July 17 day 17 Helena MT. to White Sulphur Springs MT. 77 miles 3277 climbing

Heading out of Helena we made a slight wrong turn and wound up with a few extra miles .

Off in the distance is a lake called Clark Ferry Lake. This area is where the biggest gold rush happened in Montana's history. The hardest part the ride this morning is the rumble strips running along the shoulder of the road. A few times it got pretty thin for riding on the right side of the strip.

This train was zipping along. Jim and I thought the train was bee hives till we realized air was moving. We've seen quite a few colorful bee hives along the highway.

This is one of the many boards along the highway telling the colorful history of Montana.

Riding along we often find a crow on top of a telephone pole out in the middle of no where. He is either voicing his opinion or laughing at us for riding in the middle of no where.

The countryside had been quite dry when we rounded a bend in the road and found this incredibly 

Green field with mountains in the far distance.

This is a beautiful farm.

We a have ridden from long rolling plains to forest and into a deep tree lined canyon.

When we left the rest stop at 35 miles we knew there would be  3 long climbs. The first one was not bad and not the 7% we expected. It only went up to 5%. It had a great downhill I got up to 41 Mph.

After that it became an awfully long ride to the lunch stop. It would go up 2% then up to 4%. Then back down to 1% to 3%. Just up and down and it was getting warm, up in the 90's. All of us expected the stop to be earlier than it was. By the time we all got there everyone was pretty cranky. Once we all sat down cooled off and fussed about the ride, we all had a good laugh. Plus we knew that when we got back on the bike it was a short pop up a hill then down hill. All the way into White Sulphur Springs

The road into town!

The Hotel had 3 hot spring pools. One was 104 degrees. The second one was 96% and the third one was 107 degrees. Jim and I tried the first two, no way we were going to go in the third one.

Later as we were waiting for others to go to dinner the rains were headed In.

This is Damon Hopper with his wife Cindy and his Hopper Beer in hand.

At dinner we propped a door open since it was so warm inside. This 

Boarder Collie came in and settled down on the floor. It was raining really hard outside.

Back at the hotel we settled in for the evening. Tomorrow we are off to Harlowtown