Day 14

I wanted to cover a few miles today, since I had not gone very far yesterday. I did a total of 61 miles from Ovando MT to somewhere between Lincoln and Helena over two passes. The one thing that might be better than the descent from the top of the pass is the pine smell coming down the mountain. I don't notice the smell so much at the bottom, but up top it is great. Tide still has a ways to go before they perfect that smell. Next time you have Mountain Fresh scent for laundry detergent don't believe it until you have been up in the mountains of Montana.

Going up the second one, Stemple Pass, was pretty challenging. The map said, "next 4.4 miles are extremely steep uphill, but they lead through fascinating country with several stream crossings." The stream crossings were pretty fun. It was cool to ride through water calf high. The other thing I noticed were all these log cabins that had long been abandonded. I think most of them were from people going west back in the day and trying to mine precious metals. All I could think about when I saw all these cabins was, Unabomber. I looked it up to see where Ted Kaczynski's cabin was located and it was Lincoln, MT. Pretty much exactly were Stemple pass is. The country is definitely wild and remote, as I'm sure Ted liked it. Me not so much. Camping in this country is a little wild for my taste.