Continental Divide Ride July 17, 2009
 

Our route for today is here.


Our cumulative route is here.



    “We’re trying to sleep!”

                    Unhappy guest at our motel this morning after we cranked up



    I wanted to say back, “Well, you’re not doing a good job of sleeping,” but my instincts said to just let it lie.  But it sure was funny seeing him get so mad.

    We rode out of Dillon, MT by the bluff overlooking the Beaverhead River where William Clark, of Lewis & Clark fame, climbed up to get a better view of the surrounding landscape.  It felt a bit strange to be in the area where the intrepid explorer stood.

   
To get back to the trail, we rode west a few miles and then turned south on a gravel road.  Soon we passed the ghost town of Bannack.  A sign said that Bannack was the first territorial capitol of Montana.  We rode and green, rolling mountains kept coming.

    Twenty miles later we crossed a paved road and kept riding.  We were now on the Big Sheep Creek Scenic Byway.  The named changed, but the gravel surface remained the same.

    For the next fifty miles we did nothing but ride the gravel and look at the spectacular scenery. 

    The mountains in the area were big, green, and rolling.

   
Midway along the scenic byway we met two guys on BMW Adventure GS’s.  They were doing the Continental Divide Ride in the opposite direction.  We talked for maybe twenty minutes and swapped advice on the trail in each direction.  Funny though, we didn’t swap names, so if you’re reading this, we enjoyed the chat and hope your trip turns out well.
   
On down the trail, the gravel kept coming and we entered a canyon with rock walls and we followed a river for miles and miles.

    Around 11 A.M. we came to the tiny town of Lima, MT and we had lunch there and gathered our senses.

    After lunch, we had 132 miles before our destination of Ashton, Idaho.  Leaving Lima, we were immediately back on gravel and would spend the next three hours and 80 miles there slicing through a valley that contained three lakes almost that few people.

   
The mountains on each side were a bit more jagged and in many places we could see strips of bare mountainside edged by trees where avalanches had done their job.

    At one point we came upon a herd of cattle walking in the same direction we were traveling.  Several cowboys were following along.  When we approached, they were nice enough to ride ahead of us and split the herd for us to pass.

    Later in the afternoon, pavement finally reared its ugly head and we had to move on down U.S. Highway 20 to the town of Island Park, Idaho.  Yes, we had made our second state of the trip.

    We spent little time on the tarmac and we were soon back on gravel.  We crossed the Big Spring River. 

   
Our friends from earlier had given us advice on how to avoid a section of the trail that was an old railroad bed but is now a four wheeler/motorcycle trail.  They said it was nothing but whoops (imagine gigantic washboard).  We weren’t too interested and, as we passed it up, realized that every four wheeler within a hundred miles was using that trail.  We were glad we missed it.

    Late in the afternoon we came to Ashton, Idaho.  See y’all down the trail

                                                     July 18