We woke up early this morning and Sam took out his bluetooth tripod and took this beautiful photo of the 5 cyclists - John and Frosene Sacco (cycling from Oregon to Minnesota and further), Sam (cycling from east to west) and us two. We thoroughly enjoyed the evening together and were sad to say our goodbyes.
Christine and I were very happy to see the store open at 7:00am. The coffee was great and C found an amazing T-shirt as well.
We soon found ourselves outside Twin Bridges and passed this sign. We are both amazed at what the Lewis and Clark Expedition achieved.
Christine had to take a photo of flowers that we have not seen yet
while we both enjoyed this view of the Jefferson River. The view is so much different from driving in a car at 60 mph.
We had to stop at Granny's Country Store in Silver Star where we had a looong chat with the owner, Matt. He has an amazing selection of books for sale and
also runs the second oldest Post Office in Montana. Who can remember these PO Boxes??
Across the street is an amazing collection of old mining gear, all collected by an individual who did not want to see this part of history disappear. Unfortunately, the owner died some years ago and the intended museum may not come to fruition at all.
Once we left Silver Star we started climbing to the Pipestone Pass.
This was the start,
the climb,
the climb and
almost the summit. There are lots of trails for hiking, mountain biking and horseriding and the summit has a large trailhead for these as well as the Milwaukee Road Rail Trail. We planned to cycle down this, but the surface is very rough due to horse and mountain bike use.
Pipestone Pass summit (crossing the Continental Dive at 6,418 feet above sea level).
The rail trail is in a beautiful area and we shall come back to do it with mountain bikes.
Christine led the way in going down the mountain.
We stopped for a lunch of Bagels with peanut butter and jelly at the Thompson Nature Park at the bottom of the mountain.
We stopped for a milkshake at the Mountain View Coffee Shop close to the open pit that Butte is famous/notorious for. We missed the Visitor Center by less than 15 minutes and used the milkshakes to try to gather our wits. We were physically tired and mentally exhausted. The road from the pass to Butte has no shoulders and three large RVs decided to pass us. What saved the day was that the oncoming traffic stopped completely and moved onto the shoulder. I am sorry, but my wave changed from a five-finger one to a one-finger one.
The view of Butte and the mountains from the Main Street is quite beautiful.
There are many interesting old buildings.
We continued down Main Street towards
the Montana Tech, a well-known small Engineering University.
Here we also started on the BA&P
Rail Trail that is laid on a rail bed that took gold, silver and copper ore from the mines at Butte to the smelters at Anaconda.
We had nice views of the city, valleys and mountains
as we cycled along.
The western part of the trail is unpaved, but we continued
through an underpass of the I-90
up to the end of the trail at Rocker.
The Rocker Station building serves as a trailhead for two rail trails linking here.
It was quite late and we headed to the 2 Bar Lazy H RV Camp Grounds where we saw this beautiful sunset.
We were exhausted, but we had to find a new route to Missoula. Christine looked at the map and saw that the next mountain pass that we planned to go over the next day, was a gravel, seasonal road. This means we were in for poor road surfaces and narrow road sections with little protection. We were happy to find another route of about the same length and with a much more friendly gradient.
Anyway, all this rerouting meant that we did not do our blog in time before bed.
Oh that sunset!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful views!!
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