Butte to Beaverdam Camp 7/15 32 miles

More pics here

Sarah here-- writing the blog post for the ride out of Butte where Jody stayed with Silas to spend just a few extra minutes with 'The Cousins'.  I started the day picking on Daren before we even left the campground.  He seems to be adding new bungeed safety item, or 'just-in-case' tool to his bike frame every day.  It's lucky for Jody and me-- because in a pinch we know he'll have just the thing we never even considered bringing but desperately need.  Today I noticed he had what appeared to be a 4 season 3 person tent bungeed to his handlebars, so of course I had to ask why he thought we needed a tent at all.  He assured me that it was just a a TARP, not an entire tent, and that you just never know…

We had about 10 miles of pavement riding before we started a long, gradual ascent to reach Continental Divide Crossing #5.  In all we climbed 1800 feet to get there but it was heavily forested and, for the first time since West Glacier, a chilly ride.  Up at 7300 feet we had great views of the Pioneer Mountains-- lots of sage, lupine, and other wildflowers.  There were also large, beautiful rocks littering the landscape up there.  It will be interesting to get my hands on the geological history of that area, for now-- 'large beautiful rocks' is all I can say.


 We enjoyed 6 miles of rolling hills… for some reason much of the hills up there were made of soft wet sand which isn't easy to ride in, so though beautiful, I was looking forward to having the rolling hills behind me.  When we finally reached what was to be a 4 mile descent-- Daren's rear rack braze-on brazed-off.  BUT, Mr. Safety-First-A-Boy-Scout-Is-Aways-Prepared made a quick fix with zip ties, (and of course had an entire spare rack setup back at the ranch), and we were back in business descending to the highway where Jody would be waiting-- except we were early and she wasn't there yet.  

We sat at the off ramp awaiting pickup.  Daren went straight for his maps, reviewing the ride for tomorrow and beyond, and I descended the slope to a patch of good napping grass.  I was awakened from a nap by Daren alerting me to something "big and ugly" approaching (I thought he was making a joke about the winnebago, since they're still occasionally rejecting the new identity of "RV Owners").  I popped back up to his perch to see what he was seeing.  The first big rain drops started dropping.  Dark storm clouds were obscuring the mountains that were 'just there' a second ago.  We laughed at our predicament as we put on layers and rain shells, but then  Crash--Crack!  Thunder and lightening.  **It was a GOOD thing Daren had that TARP bungee'd to his handlebars because we SURE needed it.**  We quickly grabbed our stuff off the bikes and went to lower ground-- holed up under the tarp, anxiously watching the highway of oncoming traffic until Jody arrived.  Luckily-- we weren't stuck in the storm for too long when Jody showed up, feeling terrible of course for leaving us out to dry-- or soak, rather.  

We hopped into Rocky as quickly as we could and drove through what became a torrential rain storm.  As suddenly as it had started, the bad weather was behind us and we arrived to blue skies and sunshine at Beaverdam Campground.