Rose Pedals . . .: The Antelope of Madison County

Monday, July 15, 2013
Day 9 - Butte, Montana to Bozeman, Montana
100 miles
3,824 feet of climbing

I always get a chuckle out of the days that we have breakfast in the hotel breakfast room (instead of in the parking lot). There's usually a few unsuspecting "regular" (i.e., non-PAC Tour) hotel guests that are unlucky enough to be there when us PAC Tour people descend upon the breakfast room and take over. Don't even think about going near the waffle machine. Or the coffee.

Today's route to Bozeman, Montana began with a delightful climb to Pipestone Pass, where we crossed the continental divide. Then we had an crazy-fast 15-mile descent almost all the way to our first rest stop in the little town of Whitehall. We rode through Jefferson and Madison counties, mainly on a nice secondary road, which provided picturesque views of the Tobacco Root Mountains. We saw a pronghorn antelope, but, I'm sorry to say, I did not take a picture of it. But here's a picture of one I found on the internet - a much better picture than I could have taken:

After the first climb, we had mostly rolling terrain that brought us to our lunch stop at mile 75. We hit a strong headwind around mile 52 as we took a turn toward the southeast, and it was very slow going until I hooked up in a pace line with Art, Tim and the other Tim, and we made much faster progress than I would have going it alone. Despite the numerous dead snakes I spotted on the road, it was a beautiful ride to lunch alongside the Madison River. After lunch, we only had 25 miles to go, we had a good climb out of the valley toward Bozeman. It was a extraordinarily hot, dry and sunny afternoon, and I had the bright idea of squirting myself with (instead of drinking) the ice cold water in one of my water bottles while I was on the climb. It felt really great . . . until I ran out of water to drink. A major flaw in my plan. So I pretty much rode into Bozeman on fumes, until Art quite mercifully shared his water with me. He's a great husband who has saved me more times than I can count. : )

We finished today's ride around 3 p.m., which gave us plenty of time today to clean up, get ready for tomorrow and go to dinner before the 7:30 ice cream social PAC Tour hosted for us. It was a great way to end a very fun day of riding.