Day 5; CDT 3: Butte, Mt to Lima, MT

Today we were on the bikes by 8:30 AM. Weather was warm with overcast skies most of the day. We encountered sprinkles late in the day, but they were light and did not last long. Otherwise, it was a beautiful day.

The ride today consisted of mostly well maintained dirt and gravel roads as well as a fair amount of asphalt. We also had a short, but fun section of single track on fleecer ridge with a steep downhill.

We covered the 197 mile day in 6 hours and hit a peak elevation of 8,053. We took advantage of our early return by doing laundry, changing oil in the bikes, and lubricating and tightening drive chains.

Today's highlights included: Big Horn Sheep, Fleecer ridge single track, Bannack: first town in Montana, first ever electric dredge (in Bannack), the Big Sky of Montana, and lots of wide open ranch land.

Here are some pictures from the day:

RV Park in Butte, Montana

Rest Stop

Old house built into the hill. We actually saw a few of these today.

Typical of the wide open ranch land that we drove through today

Bannack State Park - This is a reconstruction of the old mining town that was the first town in Montana.

Another rest stop

Long road through ranch lands. You can see the road disappear over the horizon.

This is not a great picture of the canyon we were in, but the canyon walls were very steep on each side and the canyon floor was very narrow.

There was a big line of cows in a pasture and these guys were at the very end, seemingly trapped by the fence and mountain.

Coming out of the steep canyon we came upon a group of mountain goats crossing the road for water. They hustled up the mountain, but not too far for a decent picture.

We arrived in Lima to find a pretty small town and a very run-down RV Park. It was fine for one night.

Lance; Always ready for an adventure.