Little Joe Campground to Bannack State Park 7/17 38 miles

For more pics click here

After a rainy stormy night we woke to a beautiful sunny morning.  Silas started the morning with Jody and I and got his first taste of real climbing as we worked our way up 1000 feet over the first 8 miles.  He had reached his limits and was giving us the business when a huge heard of cattle was driven out of the woods directly in front of us by 10-20 horseback riders and dogs.  It was an impressive site and made things interesting as we tried to dodge the land mines they left on the highway. We reached the top of the climb a short time later and started a long steep descent at speeds up to 36 mph that left Silas grinning and his parents terrified for his life.  We met up with Sarah for lunch a few miles later at Polaris,  and Silas abandoned us for the comfort of the RV.

 The rest of the ride to Bannack State Park was hot, rolling and uneventful other than meeting up with a retired woman, Sue,  from Germany who was riding around the country by herself.  She had done a lot of riding in the past and had the best touring set up I have ever seen including front/rear panniers, a bear proof food storage cannister, handlebar mounted Computer and GPS, a solar recharging panel and a top of the line bike with an internally geared hub.  Best of all, everything was black, gray or white and matched perfectly.

After talking and riding with her a short distance we turned south towards our days final destination of Bannack State Park which turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip so far.  As we rode into the park, we passed an old cemetery that was overgrown with sagebrush and looked like something out of an old western.  Most of the tombstones were for people that died prior to 1900 and almost all were less than 30 years old. Some of the tombstones had recent decorations including several small brightly colored toys on the grave of a 4 year old that died in the late 1800's.   

Bannack itself is a ghost town that was built around the site of Montana's first gold strike and became the first state capitol . There are about 50 structures that are open to the public including the old jail cell with it's "unobstructed view of the gallows" through the iron bars of the only window.  The jail/gallows were built by the towns sheriff Henry Plummer.  Apparently Sheriff Plummer had a side job as the leader of a gang of road agents that killed over 100 people and were known as the "innocents".  When the locals figured this out, they tracked him down and gave him a "good drop" on the very gallows that he had commissioned.  The next day the vigilante's continued their work by trying to question a resident named Joe Pizanthia.  Joe refused to come out of his cabin and shot the first two men that tried to enter so the crowd got a cannon and shelled the building.  As the story goes, Joe was injured, dragged from the cabin, shot over 100 times and "with the cabin ablaze they threw his body into the flames".