

We ended the day climbing about 3000ft up to the top of the Lost Trail Pass, which put us up above 7000' elevation. It was a good, steady climb, and rose that much in about 8 miles. It was close to 10pm by the time we got to the top, so we decided to call it a night at the Rest Stop at the top. The mosquitoes were horrible, which was weird, because there weren't any further down on the hill. I ended up wearing long pants, my raincoat with hood up and cinched tight, and socks, all in an effort to keep them off of me. It must have looked like it was 40 degrees out, but really it was quite pleasant.

Over that night, the sprinklers at the rest stop went on, and woke us up at about 2:00am to a really alarming noise--just it hitting the rain fly, but it sounded bad. The worst part about that was that it only hit the tent every five seconds, so it was hard to fall back to sleep.

Today (July 6): Lost Trail Pass to Twin Rivers, MT (120 miles?)
We got another early start, which was great. Saw the moose in the morning, which was spectacular. Today we rode across the Big Hole Valley, named that way because it was surrounded by mountains. We did two more passes, one around 7400 ft, another at about 6800 ft, but both were relatively short, only 3-4 miles with 1000ft gain. Somewhat like Wildcat Road back in Berkeley. The best part of both of these were the descents, where we cruised around 30-40mph for about seven miles down the other side of both of them.

It was really hot during the day again--we took a lunch break in Jackson, MT (pop. 38), then kept pedaling on. We really wanted to get to Dillon before the library closed, and made it here by about 4:30. The library closes at 7:00, we're in luck.

Tonight the goal is to get to Twin Bridges, which is about 30 miles away. It looked like it was going to rain when we went into the library. If it does, it'll be the first time that it has rained so far. Maybe it'll just pass through, and we'll keep riding after its done.

Tomorrow's goal is to get to West Yellowstone, MT. It's probably about 110-120 miles away from Twin Bridges. I'm excited to see Yellowstone, which we'll ride through Sunday.