Feeling pretty well rested, but with a long day ahead of us, we shivered ourselves into a ready state, then went to eat breakfast at the campground's cafe.
The breakfast was really good. Everything actually tasted like its respective self with flavor to boot. And we could see the river out the window to our right and the fly fishing gear (big feathery pelts and things- so not knowledgeable on this subject) on our left.
Our first few miles took us by Earthquake Lake (formed from the 1959 Earthquake- you can still see all the dead trees in the water and where part of the mountain just collapsed damming up the Madison River), and continued to take us down through the Madison River Valley, downhill along lots of ranches.
We stopped about 30 miles in, in a place called Cameron (just a PO and one store that is the Saloon, Cafe, Grocery, and Jail) for some OJ and yogurt, but they only had pudding, so we ate that with some bananas and granola and then set off for our next destination, 27 miles out, in Virginia City. We'd gotten about 5 when I heard the sound of a *#*V*(#! FLAT. But we just laughed, patched it, and got back on our merry way. We had been warned that MT was having a high wind warning for the next few days and we really wanted to beat it. We passed through Ennis, and then did a Uturn into our big climb for the day, about 10 miles to summit. We had to stop several times, and at one scenic point we talked to two fellows from NY. One of whom was doing a 19 day, 2000 mile bike trip from Canada to Mexico, but was taking the day off due to an injury (how could you not have an injury biking 150 miles a day?) and the other was accompanying his wife who was also biking the trip, while he tooks time to enjoy the towns, museums, and have (in my opinion) a better time.
We finally made it up over the hill (pretty mild compared to the surrounding ones) and over to Virginia City. A wonky little historic town that definitely had a VA kind of feel to it, it was one of many old mining towns we would continue through. We went to the library, had some lunch, and then scooted ourselves over to the homemade ice cream place that had the machine out front. Andy had cookies and cream and I had licorice, which is a flavor I will sorely miss.
It was 5 when we left our little town, and we had 30 more miles to go. Fortunately they seemed fairly kind, and took us through 3 more little mining towns, all with varying character. One of which, Sheridan,m had just survived a major freak thunderstorm that blew out lots of old handblown windows, tore up vinyl siding, and just made a general mess of the place. The countryside continued to be that vast big sky stuff, although it was surreal with 100s of sprinklers watering everything in sight, until we arrived in Twin Bridges, where we set up camp for free at the Fairgrounds there. We had some difficulty figuring out what to do with our food and everything since Yellowstone had scared us into thinking EVERYTHING was a potential hazard. We caught a few glimpses of the rodeo trials for the upcoming county fair and then were off for dinner.
Totally beat, but full from our soup and salad bar trip at the Wagon Wheel Cafe, we somehow made it back to camp, brushed our teeth, and hit the hay.
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