What a day of riding! Like many of our days, we got to go up a hill, then we got to go down a hill. I highly recommend you set up your rides this way, because it’s hella fun letting gravity do its thing after you’ve spent all day working hard. Especially if you’re dropping into the beautiful Wise River Valley on a road just steep enough to be fast, and just slow enough so you can look around and enjoy.
As we moved on from lunch, you can see that Montana is transforming from a largely wooded state, to one made of grasses and sagebrush. As we look back, you can see the stand of trees where we saw our first black bear, a youth who quickly scrambled away as soon as he saw us. We weren’t able to get our cameras out in time to take a picture, and we sure weren’t going to hang around to wait for the mama.
Dean enjoys a great downhill stretch. Note the beautiful Montana sky that “big” does not adequately describe.
I’m quite sad that my upload speed is so slow right now. I would have loved to send this to you at the highest quality. This was the descent into Wise Valley. Pure reward at the end of nice, hard ride. We don’t make the signs, we just take the juvenile pictures next to them. BTW, “Divide” is a local community and the Big Hole River is part of the same river system as the Wise River. No word yet on why they’re named that way.I found this .22 LR shell in the parking lot at a car wash. Guns of all types are positively everywhere out here. I solemnly swear this is true, today I walked into a gas station and saw fresh fruit, hard liquor, pistols, AR-15s and shotguns, car batteries, and an assortment of hardware (nuts, bolts, etc.). This store was about the same size as the 7-11 back home.
